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Acknowledgements
For their comments on earlier drafts of various sections of this paper we are grateful to Phillip Lapsansky, James Sweet, and David Haberly. Michael Tuite assisted with the illustrations, and Kandioura Drame and Robert Fatton helped with bibliographic and translation issues from the French. We also thank Cynthia Fatton, Elizabeth James, Carroll Johnson, and Benjamin and Monique Guichard, for their help in locating source materials.
Notes
[1] Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/.
[2] Livingstone and Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition, facing page 356. One of the objectives of this work, David Livingstone wrote in the preface, was ‘to bring before my countrymen, and all others interested in humanity, the misery entailed by the slave-trade in its inland phases …’ (5).
[3] Ibid., 355–57. The ‘stout stick’ could also be called a ‘Goree’ or ‘slave stick’. See Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, image references GOREE, PRO-4, LCP-17, VILE-43.
[4] Livingstone briefly gives his reasons in letters of 17 October 1859 and 30 July 1865; see Foskett, The Zambesi Doctors, 58–59, 120–21. For biographical information on Baines, his participation in the Zambezi expedition, and samples of his work, see Wallis, Thomas Baines. Other biographical data as well as examples of Baines' drawings and sketches are published in Thomas Baines, The Victoria Falls Zambesi River; see particularly preface by M. A. Baines.
[5] Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition, 355–57.
[6] Ibid., vii. From 1858 to 1863 John Kirk was Livingstone's chief assistant on the Zambezi expedition, serving as both a medical doctor and naturalist. Kirk was an ‘enthusiastic amateur photographer, and although Charles Livingstone was the official photographer, almost all the surviving photographs were made by Kirk’ (see McMullen, “Kirk, Sir John”, http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/34336 [one must be a subscriber to access this website]). On Kirk's photography, see also Foskett, Zambesi Doctors, 3, 13–14.
[7] Waller, the editor of The Last Journals of David Livingstone (vol. 1: 15), notes that Livingstone, ‘though no great artist, had acquired a practice of making rude sketches of scenes and objects’, and reports that the illustrations in The Last Journals were based on these sketches.
[8] Coffin, Old Times in the Colonies, 48; also published in later editions, e.g., New York, 1881, 1908. This history was written for children.
[9] Manning, Slavery and African Life, 158. This work came to our attention very late in our research, after we had consulted many secondary works on the slave trade and were not aware of any that properly cited the primary source.
[10] Drescher and Engerman, A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 291; a typo (?) also mistakenly identifies Tette as Teffe. The caption writer for illustrations in the volume, James Smalls, made the error (James Smalls, e-mail communication to Handler, 30 March 2001). As an aside, but something which well illustrates the issues we are discussing in this article, at least several other images in the Drescher and Engerman volume (70, 277) which purport to show aspects of the transatlantic slave trade and middle passage have nothing to do with that trade. One shows an Asian being whipped aboard a British or American vessel (the correct citation is not as given in Drescher and Engerman, but rather Harper's New Monthly Magazine [June 1864], vol. 29: 5). The other shows convicts receiving their water supplies on the deck of a British ship taking them from India to Java (originally published in ibid. [August 1857], vol. 15: 325).
[11] Thomas, Slave Trade, fig. 48. The image is also reproduced in Postma, Atlantic Slave Trade, following page 85, where it is captioned ‘Slave coffle, marching in chain-gang style to the East African Coast’; no primary source is given, although there is an imprecise and vague reference to the ‘Collections of the Library of Congress’. Similarly, in his recent history, Joe William Trotter does not cite a primary source, merely acknowledging the Library Company of Philadelphia, but erroneously captions the image as follows: ‘enslaved Africans march overland to forts on the West African coast’ (The African American Experience, 32).
[12] Mungo Park's Travels contains a few illustrations but none of coffles.
