When The Slave Traders Were African Kings | Britain's Slave Trade | Timeline

500 years ago Europeans and Africans met for the first time on these shores the encounter created the

slave

trade

and changed the world the

slave

trade

remains a lost chapter in our history, yet Britain led the world in exploitation of human burden this story is not just a story of slave raiding by Europeans, but slave trading by Africans. Greed led African

kings

to sell twelve million people across the ocean. This is not the story of a trade that grew by accident, but of a global business created by royal appointment. The Royal African Company is to be incorporated to see as many ships as deemed appropriate for the buying, selling and bartering of black gold and silver slaves, nor is it simply the story of passive and suffering blacks freed by heroic white crusaders, but a history of black uprising and, above all, this. is not a story of a dead past, it still shapes the way Britons live today William Beckford and his father, Oldman Beckford, to put it bluntly, owned my ancestors, confronts some Britons with a heritage they never They had faced each other before, my grandfather.

He was what I consider probably a very charming man and in his youth I was quite sure that he really was and for the first time black and white Britons discover a common ancestry. It is an ancestry rooted in a past

when

British ships brought African slaves to Bristol. This quiet port was once a merchant power that dominated the transatlantic slave trading ships that ripped millions of Africans from their homes and crowded Avon for a century; Yet today a visitor sees a city stripped of any reminder of that cargo. Bristol has turned its back on the trade that made it rich.

I was very surprised by the fact that it was not recognized that Bristol's wealth lay in Atlantic trade. In vain did I go to the museum, for example, to see if the exhibition there was even a word I looked at my universities or if I was teaching it even a little. I spoke to people on the street and they were completely ignoring it and I think well, in the 20th century Bristol went through a long period of denial, there was rarely any involvement in this. In Ryder World, city authorities have long resisted efforts, especially by black communities, to mark the slave trade past.

There has been a genuine fear in Bristol of what the consequences would be if the truth came out and part of the fear was generated, I think it was because the people who had control over whether that story came to light or not, they didn't actually know which It was the extent and nature of the participation bristling and I think it's more fear than denial, but at the beginning of March this year the first sign of change appeared. Bristol dignitaries gathered for the unveiling of a new footbridge, it was a small step but a victory for the campaign to commemorate one of the slaves who lived in Bristol, a man called Perot Jones, we are here with our friends to show our respect for our ancestors who lived and died in the city as enslaved Africans so often unknown that in 1725 Bristol alone enslaved 16,550 Africans in that year is the bridge that helps us come to terms with understanding and sometimes , confronting a shared past, a past that contains for many Another great sadness is that this moment is a sign that Britain is waking up to its slave trade history.

Perry Jones belonged to a Bristol family for pennies. Britten Flav's past does not begin with Africa, it begins in 17th century England with the first slaves of the British Empire, the white men. The founder of a Pini dynasty brought farming to Dorset

when

he became involved in a rebellion against the king. The Duke of Monmouth landed nine Regis in June 1685 and Azariah, probably tired of making hay, saw these redcoats crossing the end of the field and thought. They seemed rather more fun than haymaking and why don't I go and join them and he went and in July 1685 fought the disastrous battle in which I said war, the Duke of Monmouth was executed and a large number of others were executed. executed: some were transported and a sura, my ancestor was one of those lucky ones who were sent to the island of Nevis as a servant, which meant that he himself was more or less a slave when a variety landed on the island of Nevis, which She was little more than untamed.

In the forest, English convicts were put to work alongside native Indians and some imported Africans. They cleared the island first for tobacco and then for a new crop of luxury sugar. At that time, the West End was something of a gold rush. There was a new opportunity to make quite a bit of money quite quickly and a lot of people left this country to do it and in fact they employed blacks imported from Africa as slaves and they employed after the battle of Sedgemoor quite a large number of white people who were indentured servants. . When Azariah persuaded his sister to buy him out of bondage, a year later she had installed him in the sugar business.

He quickly realized that convicts and Indians could not survive the harsh conditions, but his own time in the field had shown him where. The answer was Africa: large numbers of blacks were sent from Africa to the West Indies and the African or linear population increased and the white population decreased within two generations. His heir John Penney was meticulously recording the purchase of African slaves for his flourishing plantations, including one he called Dog Jones. I wish you to take the first opportunity to buy me ten new black ones. Never let them be under 10 and never let them be up to 30 if you can help get them on some kids or other islands. where perhaps they had better and cheaper slavery his grandfather probably made John Finnie feel uncomfortable about having only slaves, but the Scriptures filled his conscience.

