Captives and Voyagers: Black Migrants across the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World 9780807133590

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CAPTIVES

AND VOYAGERS

Antislavery, Abolition, R.

J.

M. BLACKETT

and the Atlantic World

AND JAMES BREWER STEWART,

Series Editors

CAPTIVES |

s VOYAGERS

K

BLACK MIGRANTS ACROSS THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH ATLANTIC WORLD

Alexander X. Byrd

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

+

BATON ROUGE

Published by Louisiana State University Press

Copyright

©

2008 by Louisiana State University Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured

United States of America

in the

First Printing

DESIGNER: Amanda McDonald

Scallan

TYPEFACE: Minion TYPESETTER:

J.

Jarrett Engineering

PRINTER AND BINDER: Thomson-Shore,

Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Byrd, Alexander X., 1968-

Captives and voyagers

:

black migrants across the eighteenth-century British Atlantic World

/

Alexander X. Byrd. p.

cm.

—

(Antislavery, abolition,

and the Atlantic world)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8071-3359-0

(cloth: alk. paper)

1.

Blacks—Great Britain—History—18th century. Sierra

Leone—History.

I.

Slavery—Great Britain—History—18th century. 3.

Slave

trade—Nigeria—History—18th

century.

2.

4.

Title.

HT1161.B97 2008 306.3'62094109033—dc22 2008018831

The paper

in this

book meets

tion Guidelines for

the guidelines for

permanence and durability of the Committee on Produc-

Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

‘or Jeanette

.

.

a

Acknowledgments

ix

INTRODUCTION |

Black Migrations

PART

1

I.

CAPTIVES ONE The

Slave Trade

from the Biafran

Violence, Serial Displacement,

and

the

Interior

Rudiments of Igbo Society

17

TWO The

Slave Ship

and the Beginnings of Igbo

Society in the African Diaspora 32 -

THREE

White Power and the Context of Slave Seasoning in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica 57

FOUR Routines of Disaster and Revolution 86

PART |

II.

VOYAGERS

FIVE Movement and Imagining Freedom :

Social

in the British Capital

125

SIX Migration and the Impossible

Demands

of Leaving London 139

SEVEN From

Slaves to Free Subjects in British

North America 154

viii

CONTENTS

EIGHT Black Society and the Limits of British Freedom 167

NINE The

Effects of Exodus

Afro-Maritime Society in Motion 177

TEN Arriving in Sierra Leone Catastrophe and

Its

Aftermaths 200

CONCLUSION Migration and Black Society in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic

World 244

Notes 253 Bibliography 313

Index 333

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I

have accumulated a great

many debts

in researching

about transatlantic black migration across the ish empire.

They

are debts

I

late

and writing

this

book

eighteenth-century Brit-

can never discharge, but

it is

a great pleasure to

have the opportunity to acknowledge a few of them here. I first

seriously grappled with the questions

book

of this

as a history graduate student at

and concerns

Duke

at

the heart

University. In

Durham, |

Janet Ewald, the late John Cell, Bill Chafe,

Raymond

Gavins, Barry Gaspar,

Lawrence Goodwyn, Sydney Nathans, Richard Powell, Julius

Wood, among

Peter

others,

pushed

me

to read

more closely, When it came time

Scott,

to write

and

more

to take

exams of Jack, committee consisting and to write the dissertation, Jan chaired a Ray, Julius, and Peter. These five were demanding and generous in ways that will continue to benefit me, I am certain, for as long as I write and

and

clearly,

to think

more

imaginatively.

teach history.

lam especially grateful

whose tenures

at

Duke

co-

had the great fortune of arriving in Durham at a time whenalively group of slavery scholars, Afro Americanists, and students of early America were also there. So I benefited enormously from the company of Herman Bennett, Rod Clare, Matthew Countryman, Kathryn Dungy, incided with mine.

|

to graduate students

I

Karen Ferguson, Charles McKinney, James A. McMillin, Jennifer Morgan, Celia Naylor, Ifeoma Nwankwo, Paul Ortiz, Kara Miles Turner, and others. Luckily, I also first met Vincent Brown, Stephanie Smallwood, and Claudio Saunt since.

to

me, I

Duke. They have remained great friends and interlocutors ever don’t have words for what Annie Valk and Leslie Brown have meant

at I

my family,

and

this project over the years.

