British Abolition and Slave Prices in Africa

Economic History Association

British Abolition and its Impact on Slave Prices Along the Atlantic Coast of Africa, 1783-1850Author(s): Paul E. Lovejoy and David RichardsonSource: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 98-119Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123769 .

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British Abolition and its Impact on Slave Prices Along the Atlantic Coast of

Africa, 1783-1850 PAUL E. LovEJoY AND DAVID RICHARDSON

This article challenges the widely held view that slave prices in Africa fell substantially and permanently after Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807. Examination of slave-price data shows that, when allowance is made for movements in prices of trade goods bartered for slaves, real slave prices fell sharply between 1807 and 1820 but that the fall was confined to West Africa. In West Central Africa prices remained steady before 1820. Thereafter, prices rose strongly in both areas, and between 1830 and 1850 prices were generally close to the levels reached between 1783 and 1807, the height of the Atlantic slave trade.

As Britain was the principal transatlantic carrier of slaves in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Parliamentary abolition of

the British slave trade in 1807 was a major factor, probably the most important factor, in the decline of slave exports from the Atlantic coast of Africa in the decade or so after 1807. The impact of British abolition on slavery within Africa remains, however, a matter of controversy among historians. One school of thought, most closely associated with Paul Lovejoy, suggests that, in conjunction with the rise of "legitimate" trades in palm oil and other goods, the drop in slave prices along the coast that followed British abolition encouraged increased use of slaves within Africa.' By contrast, David Eltis has argued that as the prices of slaves were largely determined by demand conditions in the Americas, the fall in prices that occurred after 1807 indicates that domestic use of slaves failed to increase "sufficiently to offset the decline in transatlantic demand." Accordingly, suppression of transatlantic shipments,

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. I (Mar. 1995). ? The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507.

Paul E. Lovejoy is Professor of History, Department of History, York University, North York, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3. David Richardson is Reader in Economic History, Department of Economic and Social History, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, U.K.

We are grateful to David Eltis, Peter Lindert, Stanley Engerman, Joseph C. Miller and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies. Preliminary versions of the paper were presented at a Colloquium on the ending of the Atlantic slave trade, held at the University of Stirling in Scotland in April 1993 and at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for African Studies held at Toronto in May 1993. We are grateful to Robin Law, who organized the Stirling colloquium and invited us to attend. Funding for some of the research underlying the paper was provided by the Nuffield Foundation and Research Fund of the School of Economic Studies, University of Hull.

I Lovejoy, Transformations, p. 136. Lovejoy revised the earlier interpretation of Hopkins, Economic History, which emphasized the importance of the shift from slave exports to the export of "legitimate" commodities without fully recognizing the significance of the redeployment of slaves into domestic production within Africa. Also see Manning, Slavery and African Life.

98



British Abolition and Slave Prices 99

in Eltis's view, "must have meant some reduction in the enslavement of Africans."2

Despite their disagreements over the impact of abolition on the enslavement of Africans, these scholars agree that fewer slaves were purchased along the African coast following Parliamentary abolition in 1807 and that this decline in demand precipitated a fall in coastal prices of slaves. Drawing on the research of others, Lovejoy supported his argument on the expansion in slave use within West Africa by suggest- ing that "the price of slaves at the export points dropped substantially as a result of abolitionist efforts to end the trade."3 Similarly, Eltis has claimed that coastal prices "fell by little more than a half and remained generally below the pre-1807 price for as long as the traffic lasted."4 Other authorities have accepted the view that British abolition triggered a decline in the volume of the trade and that lower demand caused a decline in slave prices.5 A closer examination, however, reveals that the price drop after 1807 did not last as long as previously thought. In fact, in some places prices did not fall at all. Moreover, according to the analysis presented in this article, prices rebounded with the revival in the level of slave exports after 1820.

Although contemporary reports suggest that the British withdrawal from the slave trade certainly helped to trigger a sharp fall in slave prices along the coast, with the drop at the Gold Coast being particularly acute,6 some recent studies indicate that abolition had a less immediate effect on prices. At St. Louis and Gorde in Senegambia, for example, nominal prices of slaves apparently fell only slightly in the 1810s and early 1820s and then rose sharply after 1826, surpassing levels reached before 1800.7 Similarly, at Luanda, the chief port in Angola, prices apparently fluctuated between about ?15 and ?18 per slave from the 1780s to the early 1820s before rising to over ?30 by 1830.8 Moreover, even at the Gold Coast, where prices were depressed in the 1810s, slave prices appear to have risen strongly after about 1820 and, during the

2 Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 227. 3 Lovejoy, Transformations, p. 139. 4 Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 41; and Eltis and Jennings, "Atlantic World." sLaw, "Commercial Transition"; Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth and

Slavery and African Life. 6 Braudel (Civilization, p. 440) cites a report of a British ambassador that Portuguese and

Spanish traders took advantage of "the drop in purchases and prices occasioned in Africa by the withdrawal of the English." For the Gold Coast, see Bowdich, Mission, p. 333; van Dantzig, "Elmina," p. 592; Wilks, Asante, p. 262; and Reynolds, Trade and Economic Change, pp. 43-71.

7 Curtin, Economic Change, pp. 48-53. See also his "Abolition," p. 88 and Rise and Fall, p. 116.

8 Miller, "Slave Prices," p. 67. Miller's price data were reported in the sources in milreis. The milreis depreciated rapidly against the pound sterling in the late 1820s, a point that Miller seems to have overlooked when reporting prices. We have adjusted his prices in the estimates noted in the text here, using exchange rates given in Instituto Brasileiro, Anuario Estatistico, p. 855. We are grateful to David Eltis for advice on this point.



100 Lovejoy and Richardson

1830s, reached levels very similar to those before 1807.' Hence the view that prices of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa generally fell after 1807 and remained permanently below pre-abolition levels is question- able.

These doubts over the course of price changes after 1807 suggest the need for a re-examination of the trend of African coastal prices of slaves during the era of abolition. For our purposes, we have defined this period as embracing the years from 1783 to 1850. As other historians have recognized, constructing a price series for African slaves in any period poses severe difficulties since prices of slaves were usually reported in a variety of ways and currencies and for groups of slaves of varying size and composition. The difficulties facing the compiler of a general slave-price series from 1783 to 1850 are compounded, however, by two further problems.

