Mozambique Island, Cape Town and the Organisation of the Slave Trade in the South-West Indian Ocean, c.1797–1807

Abstract

In the 1780s, French merchants developed a systemic trade in slaves to and around the Cape of Good Hope. But a decade later the trade passed into the hands of a cosmopolitan group of merchants at Mozambique. These men developed various strategies as a way of raising the funds needed to acquire, outfit and insure slave ships. They particularly built up trade links with agents and partners in several ports of the western Indian Ocean and the south Atlantic. This article concentrates on the organisation and operation of the slave trade at Mozambique Island in the decade around 1800. It is particularly concerned to examine the role in this trade on the part of merchants at the Cape, who serviced slave ships and bought their human merchandise, and who mounted their own expeditions in search of slaves. It ends by suggesting ways in which new directions in the trade, following its piecemeal abolition, and the growing dominance of Brazil, contributed to long-term developments in the region.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Michael Reidy.

Notes

¹ L. Dermigny, Cargaisons indiennes: Solier et Cie, 1781–1793 (Paris, SEVPEN, 1960), I, 104; E. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975).

² R. Richards, T. du Pasquier, ‘Bay Whaling off Southern Africa, c.1785–1805’, South African Journal of Marine Science, 8, 1989, p. 233.

³ W. White, Journal of a Voyage Performed in the Lion Extra Indiaman (London, Printed for John Stockdale, 1800), p. 47.

⁴ J. Meyer, L’Armement nantais dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Editions EHESS, 1969); O. Pétré-Grenouilleau, L’Argent de la Traite: Milieu Négrier, Capitalisme et Développement: Un Modèle (Paris, Aubier, 1996); E. Saugera, Bordeaux Port Négrier XVIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris, Karthala, 2002, new ed., 2013). On Angola, R. Ferreira, Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014); M. Candido, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World. Benguela and its Hinterland (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013).

⁵ R. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2014), pp. 88–9.

⁶ P. Harries, ‘Middle Passages of the Southwest Indian Ocean: A Century of Forced Immigration from Africa to the Cape of Good Hope’ Journal of African History, 55, 2 (2014), p. 179; J. Capela, ‘Slave Networks in Eighteenth-Century Mozambique’, in D. Richardson, F. Ribeiro da Silva (eds), Networks and Trans-Cultural Exchange: Slave Trading in the South Atlantic (Leiden, Brill, 2014), p. 179.

⁷ J. Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos nos Portos de Moçambique (Lisbon, Edições Afrontamento, 2002), p. 79; J-P. Tardieu, La Traite des Noirs entre l’Océan Indien et Montevideo (Uruguay): Fin du XVIIIe siècle et début du XIXe (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2010), pp. 10, 20, 55, 67, 87; A. Borucki, ‘The Slave Trade to the Río de la Plata, 1772–1812: Trans-Imperial Networks and Atlantic Warfare’, Colonial Latin American Review, 20, 1 (2011), p. 95.

⁸ L.F.A. Antunes, ‘O Comércio com o Brasil e a Comunidade Mercantil em Moçambique (séc. XVIII)’, in Anon., Actas do Congresso Internacional Espaço Atlântico do Antigo Regime: Poderes e Sociedades (Lisbon, Instituto Camões, 2005); Capela, ‘Slave Networks’, pp. 184–5, 189–91; J. Capela, Dicionário de Negreiros em Moçambique 1750–1897 (Porto, Centro de Estudos Africanos, ebook, 2007), p. 31.

⁹ M. Newitt, ‘Mozambique Island; The Rise and Decline of an East African Coastal City, 1500–1700’, Portuguese Studies, 20 (2004), pp. 21–37.

¹⁰ J. Charpentier de Cossigny,Voyage à Canton, à la Chine par Gorée, le Cap de Bonne-Espérance et les Îles de France et de la Réunion (Paris, André, 1798), pp. v–vi. See also N. Worden, ‘Diverging Histories: Slavery and its Aftermath in the Cape Colony and Mauritius’, South African Historical Journal, 27 (1992), pp. 3–25.

¹¹ Cape Archives (CA), British Occupation (BO) Smuts, de Wet, Warnecke, Berrangé to Major-General Craig, 3 February 1796 ; General James Craig to Henry Dundas, 14 January 1797, in G.M. Theal (ed.), Records of the Cape Colony (RCC) II, pp. 39–40; G.M. Theal, A History of South Africa Since 1795, Vol. I, pp. 29, 99; Capela, ‘Slave Trade Networks’, p. 184; Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, pp. 78, 162. On the N. S. do Rosário, see Transatlantic Slave Trade Data Base (TSTD), Voyage Identification Number (VIN): 49378.