I

am

simply thankful.

and the ensuing book as a member of Rice University. John Boles, Carl Caldwell,

finished both the dissertation

the department of history at

Edward Cox, Rebecca Goetz, Ira Gruber, Atieno Odhiambo, Paula Sanders, Allison Sneider, and Kerry Ward read parts of the manuscript (and some those listed read all of it). I appreciate their feedback very much.

among

|

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

|

As department chairs, Gales Stokes, John Zammito, Carl Caldwell, and Martin Wiener were each remarkably generous and supportive. Caroline Levander, Michael Emerson, Anthony Pinn, Maarten Van Delden, and other participants in Rice’s Americas Colloquium have encouraged

work |

a great deal. Beatriz Gonzalez-Stephan

my

and Juan Carlos Rodriguez

provided a welcome opportunity to present some of the book’s findings as they concern the idea of el gran Caribe. Paula Platt, Rachel Zepeda, and Anita Smith deserve special recognition.

Beyond

Rice,

I

am

grateful to scholars

who have

shared their work, en-

gaged mine, and encouraged me along the way, among them, Nancy Hewitt, Mark Smith, Vincent Carretta, G. Ugo Nwokeji, Carolyn Brown, Ray Kea, Philip Morgan, Paul Lovejoy, Nell Painter, David Gutierrez, James Stewart, Hasia Diner, and Gautam Ghosh. Over many years, Richard Blackett and Colin Palmer have been especially helpful in this regard.

As

a dissertation in progress

and

later as a

book manuscript,

has benefited from fellowship assistance that allowed research

and writing

for

extended periods of time.

It

me

gives

this project

to concentrate

on

me great pleasure

acknowledge the generous support the book and its author have received from The Graduate School at Duke University, the Center for Documentary to

Studies, the Ford Foundation,

The

national Migration Program, the

(through the

Andrew W. Mellon

Cullom Davis Center

American Council of Learned

Societies

Fellowship for Junior Faculty), the Shelby

for Historical Studies at Princeton University,

Woodrow Wilson

the

Social Science Research Council’s Inter-

and

National Fellowship Foundation (through a Career

Enhancement Grant).

I

am

particularly grateful to John

and Paula Mosle

for their support of assistant professors in Rice’s School of Humanities. I

am

indebted to the librarians and archivists

listed in the bibliography,

tional Archives,

Kew; the

and

am

at all

of the repositories

especially grateful to the staff at the

Na-

British Library; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the

Manuscripts Department of Cambridge University Library; the National __

Archives of Nigeria, Enugu; the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth;

Duke

and Fondren Library cious in allowing Library.

I

am

especially

I

at

me at

Rice University.

make use of material on deposit at the Bodleian to Sir Edward Dashwood for permission to make

to

grateful

use of documents

who

and Special Collections Library; Lord Clarendon was especially gra-

University’s Rare Book, Manuscript,

the National Library of Wales.

The

staff at

LSU

Press,

Rand Dotson have been tremendous. Working with Derik Shelor,

copyedited the manuscript, wasa

joy.

explored some of the issues raised in Captives and Voyagers in two

previously published essays: “Violence, Migration, and

Becoming Igbo

in

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xi

Gustavus Vassa’s Interesting Narrative,” published in Constructing Borders/ Crossing Boundaries: Race, Ethnicity,

and Immigration, and “Eboe, Country,

Nation and Gustavus Vassa’s Interesting Narrative,” which appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly. 1am grateful for permission to draw on material

from those essays

here.

The support of family, the book’s completion.

O’Gradys, the

Scatliffs,

I

and community have been critical to terribly grateful to C. T. Woods-Powell, the

friends,

am

the Molinas, the Nelsons, the Arches, the Poduskas,

the Blythes, the Simmonses, the Buckners, the Princes, the Prices, the Fra-

on and below Ditney Hill. I have benefited enormously from the stimulation and Memorial inspiration provided by the men and women comprising Lincoln Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina; Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, Texas; and:Grant Chapel AME Church in Trenton,

Bowmans, Nancy

ziers,

the

New

Jersey.

Byrd, and the wonderfully loving folks

|

The

barisiti at Salentos, especially in the last

months of the

book’s coming together, fueled large chunks of the project. My mother never asked too many questions about this book, though she inquired about helping

many

me keep

fortune.

Once

I

took to sending

other things (which was very useful

arrived in graduate school,

me

clothbound books

and

my children know anything

pleasure). years, has

Still,

it

came

to

things in perspective). Being born her son

grateful for the ensuing library that

when

they encouraged

been exactly what

I

for birthdays

I

and Christmases.

their unflagging confidence.

about this book (which

me beyond

needed (and

Before getting under way,

my

was my greatest stepmother and late father

want

to

all

words. that

I

I

|

|

am

doubt write with some

My wife,

I

these

many

ever wanted).

acknowledge a point about the

book’s nomenclature in referring to some of its black subjects. In the pages that follow,

I

tend to avoid the phrase African American.

against the term in general,

and

I

happily use

it

I

have nothing

in other writings

and

in

everyday speech to refer to blacks in the United States in the modern period. But this particular political, geographic, and temporal connotation is precisely

why I mostly

avoid the term in Captives and Voyagers.

|

CAPTIVES

AND VOYAGERS

INTRODUCTION

BLACK MIGRATIONS

On

an overcast afternoon in the wet season of 1787, three trading ships working in the Sierra Leone River were interrupted in their business by

war sloop andaleash of creaking transports, announce its arrival. The traders already in the

the approach of a lone British the sloop firing

cannon

to

estuary—some, no doubt, Guineamen awaiting their human cargos—had just been joined bya floating complement of free settlers. Here, where the French, the English, the Portuguese, and the Danes had long depended on the river for a steady flow of African slaves, a small reversal

The

was under way.