First, it appears that the effect of abolition on levels of slave shipments from Africa varied among supply centers along the Atlantic coast of Africa.10 Most of the initial decline in slave shipments after 1807 appears to have centered in Senegambia, the Gold Coast, and the Bight of Biafra. In most other regions, slave shipments remained close to or, in the case of areas around the Zaire River, even exceeded pre-1807 levels before 1850.11 This differential impact of abolition suggests that uniformity in movements of slave prices after 1807 was unlikely, thus necessitating some weighting of price data in order to create a general slave-price series.

Second, slave prices are frequently based on the prime cost or price in Europe and the Americas of the goods bartered for them.12 Almost invariably, goods were charged at current prices and the resulting slave prices are also, therefore, current prices. This presents few problems when, as in the period 1660 to 1770, prices of trade goods remained relatively stable over long periods. 13 But it does present problems when, as in the period 1783 to 1850, prices of goods in Europe and the Americas evinced much greater fluctuation. To assess the course of slave prices along the coast in this period, it is essential to adjust slave-price data to allow for changes in the cost of trade goods outside Africa. 14

In this article we attempt to clarify the course of slave-price movements in the era of abolition by reviewing evidence on slave prices and

LaTorre, "Wealth," pp. 426, 440. Manning, Slavery and African Life, p. 95.

'l On export patterns, see Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 250-52. 12 Manning attempted to adjust for the decline in the cost of ocean shipping as well; see Slavery

and African Life, pp. 198fn, 334. 13 For earlier price series see also Johnson, "Ounce"; Bean, British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade;

and Curtin, Economic Change. 14 This point was recognized by Curtin and Eltis; see Curtin, Economic Change, appendix 15;

Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 260-64; and Manning, Slavery and African Life, 334.




by constructing an integrated price series for slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1783 to 1850 that takes account of both variations in regional patterns of exports and movements in prices of goods bartered for slaves.

SLAVE-PRICE DATA, 1783-1850

To produce price data for slaves in Africa, historians have generally followed two methods. The first uses data on slaves shipped along the coast and the value in Europe of goods bartered for them in order to estimate slave prices at prime cost. This procedure was first adopted by Philip Curtin in 1975 to calculate prices of slaves in the lower Gambia in the periods 1683 to 1688 and 1727 to 1741. David Richardson later extended this method to estimate slave prices throughout Atlantic Africa from 1698 to 1807.15 Curtin used records of the Royal African Company in making his calculations whereas Richardson relied on customs data on British exports to Africa and estimates of British slave shipments in Africa based on shipping records.

The second method used to compile slave-price data relies on contemporary reports. This method was first employed in 1968 by Marion Johnson, who produced a prime-cost series of slave prices at the Gold Coast in the eighteenth century.16 Johnson's approach was subsequently refined and extended by others, particularly Richard Bean and Eltis.17 Relying solely on published data, Bean compiled a slave- price series at prime cost for the period before 1775; Eltis used both primary and published data to produce a series for the period 1815 to 1865. In creating their series, neither Bean nor Eltis attempted to weight price observations by the numbers of slaves involved or the coastal distributions of slave exports. However, both sought to convert prices of mixed groups of slaves to adult male equivalents, using evidence on price relativities of adult males to other types of slaves. Moreover, if coastal prices were given in African units of account, both sought to convert them into sterling or dollar equivalents, using available evidence on exchange rates.

In seeking to produce a slave-price series for Atlantic Africa in the age of abolition, we focus on the period 1783 to 1850 and use data assembled by both methods. Three sets of data, all based on nominal prices, underpin our price series of slaves. They include the Richardson series on slave prices for the whole British trade from 1783 to 1807; data on annual slave prices in the Portuguese trade at Luanda and Benguela between 1784 and 1829 collected by Jose Curto and Joseph Miller; and

' Curtin, Economic Change, pp. 4849; and Richardson, "Prices." 16 Johnson, "Ounce."

17 Bean, British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Eltis, Economic Growth. A slightly revised version

of Bean's series was published in Wattenberg, Slatistical History, p. 1174.




published and unpublished data on slave prices in West Africa between 1808 and 1850, variously assembled by Curtin, Eltis, Robin Law, Lovejoy, and Richardson.18 Some gaps in our data set remain, particularly for West Central Africa from 1830 to 1850, but we believe that our data provide a solid basis upon which to estimate trends in slave prices along the Atlantic coast of Africa between 1783 and 1850.

Some discussion of the nature of our data and the procedures we followed in using them is needed before we examine the trends in prices they suggest. As the British were undoubtedly the principal shippers of slaves from 1780 to 1807, the use of Richardson's British-based price data for gauging trends in slave prices before 1807 is particularly appropriate. The sources used in constructing this series have been described in detail elsewhere and need not detain us here. '9 It should be noted, however, that although the British dominated the trade in slaves from 1780 to 1807, they took relatively few slaves from West Central Africa before 1793. Thereafter British shipments of slaves from this region increased until abolition, though West Central Africa still remained a relatively modest source of slaves for British traders up to 1807.20 Richardson's series should perhaps be viewed, therefore, as primarily a West African price series, and, as such, may not fully reflect price trends throughout the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1783 to 1807.

To compensate for the probable West African bias in Richardson's price series, we turned to data on slave prices in Luanda and Benguela, the principal centers of Portuguese slaving in West Central Africa. Annual data on the number and values (in Portuguese milreis) of slaves shipped from these two ports exist for various years from 1784 onward, thus allowing us to generate a series of annual prices of slaves for West Central Africa to complement Richardson's series for West Africa.2' Largely derived from customs accounts and trade reports, the data allow us to calculate average annual prices in Luanda and Benguela in the mid-1780s and then on a regular basis from 1795 to 1829. In addition to complementing Richardson's series, this West Central, or Angolan, series usefully straddles the years before and after British abolition.

