Slavery, Sea Power and the State: The Royal Navy and the British West African Settlements, 1748–1756

Abstract

The role of the British state and the Royal Navy in the settlements on the west coast of Africa and in the transatlantic slave trade during the eighteenth century is a subject of a near-total historiographic neglect. This article surveys the parameters of British West African enterprise and the ways in which the navy was centrally involved in coastal affairs. It examines two case studies that are emblematic of the nature of state attention to West African enterprise and the application of naval power in support of British goals on the coast during the period immediately preceding the Seven Years' War. The first treats a 1750–1751 conflict at Dixcove on the western Gold Coast between the British and Dutch. The second, a protracted dispute between Britain and France over the construction of a settlement at Anomabo from 1751 to 1753, was an important pre-war skirmish that has heretofore been ignored by scholars. By winning the acquiescence of local polities and pre-empting French intervention by dispatching a squadron of warships to the coast, the British were able to secure the site for themselves. The article concludes with some reflections on the nature of sea power and empire on the African coast and the broader implications of this research.

Acknowledgements

Professor Richard Drayton, Professor Nicholas Rodger, Professor David Harris Sacks, Dr Louis Caron, Diana Siclovan and Laura Slater provided valuable advice and assistance.

Notes

Robert Lawrie to Company, 5 Feb. 1755, Records of the Royal African Company and Successor Institutions (hereafter T 70), 30, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).

List Book for 1751,27, Admiralty List Books (hereafter ADM 8), TNA

Hertzog, ‘Naval Operations in West Africa’; Matson, ‘The French at Amoku’; Reese, ‘Liberty, Insolence and Rum’; Tracy, ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’.

A notion thoroughly undermined by recent work such as Drescher, ‘Emperors of the World’.

The classic treatments are Ward, The Royal Navy and the Slavers. A recent effort, Edwards, Royal Navy Versus the Slave Traders, is extremely poor. By contrast, Hamilton and Salmon, Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire is an excellent collection of essays extending the subject geographically into East Africa and the Middle East and chronologically into the twentieth century.

Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies.

Harlow, Founding of the Second British Empire, vol. I, 172, 313, 400–2, vol. II, ix.

Eltis, Rise of African Slavery in the Americas; Hancock, Citizens of the World; Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil; Law, Ouidah.

Brown, Moral Capital.

Bolster, Black Jacks; Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa; Dubois and Scott, Origins of the Black Atlantic; Morgan, ‘Black Experiences in Britain's Maritime World’.

Jasanoff, ‘Revolutionary Exiles’ and Liberty's Exiles; Schama, Rough Crossings.

Brown, ‘Empire without America’; Coleman, Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery; Stern, ‘“Rescuing the Age from a Charge of Ignorance”’.

Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (hereafter Voyages database); Eltis and Richardson, Expanding the Frontiers.

Brown, ‘Empire without America’, 85; Richardson, ‘Cultures of Exchange’.

Recent examples include a rich study by Christopher, Slave Ship Sailors and their Captive Cargoes; Rediker, The Slave Ship.

Marshall, Making and Unmaking of Empires, 82–3.

Poirier to Admiralty, Admiralty In-letters (hereafter ADM 1),3810, TNA.

Wilson, The Sense of the People.

The historiography of the British African companies is patchy (though individual efforts have been of generally high quality). The classic history of the Royal African Company is Davies, The Royal African Company. The new company last received systematic treatment in Martin, British West African Settlements. Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society examines the Gold Coast trade through the lens of the Brew family. For a survey of the forts, see Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts. A recent popular study of the British headquarters at Cape Coast Castle, is St. Clair, The Grand Slave Emporium.

St. Clair, The Grand Slave Emporium, 57–8.

Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settlements, 30.

Drayton, ‘Maritime Networks and the Making of Knowledge’, 73.

Miller, Way of Death.

Skinner to Company, 28 Feb, 1754, ADM 1, 3810, TNA.

Petrie to Company, 25 Oct. 1767, ADM 1, 3810, TNA. For a thorough account of the Asante descent on the Fante coast, see Priestley, ‘The Ashanti Question and the British’.

