Not Made by Slaves 9780674250093

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Not Made by Slaves

Not Made by Slaves ETHICAL CAPITALISM IN THE AGE OF ABOLITION

Bronwen Everill

Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts ​• ​London, ­England 2020

 Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printing Jacket design: Lisa Roberts Jacket art: Middlesex County Historical Society 9780674250079 (EPUB) 9780674250086 (MOBI) 9780674250093 (PDF) The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Everill, Bronwen, 1983–­author. Title: Not made by slaves : ethical capitalism in the age of abolition / Bronwen Everill. Description: Cambridge, Mas­sa­chu­setts : Harvard University Press, 2020. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020003394 | ISBN 9780674240988 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Business ethics—­Atlantic Ocean Region—­History—19th ­century. | Capitalism—­Moral and ethical aspects—­Atlantic Ocean Region—­History—19th ­century. | Consumption (Economics)—­Moral and ethical aspects—­Atlantic Ocean Region—­ History—19th ­century. | Antislavery movements—­Atlantic Ocean Region—­History— 19th ­century. | Social responsibility of business—­Atlantic Ocean Region—­History— 19th ­century. | Atlantic Ocean Region—­Commerce—­History—19th ­century. Classification: LCC HF5387 .E94 2020 | DDC 174/.409182109034—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2020003394

 For my ­family

Contents

Introduction: Bad Tobacco

1

1 Anxious Consumers

25

2 Goods of Questionable Morality

55

3 Protecting Ethical Brands

80

4 Rotten Credit

108

5 Picking Winners

140

6 A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

173

7 Consumer Nationalism in Black and White

204

Epilogue: Global Social Responsibility

238

Abbreviations 247 Notes 249 Acknowl­edgments

305

Index 309

Not Made by Slaves

introduction

Bad Tobacco

“E

very t­ hing is wet,” Martin Benson complained.1 The Rhode Island merchant had arrived in Freetown, West Africa, on a speculative venture. The trip had been stormy, but at least he had arrived as the first of that season’s ships. He had been commissioned by the British quasi-­philanthropic Sierra Leone Com­pany to provision its colony of black loyalists in West Africa. The Com­pany’s ability to restock the colony’s store had been undermined by the ongoing war between the British and the French. But trade goods like rum, tobacco, and cotton cloth ­were necessary to the Com­pany’s mission: undermining the slave trade by allowing African merchants to purchase ­those trade goods with commodities like ivory, dyewood, and rice instead of with slaves. The Newport trader, Benson, had been the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s solution. As a former slave trader, he had good knowledge of the Africa trade. He had approached his backers, the Providence firm of Brown, Benson & Ives, which had recently de­cided to move away from the slave trade. George Benson, the oldest member of the partnership, was a dedicated abolitionist. Nicholas Brown—­nephew of both John Brown, the infamous slave trader, and Moses Brown, one of Rhode Island’s most prominent abolitionists—­ invited his new brother-­ in-­ law (his ­ father’s former apprentice) Thomas Poynton Ives, into partnership in 1792. Both ­were 1

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twenty-­five and looking for new opportunities to make money. They had ready access to the goods the Sierra Leone Com­pany needed, and the right abolitionist credentials. Despite this pedigree, the venture still faced obstacles. “Shifting and repacking Tobacco,” Benson and his crew discovered “not a single hogshead that we have yet opened, but has been wet with salt w ­ ater.” They continued to repack, trying to hide the damage, but a few days l­ ater Benson knew his ploy w ­ ouldn’t work: “I have had several messages from the Governor desiring me to land no more, as the Tobacco is not merchantable he declines taking it.” ­After a sleepless week negotiating the price of the cargo with the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s governor, Zachary Macaulay, Benson’s frustration leaps off the page. Macaulay also had a nose for business and drove a hard bargain. ­After a misspent youth, gambling with friends in Glasgow and working as a bookkeeper on a Jamaica plantation, he had had an evangelical conversion and become an ardent opponent of the slave trade. In fact, Benson and Macaulay had known each other in the Ca­rib­bean, where Macaulay recalled him as “my Champion when abused by my old friends of Jamaica.”2 When an opportunity came up with the newly formed abolitionist Sierra Leone Com­pany in 1791, Macaulay had jumped at the chance to combine his commercial acumen with the anti-­slave-­trade mission. By the time Benson arrived, Macaulay had already learned much from his slave-­trading competition, including the correct assortment of goods for African trade, the importance of rice in the local economy, and the rhythms of ships’ arrivals. But he found his commercial match in the former Rhode Island slave trader. Benson’s cargo had been full of rum. But “as ­people are daily turning to the Mahomaten religion” in the wider region, where a reformist Islamic jihad was u­ nder way, he lamented that “rum is no longer in demand” as a trade good. And although the Sierra Leone Colony at Freetown w ­ asn’t exactly dry, the evangelical and overtly paternalistic Macaulay was concerned that the black settlers in the colony should not have too much access to “spiritous liquors.” Rum ­hadn’t been a ­great choice of cargo. But tobacco was in g­ reat demand. So Benson told Macaulay that he w ­ ouldn’t sell any tobacco without a purchase of rum, which seemed like a good solution for his poorly planned cargo. With rum sales dependent on