18 For the British data see Richardson, "Prices." The price data for Luanda and Benguela between 1784 and 1829 derive from customs records held at the Arquivo Historico Ultramarino, Lisbon. We are grateful to Joseph Miller and Jose Curto for supplying us with these data and for allowing us to use them. Some of these data were used by Miller in his "Slave Prices." The Curtin data derive from his Economic Change. Eltis's data formed the basis of his price series published in Economic Growth; we are grateful to David Eltis for supplying us with a copy of his original data set and for allowing us to use it. We are grateful, too, to Robin Law for supplying us with some unpublished price data. Copies of the full data set of West African slave prices between 1808 and 1850 and the sources from which it derives can be obtained from the authors and will be published in our "Regional Breakdown."

19 Richardson, "Prices." 20 On patterns of British slave shipments see Richardson, "Eighteenth-Century British Slave

Trade." 2i For the sources of these data see Miller, "Slave Prices."




Whether customs valuations of slaves in Luanda and Benguela were equivalent to Richardson's prime-cost slave prices is uncertain. Miller, for example, suggested that the Luanda data may include some local factorage and other charges.22 On the whole, however, the indications are that the values attached to slaves by Portuguese officials were not significantly different from prime-cost estimates of slave prices at places in West Central Africa derived from other sources.23 Assuming that the Portuguese prices are comparable to Richardson's British data, the two series may be combined therefore to produce a general price series of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa between 1783 and 1807. To do this we need to convert milreis prices into sterling equivalents and then decide the weighting to be given to each of the two separate price series. The exchange rates between milreis and sterling for this period are available in various sources.24 For weighting purposes, we merged the Luanda and Benguela data into one Angolan series and assumed relative weights for this and the Richardson series of 0.4 and 0.6 up to 1792 and 0.25 and 0.75 thereafter. These weightings reflect the estimated numbers of slaves shipped by the British and Portuguese at this time as well as shifts in the coastal distribution of British slave exports from Africa between 1780 and 1807.25

To estimate slave prices from 1808 to 1850, we again combined evidence from data sets relating to West and West Central Africa. The West African data derive from a variety of primary and secondary sources and cover the whole coast from Senegambia to Gabon. The principal primary sources used are British Parliamentary and Foreign Office papers. Slave prices in these sources are normally expressed in pounds sterling, dollars, or, occasionally, local units of account. We converted all prices into sterling. These sources also usually identify prices in terms of the prime cost of the goods exchanged for slaves, and in this respect they are similar to the pre-1807 data. Our West African data set for the period 1808 to 1850 comprises 136 price observations,

22 Miller, "Slave Prices," p. 59. 23 James Tobin of Liverpool claimed that in the early 1790s he paid ?17-18 each for slaves at

Loango and further suggested that "I do not think that [prices] averaged more than about 10? or 12?" on "the southern coast [Angola]." (British Parliamentary Papers). In 1805, Thomas Leyland of Liverpool provided ?18 of trade goods for each slave that his ship, the Fortune, was expected to buy at the Congo [Zaire] (Leyland papers), while Thomas Lumley of London provided over ?22 worth of goods per slave for the Bedford, also bound for the Congo [Zaire], in 1804 (Chancery Masters' Exhibits). The investment per slave by Lumley seems significantly higher than the prices indicated by the Angolan data, but the evidence of Tobin and the outlay of Leyland are consistent with the Portuguese data. Finally, the French ship, La Belle, was reported to have purchased 527 slaves at Ambriz, north of the Zaire, in 1815, the average price per slave being 293 francs or ?11.6 (Daget, Traite, pp. 1-5; exchange rate franc to sterling, Curtin, Economic Change, p. 56). This price was some 44 lower than that reported by customs officials at Angola at this time.

24 For 1822 onward we used exchange rates published in Instituto Brasileiro, Anuario Estatis- tico, p. 855. For earlier years we followed the conversion rates used by Miller, "Slave Prices," p. 67.

23 Richardson, "Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade," p. 173 and "Slave Exports," p. 10.




mostly for mixed groups of slaves of varying numbers and age and sex structures. The distribution of price observations is uneven, both over time and across slave-supply centers. We have only 8 observations for the periods 1808 to 1814 and 1831 to 1835 but some 91 for the periods 1826 to 1830, 1836 to 1840, and 1846 to 1850. Among slave-supply regions, price data are much more abundant for Upper Guinea and the Bight of Benin than for the Bight of Biafra. Despite this unevenness in distribution, we have not tried to weight regional price observations of slaves in West Africa from 1808 to 1850. Nor have we tried to convert prices of mixed groups of slaves into adult male equivalents as some other historians have done. Instead, we rely on the raw price data, most of which refer to mixed groups of slaves, treating these as broadly equivalent to the average annual slave prices provided by the pre-1807 sources. We believe that this is a reasonable assumption; nevertheless, it should be noted that the proportion of children among slave exports from the west coast of Africa rose sharply between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.26 This probably introduces a downward bias in average prices after 1815 compared to our pre-1807 prices.

Parliamentary and Foreign Office papers yield few price observations for slaves in West Central Africa after 1807.27 As a result, we rely principally on annual values of slaves exported from Angolan ports by Portuguese traders as our main source of slave prices in this region after British abolition. Unfortunately, the records kept by Portuguese customs officials end in 1829, and only 11 reports of slave prices in West Central Africa have been found for the following two decades, most of them clustered in the late 1840s. This is, in our view, too small a sample upon which safely to project estimates of slave prices in West Central Africa from 1830 to 1850. In the absence of sufficient price data, we have assumed therefore that prices of slaves in West Central Africa mirrored those in West Africa from 1830 to 1850. We believe that this is, on balance, a conservative assumption, as slave exports from areas south of the equator remained much more buoyant than from places further north in the 20 years after 1830.28 Furthermore, as we shall see, slave prices between 1808 and 1830 were usually higher in West Central than in West Africa; however, there are signs that slave prices in West and West Central Africa may have been converging by 1830. By assuming complete convergence of prices between the two areas after 1830, we tend probably to understate average slave prices throughout Atlantic Africa between 1830 and 1850.

The assumption that slave prices in West Central Africa mirrored

26 Eltis and Engerman, "Fluctuations," p. 310. 27 To date we have only 15 observations for West Central Africa between 1807 and 1850. These

are listed with our West African data for this period in the data set and are obtainable from the authors.

28 Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 250-52.