HMS Nautilus had just escorted the Belisarius, the Atlantic, the Vernon,

and some four hundred

colonists, the majority of them

Londoners, to take possession of a

sliver

impoverished black

of land along the peninsula at

Sierra Leone. After almost a year of being readied for sea

and

a

month en

route, the just arrived “black poor,” as they were called in the British capital,

were suddenly the founders of what would

later

be styled “free English

territory in Africa.”

The same summer

that the Belisarius, the Atlantic,

and the Vernon ap-

proached Sierra Leone, but an ocean away, ships bearing black cargo were few and far between on the more established British colony of Jamaica. It

was foolish

to risk a slaving venture during the hurricane

as foolish as

it

was

months

(indeed,

to plant a colony in Sierra Leone during the wet season). .

But when the trade picked up, in the time between the end of summer and the end of the year, at least seven Guineamen slouched into Jamaican harbors. Four of these ships—the Emilia, the King George, the King Pepple,

and the Preston—had arrived from the Bight of Biafra, a mainstay of British slaving south and east of the fledgling Province of Freedom. The nearly hundred Africans on board had embarked mostly at Bonny and Calabar in what is now southeastern Nigeria.* Thus they had been

twenty-five

New

from some of the busiest slaving ports in eighteenth-century western Africa to what was then the largest slave entrepét in the North Atlantic. Unforced

like the

who were

émigrés from London

out lives as free

men and

arriving in Jamaica

free

women

at the

time

still

in western Africa, these

from the Bight of Biafra had

a very different

make lives

as

American

slaves.

thousands kind of en-

doomed to spend the Either that or flee. Or die.

counter ahead. The congeries aboard these ships were season learning to

struggling to carve

2

INTRODUCTION The conventional image of transatlantic migration empire

is

rarely cast so darkly, yet

made through

much

across the British

of the British colonial world was

just these kinds of black migration. In the years

1630 to 1780, more than two and a half times

Great Britain’s Atlantic possessions as did

many Africans

as

Europeans departed their homelands

the transatlantic

movement of people was concerned,

who made

explores the social

many

for British colonies.’

critical

Africans

As

far as

the late eighteenth-

century British empire was overwhelmingly black. This the migrants

arrived in

Europeans, and in the

near century from 1700 to 1780, more than four times as as

spanning

is

a

book about

examines the nature of their movements, consequences (personal and corporate) of their dislocait

so. It

more than anything else, scrutinizes their lives as people in motion across a European New World empire. The book focuses on the two largest streams of free and forced transtions, and,

oceanic black dislocation across Great Britain’s western empire: the slave trade

from the Bight of Biafra

Sierra Leone.

When

to Jamaica,

human

pondering the

and

free black

migration to

articulation of Great Britain’s

eighteenth-century Atlantic empire, admittedly, these two migrations

New England’s

hardly leap to mind.

Great Migration and the demographic

catastrophe that was early Virginia, for instance, are no doubt

commonly thought

of when the subject

much more

movement of people to, from, and within Great Britain’s Atlantic empire. The pairing at the heart of the book is not iconic, but it should be. A primary burden of the pages that follow

is

is

the

to naturalize the coupling, to underline

how important

the experi-

ences of black migrants are for grasping the shape and texture of the British

from other parts of the eighteenth-century British colonial world by the sheer vastness and sheer blackness of migration across and between it).

Atlantic world (a world set off

That the are not

slave trade to

Jamaica and

now commonly braced,

deal separated the

though,

free black is

migration to Sierra Leone

certainly understandable.

A great

two movements. The difference in magnitude between

them was enormous. In contrast to atlantic movement to Sierra Leone,

the intermittent trickle that was transthe slave trade from the Bight of Biafra

was a torrent involving hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of people. In the five years coinciding with the initial colonization of Sierra Leone (1787-1792), a little

when just two convoys

under 2,000

of fewer than twenty ships transported

free blacks to the west African

surviving ship records

than 78,000 African too great for words).'

document

that nearly 250

Province of Freedom,

Guineamen loaded more

slaves along the Bight of Biafra (a difference

almost

INTRODUCTION

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