¹² J-P. Tardieu, ‘Les Revers du Commerce Négrier entre l’Océan Indien et le Rio de la Plata (fin du XVIIIe siècle–début du XIXe siècle)’, Outre-Mers, 102 (2014), pp. 153–6; Tardieu, La traite des Noirs, pp. 14, 23. On the trade in silver dollars, see P. Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1850 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 239–46.

¹³ Borucki, ‘The Slave Trade to the Río de la Plata’, p. 96.

¹⁴ Theal (ed.), ‘Shipping Statistics’, RCC II, pp. 220–21. For the Nazaré, see TSTD, VIN: 96015; Faustina, 96009 (1797), 96012 (1798); Ascension, 36570 (1793), 36590 (1794), 36620 (1797); Christiana, 96078. Slaves staged an uprising on the Ascension on this voyage, see E.R. Taylor, If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2009), p. 209.

¹⁵ This was the São Pedro, Capela, Dicionário, p. 26.

¹⁶ Machado, Ocean of Trade, pp. 232–3.

¹⁷ M. Boucher, N. Penn (eds), Britain at the Cape 1795–1803 (Johannesburg, Brenthurst Press, 1992), pp. 202–3.

¹⁸ Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, pp. 75, 79, 144–5, 150, 161, 193, 195–7. For the Joaquim, see TSTD, VIN: 19045 and 41783.

¹⁹ K. Schoeman, Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope, 1717–1795 (Pretoria, Protea Book House, 2012), pp. 313–14; T. Du Pasquier, Les Baleiniers Français de Louis XVI à Napoleon (Paris, Harmattan, 1990), pp. 84–5, 155, 188, 195.

²⁰ M.H. Styles, Captain Hogan: Sailor, Merchant, Diplomat on Six Continents (Fairfax Station, Six Continent Horizons, 2002), p. 98; Capela, Dicionário, p. 62.

²¹ J.T. Bigge, ‘Report upon the Slaves and State of Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope’, London, 5 April 1831 in Theal (ed.), RCC, XXXV, p. 353

²² P. Philip, British Residents at the Cape, 1785–1819 (Cape Town, 1981), pp. 417–18, 428; Cape Archives (CA).Vice-Admiralty Court (VAC) 3.

²³ CA.Notarial Protocols Cape District (NCD) – 1/20.471: Declaration of Johan Wagener, notary public, 21 March 1799.

²⁴ Theal (ed.), ‘Shipping Statistics’, RCC, II, pp. 339, 406; A. Carreira, Notas sôbre o Tráfico Português de Escravos (Lisbon, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 1978), p. 75.

²⁵ This was perhaps the Boa Esperança. J. Capela, Conde de Ferreira & C.a Traficantes de Escravos (Lisbon, Afrontamento, 2012), p. 52; Tardieu, ‘Les Revers du Commerce’, p. 156.

²⁶ British Library (BL).IOR/H/729. Letter book of David Scott, 6 June 1799.

²⁷ General Dundas to Messrs Hogan and Tennat, 2 March 1799, in Theal (ed.), RCC, II, pp. 377–9, 406; Hogan and Tennant to General Dundas, 5 March 1799, in Theal (ed.), RCC, II, p. 378; Campbell to Henry Dundas, 8 May 1800, in RCC, III, pp. 125–7. The National Archives, Great Britain (TNA), War Office (WO) 1/333, p. 525. D. Campbell to Henry Dundas, 10 May 1800; Boucher and Penn portray this as ‘a carefully orchestrated plan’ devised by shippers, Cape officials and traders, in Britain at the Cape, pp. 225–6.

²⁸ M. Lenta, B. LeCordeur (eds), The Cape Diaries of Lady Anne Barnard, Vol. I (Cape Town, Van Riebeeck Society, 1999), pp. 71–2.

²⁹ Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 101.

³⁰ London Gazette, 20 February 1802, pp. 184–5.