[13] Captive Passage, 42. However, the caption and its font face suggest the image used in Captive Passage was actually taken from Coffin, Old Times in the Colonies, 48 (see above) or from some other secondary source that itself relied on Coffin's publication. (There are quite a few misleading or inaccurate captions and bibliographic citations to the illustrations in Captive Passage.) Other secondary works which reproduce this image but do not cite the original source, and imply or state it refers to the Atlantic slave trade, include: Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade, 45; Ortiz, Los Negros Esclavos, but taken from some other unidentified secondary work; Svalesen, Slave Ship Fredensborg, 98; and Capela, Escravatura, front cover. A number of websites use this image, but they fail to give a primary source and imply or state the image refers to the transatlantic slave trade. See, for example, “Bristol Slavery: The City of Bristol and its Links with the Transatlantic Slave Trade” at http://www.headleypark.bristol.sch.uk/slavery/background/whyafricanslaves.htm; “Africans in America”, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) series at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1h316.html which credits a commercial supplier, the Granger Collection); “History on the Net, Black Peoples of America” at http://www.historyonthenet.com/Slave_Trade/effectsonafrica.htm; Anti-Slavery Society at http://www.antislavery.org/breakingthesilence/upfromslavery.shtml; and the website of the public schools in Paw Paw, Michigan at http://www.pawpaw.k12.mi.us/cedarstreet/0kidkorner/free/journey/journey.htm.
[14] The Mary Evans Picture Library (MEPL) appears to be the main, if not the only, source for this illustration in modern secondary works. The MEPL (picture number 10012240) gives its source as Vernon Lovett Cameron, Travels in Central Africa. However, we could not find a work by that title under Cameron's authorship; moreover, Cameron's Across Africa (New York, 1877) does not contain this illustration. In An African's Life, 11, James Walvin publishes this illustration, acknowledging his source as the MEPL, but also repeats the MEPL's erroneous Cameron citation and inexplicably adds an 1873 publication date. He also publishes the MEPL image in his Black Ivory, as does Anthony Tibbles in Transatlantic Slavery, 106. The MEPL, either directly or indirectly, is also the source of the image shown on various websites, e.g., http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/U/untold/programs/slave/page2.html; http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/pages/slavery/slavery4.htm. Adopting the image from a vaguely identified collection in France (but not from a primary source), Simone Schwarz-Bart also publishes this illustration without comment in her essay on the Brazilian slave, Anastacia (In Praise of Black Women, vol. 2: 20 [see below, note 34]). Another variation and an even more embellished version of this illustration (not shown in this article) is also distributed by the MEPL which imprecisely cites the primary source as Life & Travels of David Livingstone. What seems to be the MEPL illustration (picture 10012238) occasionally appears on websites but the primary source is not cited. In Finkelman and Miller, Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery, vol. 1: 242, the illustration is reproduced, but is incorrectly located in Zanzibar and the only source cited is the commercial house of Corbis-Bettmann. Neil Grant also publishes this image, captioning it as ‘captured villagers on their way to be sold at the coast’, gives a non-supported date of c. 1894, and credits Radio Times Hulton Picture Library (Savage Trade, 51,139).
[15] Phillip Lapsansky was instrumental in identifying this illustration and locating its original source as The Liberator.
[16] The illustration is captioned ‘Négriers jetant leurs cargaison a la mer’ (Slavers throwing their cargo into the sea). The same image, but with a slightly modified caption, was also published in another, albeit unidentified, French source shown on the website at http://perso.club-internet.fr/obydol/e-Gallery.html. See below, note 19 for an entirely different, but similarly captioned, illustration which also shows enslaved Africans being ejected from a slave ship.
[17] Copies of both works are located in the Library Company of Philadelphia. However, the image is not found in all copies of French's book (for example, it is lacking in the Library of Congress and the University of Virginia Library copies). The Slave's Friend is also available in the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library, and has been made available on-line by the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities; see Stephen Railton, “Figure descriptions for the Slave's Friend; electronic edition”, IATH Electronic Text Center at http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu:1852/utc/pretexts/gallery; it is also online at Nineteenth-century American Children and What They Read at http://www.merrycoz.org/slave/SLAVE10.HTM. In neither case is the original source cited or other information provided on the illustration.
