SLO 5 Jamaica, the Moneymaker!

This week I opened the Slave Voyage database again. When searching I randomly chose a vessel named Martha; flying the British flag, captained by John Smith and owned by John Powell and Powell (Son). This ship began their voyage on 09/04/1775 in Bristol with 23 crewmembers. They made their purchase of 214 slaves in Gold Coast (04/1776).  After their first landing they had 13 crewmembers on board. They disembarked on 12/14/1776 in Jamaica with 197 slaves. I am curious what happened to those crewmembers did they die from diseases like many of the slaves? That will just be some sort of mystery. Though, when searching I noticed a whole lot of the ship landings taking place in Jamaica. So I entered some search keywords to further investigate just how many ships were disembarking there. I found, during the time period of 1773-1793 and only those flying the British flag the total were 2,263, and when I limit the search to those of the Caribbean it only drops down to 1,905. Whoa, so almost 85% of ships were traveling to the Caribbean! Then when I clicked through the pages of those Caribbean ports, Jamaica was very well dominating in presence (The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database). So, I took by search further to another resource and found a scholarly article The Dynamics of the Slave Market and Slave Purchasing Patterns in Jamaica written by Burnard and Morgan. This was a gold mine and had so much information about Jamaica and the Slave Trade. So let me deliver to you what it is that I have discovered. Between the 1655-1808 3,432 known voyages and 915,204 slaves reached Jamaica. These were only the vessels that were registered and completed the voyage. The intended amount of slaves from those voyages was 1,083,369. Therefore about a quarter of slaves taken from their homeland never made it to the final destination.   Jamaica had the greatest demand for slaves of any other British Colony in the Americas. It received one third of the held slaves that were imported by the British Colonies. In some periods such as 1720’s and 1790’s Jamaica accounted for 40 and sometimes 50 percent of the Africans shipped by Britain (Burnard and Morgan, 205-207). As you can see Jamaica was very popular for Britain’s landing point.

Where was Britain getting all these slaves? The slaves that reached Jamaica usually came from four popular regions of Africa: the Bight of Biafra, the Gold Coast, West Central Africa, and Bight of Benin. Of these four regions they accounted for ninety percent of the slaves residing in Jamaica (Burnard and Morgan, 208). “When the slave ships arrived from Europe they were laden with trade goods. Captains offered gifts to local African leaders and paid taxes for the right to trade. They then began the serious business of barter and exchange, offering a wide variety of trade goods such as textiles, firearms, alcohol, beads, manillas and cowries Europeans…bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers. These dealers had a sophisticated network of trading alliances collecting groups of people together for sale…Most of the Africans who were enslaved were captured in battles or were kidnapped, though some were sold into slavery for debt or as punishment…The captives were marched to the coast, often enduring long journeys of weeks or even months, shackled to one another. At the coast they were imprisoned in large stone forts, built by European trading companies, or in smaller wooden compounds.. (The Capture and Sale of Slaves)”.  The slaves being from different areas of Africa had much diversity amongst them.

As the population of Jamaica grew so did the heterogeneity, the slaves from different areas of Africa started to  “mix and mate” together (Burnard and Morgan, 219). As the slave ships docked it was seldom for the purchaser to pick and choose the ethnicity of the slave, that they were getting a great mix of ethnicities during a purchase.  In Kingston there was several large purchasers that came through. George Richards being one of them making the largest single purchase of 229 slaves and his widow Mary purchased 148 slaves several years later Burnard and Morgan, 214). These individuals are an example of those that showed interest in the Kingston slave market. Being a shipping point Kingston transformed because of the slave trade.

So, why were these people being torn from their homes? What was the need for such a great population in Jamaica? Money of course, Jamaica was a large sugar mine. Jamaica produced forty two percent of Britain’s sugar production. Jamaica being such a moneymaker for them was considerably more important than any other British colony.

Burnard, Trevor, and Kenneth Morgan. “The Dynamics of the Slave Market and Slave     Purchasing Patterns in Jamaica, 1655-1788”. The William and Mary Quarterly 58.1 (2001): 205–228. Web...

"The Capture and Sale of Slaves." International Slavery Museum, Liverpool Museums. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2016.

 "The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database." Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. 

                       Emory University, n.d. Web.  Mar. 2016."