M&D Deep Duck: Slave Trade - numbers

[David Casseres]

A data point: Ray Raphael's excellent book "Founders" says that in 1765 the
population of the city of Charleston, South Carolina was three-quarters
black. Whites flew into panic and vigilantism at the slightest rumor of
insurrection.

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 8:29 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Glancing over that website's tables for "flag" [of slave ships] rather
> than destination, my impression is that British (and later Americans) were
> a significantly larger fraction of carriers (which may or may not be the
> same as traders) than they were of "destination slave populations." Maybe
> we Anglophones developed moral qualms about slaveholding per se a bit
> earlier than those mainland Europeans -- but hey, as long as they were
> buying from Africa  and needed transport, and we had good ships & sailors,
> no sense leaving money on the table.
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 9:45 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
>> Very useful information to contextualize the time. So essentially the
>> largest slave traders, which were the dominant sea powers and colonizers
>> -Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, Great Britain, France and US were also  the
>> dominant purchasers and owners of slaves, largely in their colonial
>> holdings.
>>     I just saw Selma last night. These events were closer to the time of
>> the beginning of Pynchon's writing career. One sees the depth of influence
>> everywhere. Pynchon takes the realities of our time and looks for the roots.
>>    Hoping someone can fill in some gaps in my history. So were Spanish
>> slave dealers all directly working for the crown or were there corporate
>> structures there too?
>>    This certainly is an ignominious origin for Capitalism.
>> On Feb 3, 2015, at 4:13 PM, Monte Davis wrote:
>>
>> > The handiest compilation I've seen online for the trans-Atlantic slave
>> trade is the interactive tables at
>> >
>> > http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces
>> >
>> > In broadest strokes, for the whole tabulated span 1501-1866:
>> >
>> > 12.5 million slaves embarked, 10.7 million disembarked. So ~14% died on
>> the voyage (inherent vice, y'know)
>> >
>> > Ranked destinations:
>> >
>> > Brazil: 4.8 million
>> > Caribbean/West Indies: 3.9 million
>> > Spanish Americas: 1.3 million
>> > North America: 390,000
>> >
>> > (That last surprises many people: it wasn't all or even mostly about
>> us, not that that's anything to preen about)
>> >
>> > Slaves to Brazil peaked in 1800-1850, to Caribbean and North America in
>> 1750-1800. Spanish America had an early peak in 1600-1650 and another in
>> 1800-1850
>> >
>> > As I've noted here before, other sources concur that in total, there
>> were roughly two slaves for every European settler. Obviously the ratio
>> varied wildly from place to place -- but viewed from Mars, the story is less
>> >
>> > "Europeans settle New World, don't miss the tragic appendix about
>> slavery"
>> >
>> > than
>> >
>> > "Europeans, using twice their own number of expendable prisoners, spend
>> ~300 years getting a firm enough beachhead that other Europeans can really
>> start pouring in in the early 19th century."
>> >
>> > Becky, re your "American slavery was probably the most vicious and
>> inhumane form of slavery the world has ever known":
>> >
>> > Not so at the brute quantitative level of "how many died?" and "how
>> well did the slave population reproduce itself and grow?" In the Caribbean
>> death rates were much higher: disease, climate, sugar cultivation even
>> tougher than cotton, tobacco or indigo) Slave population growth was lower
>> or negative, rebellions and brutal repression much more common. And Brazil
>> was no picnic, although ISTR it was there that the largest proportion of
>> any New World slave population was able to slip into the forest as maroons,
>> and/or blend with indigenes.
>> >
>> > But at the more refined level of "How hard was it for a slave to become
>> free?"... or "How many knots did the law twist itself into to make slaves
>> pure chattel rather than Nth-class citizens?"... or "How wide was the gap
>> between public rhetoric about freedom and the actual slave society?"...or
>> "How much pseudo-science was ginned up to justify slavery?" ...the US
>> version was certainly right up (down) there.
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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