[18] Burnside and Robotham, Spirits of the Passage, 127. The image also appears, without any source attribution and no—or very superficial—or even misleading explanatory notes, in other modern works, e.g., Everett, The Slaves, 61; Aquet, Pictorial History of the Slave Trade, 68; Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade, 58 (the image is used, as the caption indicates, to illustrate how ‘slave traders sometimes threw slaves overboard to avoid being caught by the Royal Navy patrols’ after Britain's 1807 abolition of the slave trade). Charles M. Christian, crediting the Library of Congress, uses the illustration to depict one aspect of the middle passage; because of the ‘abominable’ conditions aboard slave ships, he writes, captains feared rebellions and ‘would punish unruly slaves severely, sometimes throwing them overboard … to discourage others’ (Black Saga, 39). In a similar vein, but never with a primary source given, the image appears—or has appeared—on various websites, e.g., the commercial photo house, Corbis (IH 023974); The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century: Topics Slavery and the Slave Trade in Britain at http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/18century/topic_2/illustrations/imoverboard.htm which credits the commercial photo house Radio Times Hulton Picture Library, today part of Getty Images, the commercial photo archives; the website of a professor of British civilization at the Université Paris 13 http://www.univ-paris13.fr/ANGLICISTES/POIRIER/UE04M/POIRIER-UE04M03a.htm which, in turn, is taken from another secondary source (Grant, Savage Trade, 95); Grant credits Radio Times Hulton Picture Library. In none of these websites is the original source identified. The Bridgeman Art Library shows the image on its website, but erroneously identifies the primary source as Torrey, American Slave Trade, an American Abolitionist tract, locating the copy at the Library of Congress. However, Handler examined copies in the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and neither contains this illustration. The 1822 edition of Torrey is an abridgement of his Citation1817 Portraiture of Domestic Slavery which also lacks this illustration in copies examined by Handler at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Boston Athenaeum; the second edition (Ballston Spa, published by the author, 1818) and its modern reprints also lack the illustration.
[19] See, for example, Rodriguez, Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, vol. 2: 714 (which erroneously gives Harper's Weekly, 1860 as the primary source); Walvin, Slavery and the Slave Trade, 58; Grant, Savage Trade, 95. A quite different and unrelated image which nonetheless has been, occasionally misleadingly, used to illustrate the Zong incident appears in a nineteenth-century multi-volume French maritime history. This illustration, titled ‘Négrier Poursuivi, Jétant ses Negres a la Mer’ (Slave Ship being Pursued, Throwing its Blacks into the Sea), accompanies a description of an incident that occurred at an unspecified date, but apparently sometime after abolition of the slave trade, near the Indian ocean island of Bourbon (present-day Reunion); see Charles Van Tenac, Histoire Générale, vol. 4: 228–9; also Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, image reference ‘mariners30’.
[20] A detailed summary of the expedition's route, misfortunes and major scientific findings, including an overview of Arago's role as draftsman, is incorporated in a report submitted in April 1821 to the French Academy of Sciences by an eight-man group which included Arago's brother, François (“Report Made to the Academy of Sciences, upon The Voyage Round the World, of the Corvette Uranie”). This report is prefixed to the English translation of Arago's 1822 Promenade Autour du Monde, published as Narrative of a Voyage Round the World in the Uranie and Physicienne Corvettes, commanded by Captain Freycinet, during the years 1817, 1818, 1819, and 1820 … by J. Arago, draftsman to the expedition (London, 1823). Biographical data on Arago are derived from the “Report” as well as Arago's Promenade and the following works: Sarda, Les Arago, 185–201; Laureilhe, “Jacques Arago,” 96–102; Quérard, La Littérature Française, 62–4; and Hoefer, Nouvelle Biographie Universelle, 954–5. The full report on the Freycinet expedition is in Freycinet, Voyage Autour du Monde. This multi-volume work includes a large Atlas Historique with 112 plates, many in color and very detailed, and drawn by several illustrators, including Arago. Although some of the plates show Brazilian scenes (but not the slave we discuss), most depict various areas in the Indian and Pacific oceans.