I can assure you that I was surprised by the first appearance of human flesh that went on sale, but surely God ordained them for use. and benefit of the Earth, otherwise, his Divine Will would have manifested itself through some particular sign or symbol. He was motivated by trade, but in doing so it appears that he considered his slaves as his main asset and took care of his assets. I am proud to say. a word regarding the care of my slaves and cattle, you have good sense, you must tell them that they are the elders of a plantation and you must demand their particular care and attention, a humanity tempered with justice must always be exercised towards the former, surely they deserve. the very means of our livelihood had to be kept clean of ticks the demand for finished sugar was enormous to meet the demands they needed more slaves but they had to raise money to buy those slaves and they turned to merchants in a London town to help the men money They were willing to give loans to the planters but it was the biggest profits from the slave ships that offered the best returns The city wanted that business for itself The king was always willing to exchange favors for cash He granted a Royal Charter that gave a single London company, the Royal African company, exclusive rights to the slave trade, in return the royal family became its largest shareholder, Charles II, by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and added to all to whom these gifts will come, greeting Guinea.

Benin, Angola, Southern Barbary and the sole trade and traffic thereof is the undoubted right of our heirs and successors and considering that the trade of the said regions is a great advantage to a subject of this kingdom, the Royal African Company must join in the name of our dear brother James Duke of York His Highness Prince Rupert Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury Henry Earl Mannington misfortune to the back John we hereby grant to the same ethical royal company of England to see as many ships as deem suitable for the buying, selling and bartering of gold, silver, black slaves, hand-made goods, the company man would not let anything get in the way of his quest for profit, they already knew that slavery was widely practiced in West Africa , in most African nations, was an alternative to prison. system those who committed crimes convicts could be sold as slaves if you ordered debts that could be sold as slaves sometimes by deception or could be tricked into becoming slaves slaves were also acquired as captives from the wars in Africa Europeans had long been time part of a system established for By exchanging them, the first Europeans to arrive in Ghana were the Portuguese and they arrived in 1471 and when they arrived here they discovered that there was an intense slave trade between Ghana and its West African neighbors and for 100 years Portugal remained on the coast of Ghana. and they participated in this coastal trade today they go to Senegal bringing goods from Senegal from Nigeria to Ghana and bringing slaves in exchange for gold and this was a situation before the classy Atlantic slave trade was introduced in which the Royal African company did not I had no interest. a coastal trade they wanted slaves to ship across the Atlantic they found a ready supply in local law prisoners when you went to war and defeated the people you brought home so he decided what to do with his captives how many slaves do we need for the agriculture how much we need for the army how many we need for the home, except, etc.

After having gone through all that logistics, the excess goes through the Atlantic slave trade, what is the image we have today of the slave trade as kidnapped en masse by Europeans could not be further from the truth for both parties, this was just a business, the African role in this mouthpiece and dormant trade should not be swept under the rug, the greed factor was that their kingdoms made money, rose as a result of trade, the great powerful. Wealthy families were created as a result of Africans being active contributors to the tree. The company discovered that African

kings

were as greedy as England's own royal family.

They were willing to supply exactly what the plantations needed. Slave owners in the West Indies. They preferred to live off of board cuts Goethe said they were slaves Heidi were very hardworking local businesses emerged to supply the transatlantic market European merchants had no need to gather slaves Europeans themselves did not go inland to the villages or talent or capture slits , they stayed in the sand castles and were the African

traders

. African

traders

sold these cables to Europeans. Now what happened was that they were middlemen who would meet the merchants from the interior who were bringing the slaves, they would buy these cables and then in turn.

They resold them to European merchants in the castle. Rival European powers were building castles to protect their cargoes. Within a century there would be a fort every three miles on what used to be called the Gold Coast. It became known as the Slave Coast, the Royal. The African company appealed to its major shareholder James II and began a series of Garrison's motivated possibly by national interest but more likely by its own profits. Every time they sighted a British ship, their sailors could count on the welcome of the fort and the African settlement. together with him we took up our old anchorage opposite Cape Coast Castle and made arrangements to begin our old business of gathering a cargo.

