Public and Private Knowledge in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

This presentation will examine the ways that British and French slave-ship outfitters in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries developed knowledge about distant consumer markets on the African coast. Since the publication of Cadamosto's voyages in 1507, European readers had access to printed material about Africa. Arent Roggeveen's The 1685 Burning Fen, gave them detailed sailing directions as well, including distances between points, depths of water near shore, latitudes of given locations and sketches of portions of the coastline as they would appear from sea. The commercial guides and travelogues that began to appear fairly regularly in the eighteenth century such as those by Willem Bosman, John Atkins and Jean Barbot, gave outfitters information about trading practices on the African coast and consumer tastes and preferences.Yet slave ship captains and officers throughout the eighteenth century continually complained about inaccurate maps, poor information about market conditions and turning up in a given location with the wrong wares.

This presentation will examine the range of printed literature, or public knowledge, about the African coast available to British and French slave-ship outfitters in Europe in the eighteenth century. It will contrast this printed material with private correspondence to look at strategies that large-scale slave-ship outfitters, whether state companies or groups of private traders, used to develop proprietary knowledge about navigation, terrain and specific consumer markets on the African coast.