A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

by William J. Bernstein

Millions more would follow. Even in the absence of religious and cultural strictures against slavery, it is difficult and expensive to hunt, capture, and transport human beings; the majority of black slaves initially fell into the hands of opposing tribal armies, not slave traders. The Europeans’ susceptibility to infectious diseases dictated a minimal white presence on the African slave coasts, limited to visiting crews and a few permanent agents, whose primary expertise lay in plying local rulers with gifts and bribes of all descriptions. Since the local inhabitants of the slaving ports would not countenance such inhuman treatment of their ethnic brethren, the captives themselves had usually passed through several hands before reaching the coast in order to ensure that they were of different tribal origin from their final African jailers. Until well into the nineteenth century, the Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French remained largely unaware of just how their human cargoes had been acquired, and often of their precise geographic origin. Even had they wanted to capture the slaves themselves, Europeans could not have survived long enough to do so. The RAC’s records show that 60 percent of its personnel in Africa died in the first year and 80 percent by the seventh year, and that only one in ten was discharged alive from company service.