TABLE 1 MEAN PRICES OF SLAVES ALONG THE ATLANTIC COAST OF AFRICA, 1783-1850

(? sterling, current prices)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Period British Angola W. Africa General

1783-1787 15.6 12.2 14.2 1788-1792 19.5 13.6a 17.1 1793-1797 18.0 15.Oa 17.3 1798-1802 27.3 16.3 24.6 1803-1807 33.2 17.2 29.2 1808-1814 15.6 17.2 16.4 1815-1820 15.9 8.5 12.2 1821-1825 14.4 8.5 11.5 1826-1830 14.5 11.5 13.0 1831-1835 7.5 7.5 1836-1840 10.0 10.0 1841-1845 - 8.2 8.2 1846-1850 - 11.3 11.3

a These are estimated prices based on linear interpolation between 1783-1787 and 1798-1802. Notes: Columns 2, 3, and 4 are subseries of slave prices relating to the British slave trade before

1807, Angola between 1783 and 1830, and West Africa from 1808 to 1850. Column 5 is the weighted general series for the Atlantic Coast based on these subseries. The general series after 1830 derives

solely from West African data.

Sources: For British prices, see Richardson, "Prices"; for the Angola trade, we used data supplied

to us by Joseph Miller and Jose Curto (see the text); for the West Africa trade, see Lovejoy and

Richardson, "Regional Breakdown" and the text.

those further north after 1830 obviates the need to weight regional price series in order to produce a general series for the whole coast in the 1830s and 1840s. A weighting of the West African and Angolan series is needed, however, to produce a general series for the period 1808 to 1830. According to recent literature that has highlighted variations in age and sex compositions of slave exports from these areas, proportion- ately more children, particularly boys, were shipped from southern

29 haentt ports. We have not attempted to adjust for this here. But the latest figures show that the proportion of slave exports from Atlantic Africa that originated in the west central region rose sharply after 1800. About half of all exports from the coast came from this region between 1800 and 1840.30 To estimate general price trends of slaves throughout the coast from 1807 to 1830, we give equal weighting, therefore, to the West African and Angolan price series. As noted earlier, the general series after 1830 derives solely from West African data. Overall, for the whole period 1807 to 1850, our analysis of price movements in West Africa is more firmly rooted than it is for West Central Africa.

The trend in nominal or current slave prices along the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1783 to 1850 revealed by our data is summarized in Table

29 Eltis and Engerman, "Fluctuations," p. 310. 30 Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 250-51.




1. Columns 2, 3, and 4 of the table contain subseries relating to the British slave trade before 1807, Angola between 1783 and 1830, and West Africa from 1808 to 1850. The weighted general series based on these subseries is shown in column 5. As price data do not exist for every year between 1783 and 1850, the series are presented as quin- quennial averages, the exceptions being 1808 to 1820 when the data are grouped for convenience into slightly longer periods.

The series in column 5 shows that between 1783 and 1807 the mean price of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa more than doubled, rising from about ?14 to over ?29 per slave. The rise in prices occurred throughout the coast but was evidently much greater in West Africa than in Angola. As a result, the mean price paid for slaves by British traders in 1807 was much higher than that paid by Portuguese traders at ports south of the equator. After 1807, prices generally fell and, averaging about ?12 by 1820, were nearly 60 percent below their pre-1807 peak. Again, however, important regional variations existed in the scale of price changes, with prices falling much more gently in Angola than in West Africa. Some recovery in slave prices was apparent in West Africa during the late 1820s and helped to push prices generally back toward the level of the mid-1780s, but prices then fell back again after 1830, averaging between ?7.5 and ?11.3 in the final two decades of our period. Overall, therefore, current prices of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1807 to 1850 were consistently below prices before 1807, though prices in Angola remained much closer to pre-1807 levels, at least until 1830.

PRICES OF TRADE GOODS

The above description relates current prices of slaves along the African coast to the prime cost in Europe or the Americas of the goods exchanged for them. Slaves were usually bartered for bundles or "assortments" of goods, and prices of slaves were very often cited in terms of the prime cost of those assortments. Historians have tended to follow contemporaries in adopting this method to estimate slave prices. But this method of determining prices presents problems when, as in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, substantial changes occurred in prices in Europe and the Americas. Consequently, changes in the current price of slaves in Africa may largely reflect movements in prices of trade goods and tell us little about the real price of slaves along the coast, prices in this case being measured by the quantity of goods exchanged. Others, notably Curtin, Eltis, and Manning,31 have recognized this problem. Manning attempted to compensate for the declining costs in transport in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

31 Curtin, Economic Change, pp. 86-112; Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 263-64; and Manning, Slavery and African Life, pp. 198n, 335.




although the impact of such reductions is difficult to measure. Eltis deflated his slave-price data by a price index of trade goods in order to produce his published real-price series of slaves in Africa for the period 1815 to 1865. For this purpose, he relied on a British price index based on prices from 1821 to 1825 compiled by A. Gayer, W. W. Rostow, and A. J. Schwartz.32

We recognize the need to adjust our data on current prices of slaves between 1783 and 1850 in order to eliminate the effects of price changes for trade goods outside Africa. We chose, however, not to use the index of Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz, principally because it includes very few of the goods used to purchase slaves in Africa and does not extend back to the 1780s. Instead, we preferred an index of prices of British exports derived from Ralph Davis's study of British overseas trade after 1783.33 Davis, in fact, provides two current-price series of British exports at ten-year intervals beginning from 1784 to 1786 and extending through 1854 to 1856. One relates to British-produced exports (Davis A), the other to British goods plus re-exports (Davis B). These two series are shown in columns 2 and 3 of Table 2. The problem, for our purposes, with Davis's series is that they relate to British trade with all parts of the world, not just Africa. The composition of British exports to Africa was, nevertheless, broadly similar to the general export pattern of Britain after 1783, with home-produced goods, especially cottons, accounting for over two-thirds of all exports.34 We assume, therefore, that Davis's price indices provide a reasonable guide to price trends of goods shipped from Britain to Africa between 1783 and 1807. As re-exports constituted up to 30 percent of such shipments, we prefer the Davis B to the Davis A index and have used this to adjust slave prices in the British trade from 1783 to 1807.