[21] Arago, Promenade, 99–100 (our translation). For a detailed discussion of the markets on this street, see Karasch, Slave Life in Rio, 29–54; contemporary illustrations of the slave markets are shown on Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, images ‘vista05’, ‘GRA1’, ‘H015’.
[22] Bassett, Realms and Islands, 33–4. See also Riviere, Woman of Courage.
[23] Arago signs all of the plates, and the only Brazilian subject is a church in Rio. The Atlas consulted by Handler is in the Bibliothèque du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The plates are also interspersed throughout the English translation, Narrative of a Voyage.
[24] Souvenirs d'un Aveugle, vol. 1, facing page 119. The lithograph was derived from Arago's drawing, but a lithographer, N. Maurin, whose name appears under the published drawing, drew it on the lithographic stone. We cannot establish how Arago's original drawing compares with the published version. Efforts to locate the original drawing, including correspondence with French scholars and archivists, have failed. It may be held by Arago's descendants in France because some of his other drawings are/were in the family's possession (see Laureilhe, “Jacques Arago,” 98; Bassett, Realms and Islands, 117, 255–7; Riviere, Woman of Courage, ix).
[25] Promenade, vol. I: 102; our translation. The tip of the sword was pointed toward the shoulder so that if the slave moved his head in the wrong direction, it would jab into the shoulder.
[26] Souvenirs d'un Aveugle, vol. 1: 119; our translation. In the 1822 edition the mask is identified as made of tin; in 1839, of iron (see above quotes). We cannot explain this discrepancy unless it was a printing error since, in French, “fer” is iron, “fer-blanc” is tin. Arago's description of his second visit to Rio, during the return trip to France, very briefly mentions changes in the city since his earlier visit three years before, but he sees no change in the living and working conditions of the slaves and their cruel treatment. He does not refer to the drawing of the slave with mask and collar; another indication that the drawing was done during his first visit (ibid., vol. 4, 323–4).
[27] See, for example, Higgins, “Pica”.
[28] Debret's watercolor is in a museum in Rio and is published in Moraes, O Brasil dos Viajantes, 93.
[29] Ewbank, Life in Brazil, 437.
[30] A similar mask was illustrated for Trinidad where, according to Richard Bridgens, it was used as ‘a punishment and preventative of … dirt eating’ (West India Scenery, plate 20). See Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, image reference BRIDG-4_IMG.
[31] The lithograph was also published, albeit in modified form—presumably because the original plates were not available—in subsequent French editions (e.g. Paris, 1844, 76, and later publications), and Russian (St. Petersburg, 1844, 51) and Spanish translations (Madrid, 1851, facing page 32). shows the image in the 1851 Madrid edition, and this appears to be a copy of the image that appeared in the 1844 Paris edition. Copies of various French editions of Arago's accounts, as well as their translations, are in several major libraries, e.g. Library of Congress, British Library, Bibliothèque Nationale, Bibliothèque du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, but none of these libraries contain all editions. As well as English and Spanish, Arago's volumes were also translated into German (Leipzig 1854, 1857), Italian (Milan, 1824; Naples, 1830), and Russian (St. Petersburg, 1844); the image appearing in the Russian edition resembles that in the 1844 Paris and Madrid editions, but differs from these.
[32] For details on how Arago's image was appropriated in the late twentieth century to represent Anastacia, see Handler, “From Arago to Antastacia”.
[33] Although the image does not appear in the original 1916 edition of Ortiz, Negros Esclavos (Havana), it is published in the 1975 reprint (Havana) with an identification of Arago as the original source; however, nothing is said about the image. Walvin's well-known Slavery and the Slave Trade, 113, shows the image with the caption ‘punishment for a slave’; no primary source is cited and the illustration appears to come from some commercial photo house (see ibid., “Acknowledgements”). In the elaborately illustrated catalog of an art exhibition held in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2000, the 1839 Arago image is reproduced. While the catalog acknowledges Arago as the artist, his 1839 publication is not cited; the image is merely identified as a ‘hand-colored lithograph’ in the hands of a private collector—creating the impression that the image was separately published (Aguilar, Mostra do Redescobrimento, 286). In Susanne Blier's African Vodun one version of the image (with a misleading textual reference) is reproduced (26, Figure 18); the 1839 Arago volume is cited as the primary source. However, Blier acknowledges taking the image not from the 1839 volume itself, but rather credits Paul Lovejoy's edited volume of essays in honor of Philip Curtin, Africans in Bondage. The image does, indeed, appear on the cover of this volume. Lovejoy acknowledges Mary Karasch ‘for the cover graphics’, and cites Arago's 1839 edition as the primary source. However, the version of the image that is published in Lovejoy, and later used by Blier, is not from Arago's 1839 publication; rather, it appears in the 1844 French edition of Souvenirs, as well as in its 1851 Spanish translation (see ).