Our first objective is to store rice for the slaves on the way to the West Indies, you will naturally think so. It must be difficult to do business with these people through ignorance of their language, but they have been trading with the English for so many years that all the merchants have mastered English enough for that purpose. Oh, the transatlantic slave trade dominated West Africa for some kingdoms selling slaves. It became an economic necessity and new trading settlements sprang up along the coast in the 17th century. Slavery in the Atlantic became the most important activity on the coast.

We found that almost every town circulated and every rupee and every castle of fortune was involved in the slave trade. We have a 65-person slave market in Ghana and no, Africans could hardly have anticipated the consequences of all this, but the deal they made with European slave traders transformed the continent, what started as a local tradition became a monster that ultimately swallowed 12 million people. slavery existed in societies that did not have prison systems it was part of the punitive measures against criminal behavior Colonel's behavior the slaves lost their freedom they went perhaps to the neighboring state for the nation lasting but only for a season it was not a long-term loss period of Freedom andChildren of slaves, of course, were never slaves in that context, but here, of course, when with the Titanic slave trade there is a final separation, if we leave and they never return, slavery would drive millions away from the continent. be the cause of war and torment and would drag both Africa and Europe into a harsh new era in the 18th century the coastal cities of West Africa were making huge profits but the price paid by the Africans was enormous the slaves suffered treatment which had never been supported before in the original system, especially in Ghana, no slave owner had any part of life and death during sleep, but in the castle you could do anything to the slaves, you could kill the slave, you could do So that the slave could find you later, you could sleep. polish the dream however you want cape coast castle in modern ghana the headquarters of the royal

african

company a place of misery and terror they too lived in the dungeons they were animals you know so they weren't given enough food to eat they were prisoners we have the condemned cell, we are fabulous with children and many of them were turbulent because I mean, if you live in your country and someone comes here and takes you into captivity, if you don't take seriously that slaves are locked up in every space they could be trapped here for months there were only two exits to the sea and to the slave ships or to the cemetery they had to go to the bathroom in the dungeons they were fed in the dungeons their whole life was in the dungeons and that seems very uncomfortable very unhealthy it could have been some windowless epidemics were actually confined to those small rooms the forts became synonymous with cruelty and rape the moral restraint of the Europeans evaporated under African influenceSun, most of the colonial officials who came to the coast got their way , so most of them became lovers, they became domestic servants, concubine lovers of this official for some of the slaves who lived in the dungeons, the governor saw quotes some of the female camp and when they found them pregnant, If they were lucky, they were so free, the Europeans were not ashamed to declare their conquests on the Cape coast.

Families still carry names like Gonzales Coleman frist and a heart of silver. European merchants intermarry or have African premises. African women and their descendants for the Milettis also grew in number as slaves were brought in, not all were sold and shipped, some remained as if one were to see a sort of cosmopolitan life growing along the coast, the West Africans They tolerated the brutality of the merchants because European military backing gave them power and they needed to import cheap brass and iron trees for farming and cooking. Africans were always looking for a better deal. It was a small English town of Bristol that offered that deal.

The local mineral deposits gave a nicer unique advantage. Bristol could manufacture high-quality metal goods at low prices in factories spread across the Avon Valley to meet new African demand. This is what makes a guinea pan that was used as one of the trade items that filled Bristol merchant ships sailing around West Africa and for several of these. you could trade a slave in the early 18th century and it was thanks to these small factories that only Asian value was able to develop an industrial structure to manufacture these large quantities cheaply, but basically Bristol was able to develop a slave trade in the early 18th century .

Century The Golden Age of Bristol was dawning the families who transformed the city used their wealth to buy huge estates Abraham Elton's descendants still live in his stately home Clevedon Court when he was a self-made man He came from a fairly humble background He was an apprentice, became a sailor, and became a master sailor, but he clearly had a strong business talent and eventually became a merchant. Abraham saw the opportunities in metals, bought land with large deposits of copper and began looking for new markets. He was looking for an outlet for his copper products. he had the raw materials for the business here, the copper factory, he has an outlet for copper in the Bristol brass industry, but naturally he was looking for wider markets.

