Understanding the Long Tail: Slave Merchants and Small-Scale Procurement on the Loango Coast in the Eighteenth Century

With the publication of the Slave Voyages Database we now know a great deal about the numerical contours of the transatlantic slave trade, especially in relation to time and place. What remains less clear, however, is the nature of slave procurement, particularly as it applies to the sellers of small numbers of slaves. Earlier work done by Phyllis Martin, Jan Vansina and Joseph Miller has established that significant sources of slaves were transported by caravan to the Loango Coast in the eighteenth century, often though the Congo River market at Malebo Pool. Yet as recent work on the records of the Dutch Middelburg Commercial Company (MCC) reveals, alongside these large-scale suppliers of slaves were many smaller traders selling individuals in ones or twos to the MCC over a seventy year period. The aim of this paper is then to provide an explanatory framework, through the lens of debt, for understanding this long tail of minor merchants, who brought only one or two slaves to the Loango Coast during the eighteenth century. Using the detailed quantitative data on over 10,000 slaves purchased by the MCC during this period, and comparative qualitative evidence on enslavement techniques and procurement practices from Angola during the same century, the paper will suggest not only that it was possible to exploit the connection between debt and enslavement for personal gain, but that a number of individuals were willing and able to do so.  It will also consider the implications of this analysis: while a substantial number of slaves may have travelled significant distances to reach the Loango Coast markets, they were likely to have been supplemented by additional sources closer to the coast.