³¹ A third of the slaves on the Rose died on the way to the Cape, where the survivors sold for an average of Rds458. TNA.High Court of Admiralty (HCA) 49/31/8; SA National Library: Samuel Hudson diary, 10 November 1799. For the case against Hogan, see TNA.WO 1/333, 525 Captain Campbell to Henry Dundas, 8 May 1800; Robert Ross, ‘The Last Years of the Slave Trade to the Cape Colony’, Slavery and Abolition, 9, 3 (1988), pp. 215–16.

³² M. Lenta (ed.), Paradise, the Castle and the Vineyard: Lady Anne Barnard’s Cape Diaries (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2006), pp. 57, 206–7.

³³ BL.MSS.EUR.F489, Hogan Papers, M. Hogan to Sir George Yonge, 30 December 1800; Cape Town Gazette (CTG), 20 December 1800; Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, p. 79.

³⁴ CTG, 10 and 24 January 1801.

³⁵ Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 116. Michiel van Breda, who farmed land above Cape Town, bought seven of these slaves, for whom he paid an average of Rds371. NCD 1/42 01 ref 769.

³⁶ BL. Hogan Papers, M. Hogan to G. Yonge, 20 August 1800; Statement of Michael Hogan on dealings with Governor Sir George Yonge, 9 January 1801; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 106–8.

³⁷ BL. Hogan Papers, W. Anderson to M. Hogan, 7 January 1803. Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 141.

³⁸ The Cape Town Gazette frequently carried information on these sales in its pages between June 1799 and January 1802. The issue of 11 October 1800 noted that, in only 11 days, the Navy had taken five prizes off Mauritius.

³⁹ Borucki, ‘Slave Trade to Rio de la Plata’,p. 99; TSTD, VIN: 37041.

⁴⁰ CA.VAC 3; CTG, 6 and 13 February 1802; CA.BO 122.71, Governor Izidora de Almeida Souza e Sa to Sir George Yonge, 1 December 1801; Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 143; Capela, Dicionário, p. 78.

⁴¹ CA.BO 91 Cloete to Dundas, 4 June 1802.

⁴² Capela, Dicionário, pp. 27, 72.

⁴³ BL. Hogan Papers, W. Anderson to M. Hogan, 11 and 28 October 1802. Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 144.

⁴⁴ BL. Hogan Papers, W. Anderson to M. Hogan, December 1802.

⁴⁵ BL. Hogan Papers, M. Hogan to W. Anderson, 11 October 1802.

⁴⁶ H. Klein, The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 62.

⁴⁷ CA.BO 91, T. Pockham (first mate) to Andrew Barnard (colonial secretary), 5 April 1802 ; CTG, 20 December 1800; CTG, 3 January 1801; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 141–2.

⁴⁸ TSTD, VIN: 19151; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 141–2; Capela, Conde de Ferreira, p. 53; Klein, Middle Passage, p. 62.

⁴⁹ TSTD, VIN: 1804 (19190); 1805 (96044).

⁵⁰ O. Pétré-Grenouilleau, Nantes au Temps de la Traite des Noirs (Paris, Hachette Pluriel, 2007) p. 157; E. Saugera, Bordeaux, Port Négrier (Paris, Karthala, 1995), pp. 135–8, 360.

⁵¹ Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, pp. 320–21; Tardieu, La Traite des Noirs, pp. 47, 55. On the Belisário, see Kaapsche Courant (KC), 26 November 1803; P. McMagh, The Three Lieschings: Their Times and Contribution to Cape Medicine 1800–1843 (Cape Town, Society for the History of Pharmacy in South Africa, 1992), pp. 87–8.

⁵² Allen, European Slave Trading, pp. 74, 100; E. Saugera, ‘Les Armements Négriers Français vers l’Océan Indien sous le Consulat’, in C. Wanquet, B. Jullien (eds), Révolution Française et Océan Indien (Paris, Harmattan, 1996), p. 111; Capela, Dicionário, p. 48.

⁵³ KC, 15 and 22 December 1804; KC, 16 March 1805; Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, p. 50; Tardieu, La Traite des Noirs,pp. 54, 68, 92; TSTD, VIN: 96043.

⁵⁴ Capela, Dicionário, pp. 27, 29; Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, pp. 195–6.

⁵⁵ Tardieu, ‘Les Revers du Commerce Négrier’, p. 167.

⁵⁶ The slaves were sent to the Americas as Dundas refused to allow their sale at the Cape. Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 159.

⁵⁷ Capela, Dicionário, p. 27.

⁵⁸ CTG, 19 February, 12 and 19 March 1803; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 157, 160–61.