As with the British trade, there are, unfortunately, no price series specifically for goods exchanged for slaves in Angola from 1783 to 1829 and West Africa after 1807. We must, therefore, resort to other means of assessing prices of goods used in these branches of the slave trade. One indication of price trends is provided by James Tobin, a Liverpool trader, who made ten slaving voyages before 1807 and continued thereafter to be involved in the African palm oil trade.35 Giving evidence to a select committee of the House of Commons in 1848, Tobin reported that on his first voyage to Loango, north of the Zaire, in the mid-1790s

32 Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz, Growth and Fluctuation, Vol. 2, pp. 468-69. 33 Davis, Industrial Revolution. There are other price series for this period, but, like that by

Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz, they are based mainly on domestically consumed goods rather than exports; see Schumpeter, "English Prices"; Hueckel, Napoleonic Wars; and O'Brien, "Agricul- ture."

34 Richardson, "West African Consumption Patterns." 3S Tobin was said to be the principal trader in palm oil in the mid-1820s at Bonny in the Niger

delta, where, it was alleged, he "appears to enjoy quite a monopoly" in the trade (Leonard, Western Coast, p. 82).




TABLE 2 PRICES OF TRADE GOODS AND REAL PRICES OF SLAVES, 1783-1850

(E sterling, 1783-1787 = 100)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Period Davis A Davis B Curtin Prices Prices

1783-1787 100 100 j1ya 14.2 14.8

1788-1792 107 102 n.a. 16.8 17.6

1793-1797 115 103 n.a. 16.8 16.8

1798-1802 126 117 n.a. 21.0 21.0

1803-1807 137 131 n.a. 22.3 22.3

1808-1814 120 121 n.a. 13.6 13.9

1815-1820 103 110 n.a. 11.1 9.4

1821-1825 69 77 72b 14.9 12.9

1826-1830 60 67 55 19.4 18.3

1831-1835 50 58 47 12.9 12.9

1836-1840 44 54 47 18.5 18.5

1841-1845 37 49 38 16.7 16.7

1846-1850 37 49 33 23.1 23.1

a base = 1780s, as reported by Curtin. b Figure calculated for 1823-1825 only. Notes and Sources: Columns 2 and 3 are current-price series of British exports compiled by Ralph

Davis. The Davis A index relates to British-produced goods; the Davis B index relates to British

goods plus re-exports (Davis, Industrial Revolution). Column 4 is Philip Curtin's series of prices of

goods imported at Senegal in the 1780s and again from 1823 to 1850 (Curtin, Economic Change). Columns 5 and 6 are real-price series of slaves along the Atlantic Coast produced by adjusting the

prices of slaves reported in column 5 of Table 1 by the Davis B index. Column 5 assumes shifts in

the regional distribution of slave exports through time; column 6 assumes fixed regional weightings

based on export patterns from 1793 to 1807. For details, see the text.

the average price he had paid for slaves was ?17-18. This is consistent with our data on Angolan prices in Table 1. Tobin went on to note, however, that "then goods, you may take into consideration, were 300 percent. dearer than they are now."36 On Tobin's reckoning, therefore, prices of trade goods about 1848 were only a third or perhaps even a quarter of their level in the 1790s. As a result, on the most conservative interpretation of Tobin's remarks, slaves priced at ?6 in the late 1840s cost as much in real terms as they did in the 1790s.

Curtin's series of prices of goods imported at Senegal in the 1780s and again from 1823 to 1850 provides a second indication of the trend in prices of trade goods.37 Based on reports by local officials of prices of eight commodities, including Indian and European textiles, firearms, gunpowder, brandy, and tobacco, Curtin's index of prices of Senegal imports is reproduced in column 4 of Table 2. It shows that by the 1840s prices of such imports were about two-thirds below the level of the 1780s. This fall in prices was caused principally by a collapse of prices of textiles, which amounted to over half of all imports into Senegal in the

36 British Parliamentary Papers, 5652. 37 Curtin, Economic Change, pp. 108-11.




1830s.38 Moreover, Curtin's evidence parallels Tobin's observations for exports generally to Africa from the 1790s to 1848 and also strongly resembles Davis's series for British exports from 1784 to 1854. The latter comparison may be open to question as Curtin's index refers to import prices in Senegal, whereas Davis's indices relate to British export prices. However, it seems that Senegalese officials valued goods arriving from Europe "at their European prices."39 Senegal price data are comparable, therefore, to those of Davis and indicate that, despite British abolition of slaving in 1807, prices of goods used to purchase slaves along the African coast may subsequently have followed price trends of British exports as portrayed by Davis.

Support for this suggestion is to be found in patterns of imports into Angola and West Africa between 1785 and 1830 as well as of British exports to Africa from 1827 to 1850. A recent study by Miller has shown that although Brazilian goods such as rum were important in the trade at Luanda from 1785 to 1823, they accounted for less than 20 percent of total imports at the port. Asian and European goods, notably textiles, accounted for the rest. Furthermore, even though official figures point toward a large contribution by Asian goods, places of origin were not always accurately recorded, inducing Miller to assume that most of the textiles imported at Luanda probably came from Britain.40 Similarly, research by Eltis has shown that tobacco and specie were important exports from Havana and Brazil to West Africa in the 1820s.41 Eltis notes, however, that most of the specie was exchanged for trade goods before the ships carrying it reached Africa and that tobacco amounted to under 10 percent of the goods used to purchase slaves in West Africa in the 1820s, a proportion similar to that for Senegambia in the 1830s. Overall, he suggests, British merchants continued after 1807 to supply "the greater portion of the goods and credit used by the Brazilian and Cuban slave traders."42 This suggestion is echoed by Joseph Inikori, who claims that after 1807 the dominance of world markets by British goods meant that "slave traders, though not British nationals, came to West Africa largely with British goods or, at least similar ones. "43 As shown in the appendix, the trend in prices of British exports revealed by Davis conforms closely to that suggested by prices of British exports to Africa from 1827 to 1850 compiled by Inikori.