Martin, British West African Settlements, 28.

Figures from Price, ‘The Imperial Economy’, 100, table 4.1.

Figures taken from Voyages database estimates for British-flagged vessels between 1748 and 1756, sorted by embarkation region. Total estimated: 221,435. From Bight of Biafra: 29,627; Eltis, ‘Africa, Slavery, and the Slave Trade’.

23 Geo II, cap. 31, A Bill for Extending and Improving the Trade to Africa.

Senior to Company, 3 Jan. 1759, T 70, 30, fol. 137, TNA.

The exceptions were small brigs occasionally stationed in Senegambia during the short-lived colonial phase, 1765–83.

St. Clair, The Grand Slave Emporium, 20. It was more correctly an annual visit.

Company to Admiralty, 20 Feb. 1751, ADM 1, 3810, TNA.

Company Minute Book, 8 Oct. 1754, T 70, 143, fol. 156; ADM 2, 511, no. 63, TNA.

Letter dated 27 April 1751, 34; letter dated 5 June 1751, 63; letter dated 7 Aug. 1751, 96; letter dated 18 Sept. 1751, 136; letter dated 16 June 1752, 292; letter dated 22 June 1752, 296; letter dated 26 June 1752, 299; letter dated 2 July 1752, 304; letter dated 31 Oct. 1752, 381; letter dated 21 June 1753, 517; Secretary's Letters to Public Officers and Flag Officers, 1751–1753, ADM 2, 511, TNA.

Tracy, ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’.

Middleton, Bells of Victory, 85–86; Webb, ‘Mid-Eighteenth Century Gum Arabic Trade’.

Admiralty to Barrington, 20 June 1753, ADM 2, 74, TNA.

ADM 8, 26–31, 39–48, passim, TNA

Rodger, The Wooden World, 319.

Orders to Captain Edwards, 30 Oct. 1754. ADM 2, 74, TNA.

For example, Orders to Captain Collingwood, 13 Nov. 1772, ADM 2, 98, 141, TNA.

Sandwich to Bedford, 22 March 1750, Secretary of State Papers, Naval (Supplementary) (hereafter SP 42), 62, TNA.

‘Il fait transporter ces Negres dans des Batteaux qu'il protége avec les Vaisseaux de Guerre qui sont sous ses ordres. Il en transporte Lui même sur ces Vaisseaux’, Secretary of State Papers, Foreign, France (hereafter SP 78), 236, TNA.

Albemarle to Newcastle, 26 May/6 June 1750, SP 78, 236, fols 74–75, TNA.

Skinner to Company, 16 Jan. 1753, T 70, 30, TNA.

Admiralty to Edwards, 30 Oct. 1754, ADM 2, 74,TNA.

Lisle to Company, 2 June 1756, T 70, 30, TNA.

Lisle to Company, 10 July 1756, T 70, 30, TNA.

For a full and detailed account of the origins of the Dixcove conflict, see Egerton MSS 1162 A, fols 268–311 for English translations of correspondence between the principal coastal officials. Further documents relating to the origins in Egerton 1162 B, fols 50–61. Egerton MSS 1162 A-B, Documents relating to the African forts, British Library (hereafter BL).

For an account of the battle, see ‘A Minute of the Attack upon Dixcove Fortress’, Egerton MSS 1162 A, fols 310–311, BL.

Thomas Melvil to Committee, 11 July 1751, T 70, 29, TNA. This is a highly simplified version of events, the true extent of which demand a full-length treatment; for the Jenny, see Voyages database, no. 90148.

The Dutch Display'd, 49–51; ‘A Minute of the Attack upon Dixcove Fortress’, Egerton MSS 1162 A, fols 310–11, BL.

Baird to Admiralty, 25 July 1751, ADM 1, 1485, TNA.

General to the Governor, 14 Jan. 1750, Egerton 1162 A, fol. 305; Governor to the General, 5 Jan. 1750, Egerton 1162 A, fol. 306; General to the Governor, 16 Jan. 1750, Egerton 1162 A, fol. 306, BL.

Patrick Baird to Admiralty, 25 July 1751, ADM 1, 1485, TNA.