[34] The Public Broadcasting System (USA) website for its program ‘Africans in America’ is the only website we have found which indicates the primary source for this image, but the website gives a misleading explanation for the image and a caption that is not found in Arago's volume: see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1h308.html; several other websites show the image, but provide no bibliographic citation or explanation, e.g., ‘AfricanAmericans.com’, a website ‘Dedicated To All Things For And About The African American Diaspora’ at http://www.africanamericans.com/SlaveryBeginningsinAmerica.htm.
[35] See http://www.pawpaw.k12.mi.us/cedarstreet/0kidkorner/free/chains/Chains.html; History on the Net.com in the section, ‘Black Peoples of America: What is Slavery?’ at http://www.historyonthenet.com/Slave_Trade/slaveryexplain.html; University of the Poor, ‘the educational arm of the poor people's economic human rights campaign’ at http://www.universityofthepoor.org/schools/artists/abolition/ironmuzz.htm.
[36] Dapper, Description de l'Afrique; Jones, “Decompiling Dapper,” 187–90. For examples of the images in Dapper, see Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade.
[37] “The Choicest Pieces of her Cargo Were Sold at Auction”, Harpers New Monthly Magazine (Jan. 1895): 299; “Landing of Negroes at Jamestown from a Dutch Man-of-War, 1619”, ibid. (Jan. 1901): 172 (see Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, images H007, H009).
[38] Rugendas, Voyage Pittoresque; Slenes, “African Abrahams”, 149. For examples of Rugendas, see ibid. and Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, passim.
[39] See Handler and Tuite, Atlantic Slave Trade, image NW0232. One can also include in this general category images of historical personages, e.g. Toussaint L'Ouverture (the leader of the revolt in St. Domingue), or Nanny (the Jamaican Maroon and National Hero) for whom no life portraits exist, but artistic renderings are often taken as representations of their actual likenesses. In the case of Toussaint, books or websites that show his image not infrequently reproduce the dramatic and evocative portrait in Marcus Rainsford's well-known account, An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (1805). Although Rainsford provides a lengthy description of Toussaint's physical appearance, there is no evidence of an image of him that was actually taken from life. Yet authors who use this image do not make clear though they often may be unaware of its questionable authenticity, nor do they mention the existence of other images that might not be as dramatic (see ibid., image LCP-43 for the Rainsford image and citations to several other contemporary images of Toussaint. For additional images of Toussaint, see the website http://www.haiti-usa.org/special_features/toussaint_louverture/index.php). With respect to Nanny, virtually nothing is historically known of her physical appearance, and the widely used image of her was specifically created by a Jamaican artist in the 1970s (Sharpe, Ghosts of Slavery, 17-24). Today, that image appears on the Jamaican $500 bill, and is, for example, the emblem of the widely respected Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (Yale University) as well as even adorning the website of a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition of maroon cultures in the Americas—http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main.asp?id = 99—though neither of these sources hint at or even suggest that the image is an entirely modern fabrication, and thus leave the impression that it represents an actual likeness of Nanny. See also the following items in the Jamaica Observer of 27 Feb. 2005, brought to my attention by Ken Bilby after the present article had gone to press: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20050226t230000-0500_75842_obs_will_the_real_nanny__please_stand_up_.asp and http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20050226t230000-0500_75843_obs_olive_bowen__the_nanny_model.asp.
[40] For a germane discussion that touches on a number of issues that we raise, see Masur, “Pictures Have Now Become a Necessity.”