Slaves as Commercial Scapegoats: Smuggling Clothes under the Cover of the Slave Trade in Caribbean New Granada

During the second half of the eighteenth century British and Spanish commercial legislation redefined the meaning of contraband. In the aftermath of the Seven Years' War both empires increasingly allowed trade with neutral foreigners. Some restrictions, however, remained. This paper analyzes the connections between the legal trade in slaves and the illegal trade in cotton manufactures. Based on shipping returns for the port of Kingston, Jamaica, and reports by Spanish authorities in northern New Granada, I study the practice of introducing contraband clothes in Caribbean New Granada under the cover of the slave trade. The experience of these slaves as commercial scapegoats reveals a new angle of the slave experience: that of slaves who were not intended to be sold. It also reveals the possibilities that the Caribbean offered merchants and slaves to benefit from legal loopholes in British and Spanish commercial policies while demonstrating the economic limitations of Caribbean New Granada to become a plantation economy. Ultimately, the paper sheds light on the gradual transformation of the Greater Caribbean into a trans-imperial "free" trade area, where imperial rivals also collaborated to obtain mutual benefits. The experience of slaves as commercial scapegoats reveals that, in this particular case, the benefits "trickled down" and reached a limited number of slaves, who were able to "perform" slavery, while, at least temporarily, leading a free maritime life.