⁵⁹ BL, Hogan papers, M. Hogan to W. Anderson, 17 January and 9 March 1803; M. Hogan to W. Anderson, 4 June 1804 ; Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 159.

⁶⁰ Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 166; Capela, Dicionário, p. 27.

⁶¹ BL. Hogan Papers. M. Hogan to W. Anderson, 28 October 1803; TSTD, VIN: 900054; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 167–9. Owing to the uncertain legal situation, the Excellentisimo disembarked the slaves on the coast near Savannah.

⁶² KC, 5 and 12 November 1803; KC, 28 April and 5 May 1804; Styles, Captain Hogan, pp. 168–9.

⁶³ Strombom sold most of the slaves at his establishment in Berg Street. KC, 10 and 17 March 1804; 23 June 1804; TSTD, VIN: 36782; Capela, Dicionário, p. 85.

⁶⁴ Styles, Captain Hogan, p. 171.

⁶⁵ G. Grandin, The Empire of Necessity: The Untold History of a Slave Rebellion in the Age of Liberty (London, Oneworld, 2014), p. 108; Tardieu, ‘Les Revers du Commerce Négrier’, pp. 167–77; Capela, Conde de Ferreira, p. 53; Capela, Dicionário, p. 72; TSTD, VIN: 96035.

⁶⁶ On Sanchande’s business dealings, see Machado, ‘Forgotten Corner’, p. 23.

⁶⁷ CA.Colonial Office (CO) 3857.238 and 279. Petitions to Sir David Baird from Manuel Pedro de Almeida, n.d. March 1806. It was forbidden, on pain of confiscation of a vessel, to take piastres out of the Cape without the permission of the Fiscal. Golovnin, Detained in Simon’s Bay (Cape Town, Friends of the SA Library, 1964), p. 67. Almeida referred merely to the ‘unexpected circumstances’ that led to the seizure of his slaves. This incident was indirectly referred to in Bigge, ‘Report on the Slaves and State of Slavery at the Cape’, in Theal (ed.), RCC, XXXV, p. 354.

⁶⁸ CTG, 29 March and 5 April 1806.

⁶⁹ Major-General Bourke to Bathurst, 22 June 1826, in Theal (ed.), RCC, XXVI, p. 494.

⁷⁰ CTG, 14 February, 2 and 25 May 1807. Machado, Ocean of Trade, pp. 235–6. The General Isidro eventually left Simon’s Bay for Mozambique with a cargo of ballast on 25 May 1807.

⁷¹ CA.CO 3866, petition of J.R. de Monteiro to Caledon, 11 December 1807.

⁷² CA.MOIC (Insolvent Estates), Rekening van Antonio Salvador Monteiro, 1807.

⁷³ Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, pp. 203–4. See also Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, p. 173.

⁷⁴ House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP), 50, 1812–1813, Earl of Caledon, Castle of Good Hope, to Lord Castlereagh, 15 December 1807, ‘Further papers relating to the slave trade: viz. On the subject of the slave trade at the Cape, and at the Isle of France’, p. 5.

⁷⁵ Earl of Caledon to Lord Castlereagh, 18 May 1808, in HCPP (50) 1812–1813; Lord Charles Somerset to Earl Bathurst, 19 May 1817, in Theal (ed.), RCC, XI, p. 341. The disappearance of the apprentices led to a thorough government investigation and volume of evidence, TNA.CO 48/34.

⁷⁶ CA.CO 3866.510, Memorial of Leopold Heuser, J. van Breda, G. Van Reenan, M. Melk, H. Cloete, J.P. Eksteen, T.A. Munnik, A. Van Breda, A. Munnik, n.d. September 1807.

⁷⁷ CA.CO 3866.527, memorial of Joaquim Rosario de Monteiro to Earl of Caledon, 8 December 1807; CO 3866.534, petition of J.R. de Monteiro to Caledon, 11 December 1807. See also Beck to Caledon, 21 December 1807 in CO 3866.561.

⁷⁸ CA.CO 3866.537, Andries Amyot to Caledon, 13 December 1807; Widow J. Langerman to Caledon, December 1807; J. Botha to Caledon, 16 December 1806; J. Geyer to Caledon, 16 December 1806; J.G. Tredoux to Caledon, 16 December 1807; John Murray to Caledon, 17 December 1807; A. Krynauw to Caledon, 16 December 1807. The Restaurador had left port by the time petitions arrived from P. Auret and J. Hendriks, both to Caledon, 18 December 1807. M.J. Milbert noted that, during the Batavian period, Île de France sent equally troublesome slaves to the Cape, though at some cost to their owners. Milbert, Voyage Pittoresque à l’Isle de France, au Cap de Bonne Espérance et à l’Isle de Ténériffe (Paris, A. Nepveu, 1812), Vol. II, p. 340.