Abraham's maritime connections told him that Africans would pay top dollar for the high-quality brass he seized. Opportunity, large numbers of people were involved in supplying slave ships, so something that seems completely unrelated to the slave trade, like the brass industry, was actually very geared toward an export market to the coast of West Africa because the West African warlords wanted brass vessels and so most of the brass vessels were arrested for what they call the Guinea pan. Abraham was an aggressive cost cutter. He and others discovered that with a simple redesign the ships that carried their metal products to Africa could also transport slaves to the Caribbean and then bring them back.

They returned sugar to England in one fell swoop, their costs skyrocketed and their profits doubled. Knowledge of it gave rise to triangular trade. What she tried to do was fill her boats on trips to Africa. She would then be paid for the slaves she brought. the next leg of the journey and then the third leg brought back the sugar and tobacco and the RAM backed Bristol, which you then sold to minimize your financial risks as much as possible. The Bristol merchants had managed to outmaneuver the Royal. African company, they gave African customers what they wanted at half price.

It was not an exchange of unequals, it was an exchange of equals. I have to remember that many of these African societies were complex and very urban in some places, some of the cities were large and therefore they were not going to sell a European good, so it was a great skill to get the right types of goods and the Bristol merchants in particular were very skilled at bringing together these different items that were acceptable for trade in the great advance. in Bristol skyrocketed the profits of the city's slave trade Restless merchants would use those profits to begin a historic change in British life the Industrial Revolution Among Abraham Elton's circle of friends was Thomas Gold nee, who had made a fortune with a single successful trip, he plowed some of the money into the job of an old family friend Abraham Darby Darby was experimenting with new ways of making high-quality iron products, he moved his factory to Shropshire, where he began smelting iron with coke, A revolutionary process that Coalbrookdale, an iron producer, was strong enough to make tools that would not bend or break paved the way for the modern era, was adopted by these companies in 1709 and is generally considered to be the starting point of a decisive moment in which the Industrial Revolution begins what developed was a remarkable partnership between the people who have the knowledge on the one hand and the people who have the money on the other.

What we buy. The iron masters were trying to find a source of iron-fired coke that would be acceptable to the African market and this is what happened. To the extent that it inspired the industrial development that took place, the golden leader was the association that also inspired Ironbridge, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. This Great Leap Forward is usually attributed to the native genius of British engineers, but curiously it advanced towards the demands of African trade in 1700. Ships descended the Valley of the Seven to Bristol carrying goods intended to serve the eyes on the coast of Africa In the West, when the boys got up to work, the merchants had to collect goods from the visceral region, many of them came from the Valley of the Seven and it was the ability to obtain those products together that really allowed the ships to trade with Africa and that all the economies worked, somehow the Industrial Revolution allowed the slave trade, the Atlantic slave trade, to be economically viable, just like without the Industrial Revolution, commodities were working. too expensive and African communities would not have been willing to trade in Africa.

Bristol iron was so valuable that it became a type of currency trade. Everything is done according to the principle of exchanging one commodity for another. All types of merchandise are priced by number. of iron bars are worth, say, for muskets equivalent to 40 bars, tobacco beads and cloth, 20 bars, the total is more or less according to the value of the slave, so that supposing that the bar is worth one shilling and sixpence, These goods would buy a slave valued at about nine pounds sterling, which today is approximately the price of a prime slave. The sugar trade with Bristol had made Nevis rich, but it was a tedious and secluded place.

John Penny now a successful sugar planter longed to return to Bristol, the magic of gold. The rush was over, a lot of people were coming back to this country and trying to bring the money they had earned in Nevis or the other West Indies to this country and he was one of those two cents who had built a big house on Mount Travis in the The West Indian planter, a slave he had named Taro Jones Harrow, was separated from the last member of his African family, his sisters Nancy and Shaba, when he left for England never to return a cent and Perrault moved to a new house in Bristol, built the house we are now sitting in acquired land in Somerset still had land and houses in Dorset continued in the sugar business trading with the West Indies plantations at a time when sugar was increasingly becoming part of England's diet , it probably seems strange but the siege of a black man was far from unusual in Bristol, many merchants had slaves as valets and housekeepers.

