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Markets, Transaction
Cycles, and Profits:
Merchant Decision Making in the British Slave Trade
Stephen D. Behrendt
| IN December 1803
Liverpool merchant John Leigh, recently recovered from bankruptcy,
decided to expand his small brokerage business in the coastal and
Irish Sea trades and began organizing a slaving voyage with Captain
John Ainsworth. During the next four months, they acquired partners
for the venture, purchased a sailing vessel, and ordered materials
(such as shackles), trading goods and food supplies for a crew of
thirty and a human cargo "of about 200 slaves." The partners
decided to fit out a vessel for New Calabar, a port in the Bight
of Biafra, from which location Ainsworth, after purchasing slaves
and provisions, would sail to Surinam to gain information on local
and regional slave prices in the Americas. |
1 |
| Leigh
and Ainsworth, a mariner who previously had commanded five slaving
voyages, knew that their choice of African market was the key decision
in the planning stages of the venture. African coastal dealers in
different trading outlets demanded specific quantities and qualities
of European, Asian, and American textiles, manufactures, firearms,
gunpowder, and alcohol. Significant variations in supplies and prices
of slaves, foodstuffs, ivory, palm oil, gum, dyewood, and other
produce occurred from one African coastal region to another. Ainsworth
would have difficulty selling his cargo, which probably comprised
two-thirds to three-fourths textiles, firearms, and gunpowder, at
markets other than New Calabar or nearby Bonny.1
He could not profitably sail from port to port along the African
coast seeking out supplies of slaves and bartering a "disassorted"
cargo for them, because merchants "assorted" trading cargoes
for specific African markets.2
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| By
the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Liverpool slaving vessels
traded competitively at thirty ports and lagoon sites along the
African coast from the Senegal River south to Ambriz—north
of the Portuguese colony of Angola. In early 1804, Leigh and Ainsworth
assessed their market options and decided that New Calabar offered
the best opportunity for slaving profits. Leigh anticipated that
his captain would trade in the Bight of Biafra during a slave buyers
market in the late summer and early autumn of 1804 and then arrive
in the Americas late in the calendar year, during a period of planter
demand. He was confident that their trading cargo was "well
assorted…to enable [Ainsworth] to make a speedy purchase."
On June 22, a week before Ainsworth and the brig William
departed from Liverpool, Leigh noted that the "vessel is going
out with fine prospects. Should she be so fortunate to get safe
round we would not be surpriz'd if she would clear £8,000."
Because the voyage cost less to fit out, he thus envisaged a profit
of more than 100 percent for the partnership. |
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