⁷⁹ Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, pp. 144–5, 201–2, 326; Capela, Dicionário, p. 29.

⁸⁰ M. Bastião, ‘Les Silva Guedes sur l’île de Mozambique: transmigration et processus d’intégration pendant la transition du XVIIIe au XIXe siècle’, Diasporas, 25 (2015).

⁸¹ CA.NCD 20/35.727.

⁸² Antunes, ‘O Comerçio com o Brazil’, pp. 7–9.

⁸³ Capela, O Tráfico de Escravos, p. 162.

⁸⁴ KC, 10 March, 17 March, 12 May, 23 June 1804; Capela, Dicionário, p. 85; Capela, ‘Slave Trade Networks’, p. 190.

⁸⁵ Schoeman, Portrait of a Slave Society, p. 305; G. Buti, ‘Marseille, port négrier au XVIIIe siècle’, Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire, 11 (2007), p. 176; M. Ly-Tio-Fane, Le géographe et le naturaliste à l'île-de-France 1801, 1803: Ultime escale du capitaine Baudin (Port Louis, Mauritius, 2003).

⁸⁶ Capela, ‘Slave Trade Networks’, pp. 185, 188–9.

⁸⁷ B. Faustio, S. Faustio, A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 65.

⁸⁸ M. Florentino, Nas Rotas do Império: Eixos Mercantis, Tráfico e Relações Sociais no Mundo Português (Vitoria [Brazil], EDUFES, 2006), p. 214; J. Capela, ‘Mozambique–Brazil: Cultural and Political Influences Caused by the Slave Trade’, in J.C. Curto, R. Soulodre-La France (eds), Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the Slave Trade (Trenton, Africa World Press, 2005).

⁸⁹ CA.CO4437; ADM 1/60, A list of vessels detained by the squadron stationed at the C[ape of] G[ood] H[ope] between 11 January and 8 February 1808; Capela, Dicionário, p. 85; CTG, 19 January 1811; Cape Almanac, 1812; TSTD, VIN: Alexander 19374, Albuquerque 19502.

⁹⁰ Cape Almanac, 1814, pp. 9, 80.

⁹¹ These included a sumaca, the Chalaça, and a schooner, the São João Baptista; Capela, Dicionário, p. 86.

⁹² J.T. Bigge, W.M.G. Colebrook, W. Blair to Bathurst, 10 July 1827, ‘Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry upon the seizure of the Stedcombe schooner by Captain Evatt, Commandant at Algoa Bay, for a breach of the laws for the abolition of the slave trade, in the year 1822’, in Theal (ed.), RCC, XXX, p. 182.

⁹³ Owen, Narrative, I, p. 194; Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, January 1828, 171–2.

⁹⁴ TNA.CO 414/6–36: W. Owen, 2 November 1825; ibid., William Guest, Memorial to John Thomas Bigge, commissioner (n.d.).

⁹⁵ CA.CO 3928.141: William Guest to Lord Charles Somesrset (n.d. January 1825).

⁹⁶ J. Capela, ‘Slave Networks’, p. 192; Oudtshoorn Courant, 9 February 1909.

⁹⁷ J. Prior, Narrative of a Voyage in the Indian Seas in the Nisus Frigate to the Cape of Good Hope (London, Phillips and Co.,1819), p. 89; P. Harries, ‘Negotiating Abolition: Cape Town and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade’, Slavery & Abolition, 34, 4 (2013), p. 593.

⁹⁸ P. Harries, ‘Slavery, Indenture and Migrant Labour: Maritime Immigration from Mozambique to the Cape, ca.1780–1880’, African Studies, 73, 3 (2014).

⁹⁹ J.A. Heese, R. Lombard, South African Genealogies (Pretoria, Protea Boekhuis, 1989), p. 596; Styles, Hogan, pp. 338–9.

¹⁰⁰ J.M. Rubio y Estéban, ‘The First Diplomatic Negotiations with the Revolutionary Junta in Buenos Aires’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 4, 3 (1921).