We believe that Davis's data provide a reasonable guide to price 38 For other evidence on prices of textiles at Senegal between 1776 and 1849 see Webb, "Trade,"

p. 162. 39 Curtin, Economic Change, p. 109. 40 Miller, "Imports," p. 199. 41 Eltis, "Trade," pp. 219-26. 42 Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 83. See also his "Trade," p. 210, in which he notes that "British

goods dominated the mix of merchandise exchanged for both slaves and commodities in this period [after 1807], whatever the national origin of the trader."

43 Inikori, "West Africa's Seaborne Trade," p. 63.




trends of goods exchanged for slaves in Angola between 1783 and 1829 and in West Africa after 1807. But some uncertainty remains about which of the two Davis series is more appropriate for our purposes. Davis A, based simply on British-produced goods, is closer than Davis B to Curtin's index for Senegal import prices. It appears, however, that goods such as rum and tobacco, which experienced little change in price after 1815, were less important items of trade at Senegal than at other places in West Africa or Angola." Furthermore, manufactured goods, particularly cotton textiles, which fell sharply in price after 1815, comprised a rather higher proportion of the goods included in the Davis A price index than they did among exports to Africa from 1807 to 1850.45 It is likely, then, that the Davis B index, which includes re-exports such as sugar, spirits, and tobacco, provides a more accurate indicator of price trends of goods exchanged for slaves in Angola and West Africa. The trend in prices of British exports to Africa between 1827 and 1850 shown in the appendix reinforces this observation. Bearing in mind that we prefer the same index as an indicator of price trends of exports from Britain to Africa before 1807, we believe that, overall, Davis B represents the best guide currently available to changes in prices of goods bartered for slaves in Africa between 1783 and 1850.

According to the Davis B price series presented in column 3 of Table 2, prices of trade goods rose by some 30 percent between 1783 and 1807, and much of the increase occurred after the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793. Prices then began to fall, and by 1820 most of the wartime rise in prices had been reversed, with prices of trade goods from 1815 to 1820 being no more than 10 percent above the level between 1783 and 1787. Further sharp falls in prices then occurred between 1820 and 1845, after which prices stabilized. By the period 1846 to 1850, prices of trade goods were, according to Davis B, 50 percent below the level of the 1780s and about 66 percent lower than on the eve

" Figures compiled by LaTorre ("Wealth," p. 399) show that at the Gold Coast the price of rum more than doubled between the mid- 1770s and the late 1810s but then fell back during the following 30 years to its earlier level. Similarly, figures for tobacco prices at New Orleans and Senegambia suggest that the price of tobacco increased by as much as 50 percent between the 1780s and the early 1820s but then fell back and remained for the most part at about the level of the 1780s through most of the 1830s and 1840s (Gray, Agriculture, Vol. 2, p. 1038; Posthumus, Prijsgeschiedenis; and Curtin, Economic Change, p. 110).

4S Davis's figures (Davis, Industrial Revolution, pp. 94-100) show that British cottons and cotton yarn constituted some 34 to 48 percent of home-produced British exports between 1814 and 1846, whereas figures provided by Inikori (Inikori, "West Africa's Seaborne Trade," pp. 84-85) show that textiles, among which cottons were increasingly dominant, comprised some 23 to 42 percent of all imports from Britain into the area from the River Volta to Angola before 1850. Inikori's calculations suggest that Britain supplied directly less than 40 percent of West African imports from 1830 to 1850, but he notes that the slave trade of other nations after 1807 "depended significantly on the products of the British Industrial Revolution that was in progress" (pp. 61-63). It should also be noted that, under competition from British cottons, the price of French textiles shipped to Africa fell considerably after 1815 (Webb, "Trade," p. 162). So, too, did the price of East Indian textiles (Esteban, "British Textile Prices," pp. 72-73).




of Britain's abolition of its slave trade. Reference to Davis A, shown in column 2 of the same table, reveals that, as is generally recognized, movements in prices of British-produced goods were central to the price changes indicated by Davis B. Overall, it appears that British abolition of slaving coincided with a major reversal in price trends of goods shipped to the African coast.

REAL PRICES OF SLAVES, 1783-1850

Adjusting the prices of slaves given in column 5 of Table 1 by the Davis B index produces the real-price series of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa shown in columns 5 and 6 of Table 2. The series in column 5 assumes shifts in the regional distribution of slave exports through time, whereas that in column 6 assumes fixed regional weightings based on export patterns from 1793 to 1807. The former shows mean real prices of slaves throughout the coast in each of the periods indicated, and the latter gives a more specific indication of the impact of British abolition on the trend in coastal slave prices. We shall focus first on the series in column 5.

According to this series, the mean price per slave rose by just over 50 percent during the two decades before British abolition, or from about ?14 between 1783 and 1787 to about ?22 between 1803 and 1807. Most of this rise occurred in the decade before 1807. Prices then fell abruptly and continued to slide until about 1820, when the mean price per slave stood at about ?11 and was half the pre-abolition peak. From a trough in the years 1815 to 1820, prices rose strongly during the following decade and by 1830 had largely recovered the ground lost after 1807, averaging over ?19 per slave. This resurgence in prices was ended by another sharp fall between 1831 and 1835, but prices recovered in the late 1830s and, after easing slightly between 1841 and 1845, then surged ahead again toward the end of the decade, averaging over ?23 per slave between 1846 and 1850.

From this review, it is clear that, overall, the real price of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa fell sharply between 1807 and 1820. Thereafter, however, prices generally recovered, and during the three decades after 1820 were normally at or above the level prevailing at the peak of transatlantic slave shipments in the 1780s. Furthermore, as a result of another surge in prices during the late 1840s, the mean price per slave along the coast by 1850 was apparently about 100 percent higher than in 1815 and even slightly higher than between 1803 and 1807. These calculations make no allowance for the increases in proportions of children among slave exports between 1783 and 1850 that other historians have recently noted. But from the data presented in Table 2, it is clear that, in terms of the quantities of goods bartered per slave, prices of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa did not fall permanently after




1807. Moreover, Eltis appears to have been premature in claiming that the price of slaves in Africa after 1815 "never again reached the levels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."46

THE PRESSURE OF ABOLITION ON SLAVE PRICES

This review of real price trends is based on column 5 of Table 2 and assumes changes in the coastal distribution of slave exports between 1783 and 1850. This provides an indication of the general trend in prices as well as of the average level of slave prices throughout the coast at particular points in time. But, given the heavy concentration of British slaving in West Africa from 1783 to 1807, it probably provides a slightly inaccurate picture of the impact of abolition on trends in coastal prices of slaves. More useful from this point of view is the other series on slave prices presented in column 6 of Table 2. This is based on the same price data but assumes that the geographical distribution of exports between 1783 and 1850 remained unchanged and was the same as in the 15 years before British abolition. A perusal of column 6 shows that, on the whole, this assumption does not alter the broad trend in prices indicated by the series in column 5. But, the depression in prices between 1815 and 1820 revealed in column 6 is deeper, and the general level of prices in the 1820s is also rather lower than in column 5. This underlines the deflationary impact of British abolition on African coastal prices of slaves in the decade or so after 1807.

