Session Abstract

Examining the commercial exchanges between Britain, West Africa, Jamaica, and the U.S. South, this panel discusses the role of communities and networks of slave merchants and enslaved individuals in the shaping of the British Atlantic slave trade. The four papers of this panel focus on how families of slave merchants perpetuated continued relations with Britain and West Africa, by participating in the broad Atlantic slave trade enterprise during the eighteenth century. The four papers also focus on how enslaved individuals participated in and reacted against this dynamic, not only by providing their workforce but also by offering resistence. The paper shows that if the Atlantic slave trade in the British atlantic largely relied on networks consisting of families of slave merchants, the enslaved population was also able to keep and develop family ties within and across the Atlantic Ocean.