He may have started out as a slave, but he is described as a servant or valet and took care of John. Can a close person? one imagines mixing his robinia with shaving water, arranging his clothes, etc. He had been working for John Kinnear for 32 years and when he jumped back to Bristol he found a city more interested in spending money than in doing so. Complacency would cost the Dean of Bristol in 1794. the city, somehow forgets to mention the slave trade, Stately Bristol to your happy harbour, Prolific commerce makes its beloved resort its beloved resort With brave ships with wide spread sails, What do the treasures of the world show?

The Docklands were the heart of Bristol and had beautiful residential houses built just across the road from the warehouses by merchants who were growing a lot in the 1920s and 1930s in what was quite a greedy and hands-dirty trade and then Yes When you cross into Queens Square, there were at least eight African merchants in this square that developed in the 1720s. It was one of the first provincial examples of what people called the Urban Renaissance. Another beautiful gorge. An explosion of houses and facilities in the urban center. and it was largely financed and driven by people directly involved in the slave trade and the whole square was really made up of people not only in the African trade but also in the West Indies, Carolina and Virginia trade, they were all involved and these are the same. people who while sending slaves from Angola to st.

Kitts index does not exceed 4 feet 2 inches. They are also investing in the Teatro Real. They are becoming sponsors and banks. They are investing in new private libraries. So you have this strange mixture of brutality and gentleness that is a fundamental part of it. and part of this is trying to attract wealth to Bristol, to buy respectability, the men who had made their fortune in the slave trade craved social recognition to be a trader or merchant in the 18th century they were thought to have a low status, so they He showed them his back. inputs into work, so that when you arrived excessive sums of money, which is what slave traders and product traffickers acquired based on slave wages, you had to buy yourself into society;

By the way, doing it was simple, you had to build a mansion. hopefully piling on the near-palladium neoclassical style to show that you had knowledge or that you understood the classics and then you had to patronize the art. Thomas Gold (née) was now one of Bristol's commercial aristocrats. He created a property in the newly trendy Kissed on the district. elegant varnishhiding the hard-nosed businessman in this garden is where essentially all the gold news interests are symbolically linked out here we have the port where he could see the ships coming in the slave ships leaving his merchandise is his industrial products that come down from Shropshire, so a lady has some wonderful gardens, including a tower which is expected to be a roundhouse which contained a steam engine and which was used to pump mines which her investments had in Shropshire and which the hotel company was producing, but you use it. not to pump mines, but the pump has Visser's own gardens to recycle water that was not available.

The splendor of gold. Nia's status had one main goal: to impress the bristly social elite. Beneath the garden he built a grotto filled with rare finds from his ventures in the South Seas and the West Indies Thrilled his guests Visitors told me the shopkeeper's son was now a global player Bristol's nouveau riche could leave the past behind very quickly gold his friend Abraham Elton was now Sir Abraham simply standing in Bristol with immense he became mayor in 1710 and had his portrait painted with the scarlet. He wrote that he became MP for Bristol and was so rich that he first contributed ten thousand pounds to George's rather depleted coffers and, as is usual in these things, of course, he was named a had returned to the net when he died, for what Abraham hoped the family had buried their ties to the slave business.

He had amassed a fortune by his death of one hundred thousand pounds in fair money. He was someone like Richard Branson. He earned a lot of money. through their own business skills, I think anyone who comes out of nowhere and makes that kind of fortune with their own skills, then as now, their extraordinary ziz is admirable in many ways, they weren't plantation owners, they weren't slavers, They were mainly worried. Exporting their products to the widest possible market and it seems to me that the older families inherited the slave share was just part of the cycle of trade, so over the next hundred years good works became a passion for the Eltons, the Elton who really got underway with the The development of Clevedon was the Reverend Sir Abraham, who was the fifth Baronet.

He put the sewage into the main drain, the gas plant, he built the hospital. He was immensely concerned about the health of the city and, of course, the workers on the property he built the churches for the schools. I am very proud that the foundations of this family's wealth are now obscured by a hundred years of philanthropy and that throughout Bristol the slave trade was practically forgotten in 1798, but the slave that John Penny had brought from Nevis was dying. All my family are well except my servant Sparrow, who was very ill and now in Ashton for a change of scenery, I am recovering from Dad, one or the other of us visits him three or four times a week, he has been cared for for more than 32 years old and I can't help but feel.