Note following letter of 17 Jan. 1750, Egerton 1162 A, fol. 306, BL.

Baird to Admiralty, 25 July 1751, ADM 1, 1485, TNA,

General to the Governor, 16 March 1750, Egerton 1162 A, fols 308–309, BL.

Baird to Admiralty, 25 July 1751, ADM 1, 1485, TNA,

Sandwich to Newcastle, 11 Jan. 1749, SP 42, 62, TNA.

Jasper to Admiralty, 12 April 1751, ADM 1, 1984, TNA,

Melvil to Company, 26 Aug. 1751, T 70, 29, TNA.

Jasper to Admiralty, 12 April 1751, ADM 1, 1984, TNA.

Roberts to LeClair, 5 April 1751, T 70,1477, TNA.

A pamphlet of 1766 offers a very different version of events, claiming that the siege of Dixcove was lifted only after intervention by a French ship out of Nantes. It is a curious account, at odds with the narratives of Roberts, Jasper, Baird and Melvil, none of whom mentions a French ship participating in the manner described (or, indeed, at all). The Dutch Display'd, 49–51.

1]Melvil to Company, 8 Jan. 1752, T 70, 29, TNA.

Thin summaries of the incident are to be found in Matson, ‘The French at Amoku’, 47–60, and Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society, 36–42; a retrospective account of the incident by Governor John Roberts can be found in ‘A Proposal for Establishing a New Plan of Traffick upon the Coast of Africa’, undated but likely authored in the late 1760s or early 1770s, fols 4–5, Egerton 1162 B, BL.

Getz, ‘Mechanisms of Slave Acquisition’, 79.

Chalmer, Husbands and Crichton to Admiralty, 21 Dec. 1743, ADM 1, 3810, TNA.

Chalmer, Craik and Crichton to Company, 21 March 1743, ADM 1, 3810, TNA,

Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society, 15, n. 6; Shumway, Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 119. Martin, in 1927, simply stated: ‘A Cabboceer was a native official’, Martin, British West African Settlements, 52.

Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society, 13.

Thompson, Account of Two Missionary Voyages, 47.

The Royal African; Shumway, Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 79–80; Sypher, ‘African Prince in London’, 237–47.

Roberts to Halifax, T 70, 1477, TNA.

Yorke to Holdernesse, 4 Sept. 1751, SP 78, 241, TNA.

Buckle to Admiralty, 19 Feb. 1752, ADM 1, 1485, TNA.

Thompson, Account of Two Missionary Voyages, 33.

Anson to Holdernesse, 3 July 1752, SP 42, 62, TNA.

Quoted in Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 489–90.

Numerous copies of the treaty exist, but overlooked is one in Cokburn's correspondence to the Admiralty for 1753. ADM 1, 1604, TNA.

Thomas Melvil to Committee, 24 Feb.1753, T 70, 30, TNA.

Halifax to Holdernesse, 28 March 1753, Sierra Leone Original Correspondence (hereafter CO 267), 6, TNA.

Thompson, Account of Two Missionary Voyages, 50.

See Board of Trade Original Correspondence (hereafter CO 388), 45, TNA, for a representative collection of correspondence.

Brown, Moral Capital, 281–2.

Eltis, Rise of African Slavery in the Americas, 9–11.

‘A List of Ships Employ'd in the Trade to Africa from the Port of Bristol the year 1749’, CO 388, 45, fols 5–6, TNA.

Even restricted to the chronology and flash-points encompassed by this study, CO 388, 45 contains a nearly complete record of correspondence from Cape Coast, including letters passed between Cape Coast and Elmina, reports from naval captains, copies of the Fante treaty, and responses from the Secretary of State. CO 267, 5 contains significant ministerial correspondence. SP 42, 35 has further naval specifics, including a detailed journal by Matthew Buckle describing his proceedings on the coast and negotiations with Currantee. Letters from individual frigate captains are to be found in the relevant ADM 1 file, sorted by year and surname. T 70, 1515–1518, detached papers contain much original correspondence between the company committee, the Admiralty and board of trade. All TNA.