A Business Archive of the French Illegal Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century
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Authors
Publication Date
2021Journal Title
Past and Present
ISSN
0031-2746
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Volume
252
Issue
1
Pages
139-177
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
La Hausse De Lalouvière, J. (2021). A Business Archive of the French Illegal Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century. Past and Present, 252 (1), 139-177. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa026
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract:</jats:title>
<jats:p>Following the abolition of the transatlantic trade in African captives, slave traders from France, Spain and Cuba devised strategies of concealment to perpetuate and even expand their enterprise. A close reading of the unexpurgated logbooks and business correspondence of the Jeune Louis, a French ship that transported more than three hundred captives from the Bight of Biafra to Havana in 1825, identifies three decisive innovations in the Franco-Cuban branch of the illegal slave trade. Transnational business structure, risk management through honour-based marine insurance policies, and redacted record keeping transformed the wider Atlantic slave-trading sector into one capable of eluding attempts at international suppression. The clandestine techniques that this transnational slaving network developed to skirt the law also distorted the archival record of that traffic. Accounting for the resulting distortions and disappearances will enable future researchers to better navigate them.</jats:p>
Sponsorship
Harvard University History Department; McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Embargo Lift Date
2023-06-20
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtaa026
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/337045
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