Much to him, although he has not behaved as well as he would have liked of late, Penny sent him to Long Ashton on the outskirts of Bristol, where he convalesced but then sadly died and there is a rather charming Ormiston, a bit Rhea, who says how much he had become. I know and - like what - like him then there is a sting in the tail even there at the end of his days he died of drunkenness but still he starts speaking well of this servant but he did not survive psychologically once removed outside his own black community and basically a Barrow, I regret to inform you that he died a few months ago after having been almost useless through drunkenness and dissipation almost since we left Nevis in 1794, his conduct has been very reprehensible, to the point of that his lover and every branch of my family have urged me to dismiss him and send him back to Nevis with an annual allowance.

Harrow never returned to his family in Nevis. The only records of his life are the pinnate letters of John, but 200 years later his name is commemorated by a symbolic bridge. link between Bristol today and its slave past and we reflect on the life of Pierrot, the man after whom this bridge is named. Pierrot, a black man brought to a strange land in circumstances of servitude, so it gives me great pleasure to call this bridge the Pyrrhus Bridge. honor his memory his name and the fight he represented thanks at the time of Parros's death the bristling chivalrous merchants have been ruthlessly cast aside there was a new claimant to the crown of England which led Slade to think that Bristol's heyday in the slave trade per se was in the early 18th century, from 1698 to the 1740s, and then because the port had not innovated to accommodate larger ships because there was a traditionalism in Bristol society, society mercantile that was not as entrepreneurial did not take advantage of the opportunities as well as New reports such as that of Liverpool we find that the eclipse of Liverpool survived in the 18th century and became a much more important place that had made Bristol the master of the commercial place African and also demonstrated the reason for his fall.

The receding tide of the Avons would regularly run ships aground throughout the month, but the slave trade was expanding and in need a more ambitious captain began to look for less uncomfortable ports than Bristol, it was a difficult port to develop and therefore , Bristol was excluded from the trade by Liverpool's larger, more profitable ships rather than smaller scale ones. Activity developed by Bristol merchants in the 18th century. Bristol's dominance in the African trade had come to an end. Their merchants had made fortunes and now moved on to other ventures, but their partners in West Africa had no such alternative.

Africans were trapped in the business. From selling people, the captain of a ship could buy a hundred slaves at a time in a salad market and the demand from the plantations did not allow African suppliers to reach further into the interior, raiding parties were taking away thousands of slaves, people that intentionally read and kidnapped people for slavery wasn't like that before slavery was introduced in the Atlantic because you already had enough for the indigenous system, you know, so why should I kidnap traders? They struck with a new strategy. Walls between African nations always meant captives for sale, so slavers supplied weapons to some. nations and encouraged their kings to make war on vulnerable neighbors when there was peace, I mean there were no captives to sell as slaves and therefore the slave trade would tend to decline at that particular time and later when there were wars, they were granted captives who were brought in and in Italy this would flourish later, so in some way or largely the slave trade depended, I think, largely on conflicts between local Africans.

Slave traders had started an arms race in Africa. They never gave any African nation enough. weapons to challenge European power, but the weapons helped Africans continue fighting each other for a century. The years of conflict and depopulation left a legacy from which Africa has yet to recover. Many people wonder why talking about the slave trade wants to forget about it. it was such a terrible crime against humanity millions of people were sent again we cannot say the number we could talk about a numbers game in history some say 10 million others say 12 times 8 20 million some even say 300 million Africans were expelled and Africa was depopulated and all these things happened we are putting up with this right now the slave trade left an indelible mark on this part of Africa when I compare it with the loudest ones I think the world perhaps has not given enough attention to the fact that that the Africans had suffered a holocaust before they used it, what makes me just a feeling of indignation and also unlimited anger.

I think our underdevelopment dates back to this period because 1,400 people who also used iron and domesticated animals and started the development of cereals. rice and corn and things like that we didn't have time to advance towards you if you use the words of the law the most revered explorer David Livingstone trade civilization and Christianity the three steam the first we understand trade the slave trade itself was a commercial enterprise I mean al That is the force that you will see on our coast, we are not vacation places, they were saving purposes for human beings, then you talk about civilization, what type of civilization are we talking about.

Africa had had civilizations, but because of the transatlantic slave trade, that civilization almost came to a standstill. Africa was destined for a future of poverty and conflict. England's royal enterprise had reinvented the trade in human beings, and Caribbean planters were refining a brutal new system plantation slavery