The consequences of British abolition and the related withdrawal of French, Dutch, and U. S. shipping for slave prices may be further explored by looking at interregional variations in price movements. As yet, we are unable to construct real-price series for slaves for each subregion in Atlantic Africa, but it is possible to create series for West Africa and Angola between 1783 and 1830. The creation of these series depends on two assumptions. The first is that prices paid by British traders before 1807, as shown by Richardson's series, were equivalent to slave prices in West Africa. This is, as we have seen, a not unreasonable assumption. Combining Richardson's series with our post-1807 West African data thus enables us to create a single West African price series from 1783 to 1830. This can then be compared to our Angolan series for the same period. The second assumption is that goods traded for slaves in West Africa and Angola were broadly similar and that price trends of such goods were described by the Davis B series.

Estimates of real prices of slaves in West Africa and Angola between 1783 and 1830 are shown in Table 3. From this it appears that slaves were cheaper in Angola than in West Africa in the mid-1780s and that

'4 Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 227.




TABLE 3 REAL PRICES OF SLAVES, WEST AFRICA AND ANGOLA, 1783-1830

(? sterling, 1783-1787 = 100)

Period West Africa Angola

1783-1787 15.6 12.2 1788-1792 19.1 13.3a 1793-1797 17.5 14.6a 1798-1802 23.3 13.9 1803-1807 25.3 13.1 1808-1814 14.2 12.9 1815-1820 7.7 14.6 1821-1825 11.0 18.7 1826-1830 17.2 21.6

a These are interpolated prices; see Table 1. Sources: See the text.

between 1783 and 1820 trends in slave prices in the two regions also differed significantly.47 Thus, whereas prices in Angola stood at ?12 between 1783 and 1787 and fluctuated between ?13 and ?15 between 1788 and 1820, prices in West Africa rose from just over ?16 in the mid-1780s to about ?25 two decades later and then collapsed after 1807, falling to under ?8 per slave between 1815 and 1820. From about 1820, however, both regions experienced inflation in slave prices, although prices rose more sharply in West Africa than in Angola. By 1830, therefore, the mean price of slaves in West Africa was similar to the late eighteenth century but was significantly below that just prior to British abolition. By contrast, slave prices in Angola by 1830 were noticeably higher than contemporary prices in West Africa and were also substantially above pre-abolition levels. Overall, real slave prices in West Africa appear to have exhibited much greater volatility than prices in Angola during the era of abolition.

From the evidence on prices, the cost of abolition seems very largely to have fallen on West African slave dealers after 1807, exactly as one would expect, since most British slaving before 1807 had been in areas north of the equator. Combining price data with evidence on exports, it appears that annual earnings from slave exports by dealers in West Africa fell from over ?750,000 between 1783 and 1807 to under ?300,000 between 1815 and 1820, a fall of some 60 percent.48 These losses were not evenly distributed throughout West Africa. From the evidence on export levels, suppliers at the Gold Coast experienced the greatest and

47 The difference in prices of slaves in West Africa and Angola was also noted by Miller, who observed that in West Africa, slaves cost 50 percent more than in Angola between the 1780s and 1800 (Miller, "Slave Prices," p. 68). The difference in prices also reinforces Manning's observation that "more careful study of slave prices will show that they varied significantly among regions of the coast" (Manning, Slavery and African Life, p. 95).

48 These calculations assume slave export data given in Richardson, "Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade," p. 17; Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 250-51; and the regional price data given in Table 3.




suppliers in the Bight of Benin the least loss of earnings from slave sales in the 1810s. During the 1820s, West African earnings from slave exports seem to have improved substantially, largely as a result of rising real prices per slave. But exports from certain sectors, notably the Gold Coast, continued to be very depressed and, overall, earnings from slave exports from West Africa remained significantly below pre-abolition levels through 1830 and beyond. In this respect, abolition represented a major reversal for West African slave exporters.

Although British abolitionist pressure had both immediate and endur- ing consequences for coastal dealers in slaves north of Gabon, its impact on the fortunes of slave suppliers further south seems to have been negligible. Indeed, when estimates of slave prices are combined with evidence on slave exports, slave dealers in Angola seem to have experienced no discernible fall in income from slave exports between 1807 and 1820. Furthermore, it appears that the 1820s were years of unprecedented prosperity for Angolan exporters, with slave shipments rising and, on the evidence of Table 3, real prices of slaves reaching record heights. How far such conditions continued beyond 1830 is uncertain, since our evidence is, as yet, too fragmentary to establish firmly the trend in coastal prices of slaves south of the equator. But as slave exports from the region remained buoyant throughout the 1830s and 1840s, we believe that it is unlikely that in these years real prices of slaves fell much below the levels of the late 1820s. It seems reasonable to assume, therefore, that the prosperity experienced by slave exporters in Angola in the 1820s remained largely unaffected by British abolition before 1850.

CONCLUSION

It has been widely assumed by historians that Britain's abolition of its slave trade in 1807 caused a substantial decline in real slave prices along the African coast. The evidence presented in this article indicates that, in general, prices of slaves along the Atlantic coast of Africa fell by about a half between 1807 and 1820. In this respect, our findings are consistent with the recent claims of Eltis.49 Our evidence also reveals, however, that this decline in prices was essentially confined to trading centers in West Africa and that slave prices in West Central Africa or Angola remained relatively stable between 1783 and 1820. Furthermore, it appears that the fall in real slave prices that occurred in West Africa in the 1810s was not uniform, came to an end around 1820, and was

4 As noted earlier, Eltis, for example, claimed that prices at the African coast fell by a little over a half immediately after 1807 (Economic Growth, p. 41).




followed by a strong upswing in prices during the following decade. At the same time, prices of slaves in Angola also rose, with the result that by 1830 real slave prices throughout the coast had broadly returned to pre-1807 levels, when the export trade was at its height. Exactly what happened to prices after 1830 is still unclear, as evidence on prices in Angola between 1830 and 1850 is weak. But from West African evidence, real prices of slaves throughout the Atlantic coast probably remained at historically high levels during these years, perhaps even matching between 1846 and 1850 the pre-abolition peak of prices between 1803 and 1807. Irrespective of the precise level of prices in the two decades before 1850, it appears that slave prices along the west coast of Africa were far from permanently depressed between 1807 and 1850. In this respect, our findings question the standard view of the trend in slave prices in Africa after British abolition.

The implications of these findings for recent debates over the impact of abolition on African slavery remain to be explored. Our price evidence strongly indicates, nevertheless, that up to 1830, and probably until midcentury, British policy had little effect on enslavement activity in West Central Africa. Slave exports from this region, but especially from south of the Zaire River, continued to grow well into the nineteenth century, seemingly encouraged, in the 1820s at least, by rising real prices of slaves. By comparison, the collapse in West African slave prices in the 1810s might seem to suggest that British abolition brought about an immediate decline in enslavement activity in this region. Such a conclusion is premature since there is evidence that the enslavement of people increased sharply in the interior of West Africa after 1804 as a result of the Sokotojihad, the collapse of the Oyo empire, and other wars. British abolition appears to have coincided, therefore, with an upsurge in slave supplies, thus producing in the 1810s a glut of slaves at some slave markets in West Africa. Furthermore, whereas the reduction of slave exports to the Americas in the areas most directly affected by British policy may have been permanent, the clear recovery in real slave prices generally in West Africa after 1820 points toward a strong and largely sustained revival in demand for slaves in the region, despite the generally lower level of exports to the Americas as compared with the period before 1807. Though slave exports from some parts of West Africa revived in the 1820s and 1830s, the recovery in slave prices was probably based more on local than export demand for slaves and almost certainly had some connection with the growth of other trades, including "legitimate" exports. Unfortunately, it is, as yet, impossible to establish precisely the scale of slave holding within precolonial West Africa. Whether or not the probable expansion of internal demand for slaves after 1820 compensated West African slave dealers for the lpss of export markets caused by abolition is likely, therefore, to be a continuing source of debate among historians.




Appendix

THE DAVIS AND INIKORI PRICE DATA FOR BRITISH EXPORTS, 1827-50

As discussed in the text, we use data from Ralph Davis's study of British overseas trade from 1783 to 1856 to estimate the price trends of goods used to buy slaves between 1783 and 1807 as well as between 1807 and 1850. As Davis's data relate to British exports as a whole, not just to Africa, their reliability as an indicator of prices of goods

traded for slaves before and after 1807 is open to question. We cannot, as yet, test his

series for the period before 1807, though the broad similarity of British exports in

general to those shipped to Africa in this period is reassuring. Data recently published by Joseph Inikori do allow us, however, to compare Davis's data with evidence on

prices of British exports to Africa between 1827 and 1850.50 In this period, British

merchants were not directly involved in shipping slaves, of course. But Inikori's data are pertinent to our analysis because, as noted in the text, Britain remained a major supplier of trade goods for merchants of other nations even after British merchants

formally withdrew from slave trafficking. Inikori supplies annual data from 1827 to 1850 relating to market values of all British

exports to Africa as well as data on the quantities and values of specific categories of

exports. The latter include textiles (principally British and Indian cottons), tobacco,

spirits, and firearms. These four categories of goods comprised just under 75 percent of all exports from Britain to Africa between 1827 and 1850 and are the focus of our discussion here. Inikori's data suggest that trends in market prices of these goods varied substantially between 1827 and 1850. Thus, while the mean price of textiles shipped to Africa fell by 58 percent from 1827 to 1850, the price of spirits fell by only 3 percent, the price of tobacco remained unchanged, and the price of guns rose by 7 percent.

To determine the overall trend of prices of these goods, we constructed a weighted index of prices based on the relative shares of the four categories of goods in British exports to Africa between 1827 and 1830. The choice of this base period was dictated by the periodization we adopted in Table 1 in the text. Among the four categories of goods, textiles contributed 49.7 percent of exports, tobacco 5.2 percent, spirits 18 percent, and firearms 27.1 percent. We rounded these to give mean weightings of 0.5, 0.05, 0.2 and 0.25 respectively. These were then used to determine the overall trend in prices of the four groups of exports to Africa between 1827 and 1850. According to Inikori's figures, the yardage of textiles shipped to Africa rose by over 600 percent from 1827 to 1850, while the quantities of tobacco, spirits, and guns rose by 327 percent, 316 percent, and 155 percent respectively. As prices of textiles fell much more sharply than the prices of other goods, our use of fixed weights between 1827 and 1850 probably introduces a conservative bias into our calculation of the overall trend in prices of British exports to Africa in this period.

Our weighted index shows that prices of British exports to Africa fell by almost 28 percent between 1827 and 1850, the index standing at 72.2 between 1846 and 1850 (1827 to 1830 base = 100). As Table I in the text shows, over the same period, the Davis A series suggests that the price of all British home-produced exports fell by some 38 percent, whereas the Davis B series, which is based on home-produced goods and re-exports, suggests prices overall fell by 27 percent. The trend in prices shown by Davis B after 1826 almost perfectly matches, therefore, that indicated by Inikori's data for British exports to Africa. Allowing for the probable bias in our calculations noted earlier, we are confident, therefore, that Davis B provides a good indicator of trends in

50 Inikori, "West Africa's Seaborne Trade."




the prices of British goods bound for Africa after 1826. Given the reliance of other nationals on British goods, we also believe it provides a reasonable indicator of price trends of goods bartered generally for slaves between 1807 and 1850.

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