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tobacco, wet tobacco could have been a disaster. But he knew a desperate customer when he saw one: “I have waited on the Governor and consented to replace ­every pound of Tobacco that s­ hall be refused by the inhabitants when sold at the [Com­pany] store.” Macaulay agreed this was a fair proposal. “On breaking up six hogsheads at the store, such was the madness of the inhabitants that it was all sold, except 350 weight which was perfectly rotten.” Less than half a hogshead remained of a 30 hogshead cargo of tobacco, and even that was sold off, some of it for as cheap as 1 or 2 pence. The rum was all sold, for a profit of £33, and the tobacco earned £80.3 The voyage as a ­whole netted the new partnership nearly £450 in sales, something like £45,000 in modern purchasing power.4 Benson’s gambit had paid off. A non-­slave-­trading voyage to Africa could be profitable. But Zachary Macaulay had also learned from the experience. When he got back to Britain five years l­ ater, he had a plan: to marry his sweetheart, Selina; raise a large, evangelical ­family; and take advantage of the business opportunities created by the abolition movement.5 Drawing on his time as governor of Sierra Leone, his connections with French antislavery activists, his ­family and religious connections in the British Empire, and his prominent role in antislavery networks, Macaulay built a fortune estimated at £100,000 at its height in the early 1820s.6 As a keen businessman at the heart of evangelical circles, Macaulay was in a prime position to negotiate the emerging relationship between ideas about industrial, free-­ labor capitalism and humanitarianism. Macaulay not only ran his own business in Sierra Leone, he also wrote defenses of the imperial economic policies that supported the colony, sought out ethical investments for his clients, and penned explanations of what contemporaries referred to as “legitimate commerce,” or basically all the trade with Africa that w ­ asn’t trade in enslaved p ­ eople. As he put it himself, “I cannot deny . . . ​that for the last twenty-­t hree years I have enjoyed a close and intimate friendship . . . ​with some of ­those truly excellent men who have taken the lead in the ­great cause of African freedom and civilization.7” Macaulay took advantage of ­these “close and intimate friendships” with ­family members in India, formerly enslaved Africans in Sierra Leone, friends in the center of British politics, and trading contacts in the Amer­i­cas to build a business empire that sought to make a profit while combatting the slave trade,

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and eventually enslaved ­labor, and improving the prospects of formerly enslaved ­people around the Atlantic. Macaulay, like Brown, Benson & Ives, and the Sierra Leone Com­pany, believed that operating with ethical princi­ples need not preclude commercial success. And they ­were not alone. In the wake of Adam Smith’s revolutionary accounts of h­ uman economic be­hav­iors, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, consumers and producers around the world w ­ ere attempting to square the rise of consumer capitalism with their own moral values. Proceeding from dif­fer­ent motivations, often with entirely dif­fer­ent plans of action, and seeking new ways to consume, produce, and profit in shifting away from the Atlantic’s slave economy, ­these individuals helped create a set of arguments for a new, ethical capitalism.

Commercial Abolitionism in the Atlantic World This is a book about how a variety of p ­ eople in the late Atlantic World wrote about and engaged with commerce and developing ideas of the consumer’s role in the economy in an attempt to undermine first the slave trade and ­later enslaved ­labor. The return by historians to an economic history of slavery has emphasized that slavery was not just the economic system of the US South or the Ca­rib­bean, but was implicated in the rise of capitalism around the Atlantic. Although this is a departure from the arguments about slavery as a “precapitalist” or “feudalistic” economic system that dominated for so long, it is actually not a new way of thinking at all. In fact, a number of antislavery activists, as well as p ­ eople with antislavery leanings, thought that the global economy was deeply entangled with the slave trade and enslaved ­labor. And they tried to find ways of participating in modern economic life without supporting the slave system.8 Just as consumers and businesses t­ oday often have to choose between fair trade, rainforest alliance, organic, local, and “made in the USA” labels on their products, t­ hose who wanted to support the antislavery movement with their purchases in the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries ­were also faced with a range of choices. Should they be searching for new, slavery-­free sources of supply for tropical luxury goods made

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by slave ­labor? Or creating new free-­labor plantations to compete with enslaved ­labor? Or employing formerly enslaved workers? Should they focus on creating entirely new markets for goods grown by former slave traders in West Africa? Or focus on demonstrating the value of f­ ree white ­labor at home? And how could consumers evaluate an “ethical” good, or firms prove they w ­ ere an “ethical” business? Abolitionist arguments about commerce can be divided roughly into two fields of historical study: ­f ree produce, which focused on the consumer end of the movement; and legitimate commerce, which focused on the producer end, particularly on the African producer. F ­ ree produce was a subset of the American and British abolition movements that aimed to replace the demand for enslaved ­labor. It was an argument for the culpability of the consumer in the slave system. As the end user of the product of slave ­labor, the consumer bore responsibility for providing slaveholders with the economic incentive to continue producing goods using enslaved ­labor. Strains of the movement encouraged abstention, switching to alternative products, and promoting goods produced with “­free l­ abor.” Campaigns incorporating arguments for purchasing free-­labor goods and abstaining from the products of slave ­labor had been part of the early Quaker critique of the slave trade in the mid-­eighteenth ­century. Boycotting, or abstaining, was an impor­tant aspect of this movement, but rarely was suggested as an in­de­pen­dent action: abstention from a slave-­produced item could be supported by replacing it with one produced by f­ ree ­labor. This tactic became pop­u­lar­ized in Britain in the 1790s with sugar abstention campaigns, which attempted to put pressure on the government to pass a slave trade abolition act. But once the idea of consumer responsibility for slavery was introduced, it never ­really went away. It popped up again sporadically, and then with force from the 1820s with the emergence of formal American immediate-­abolition groups. British and American abolitionists reused many of the e­ arlier consumer-­responsibility arguments in the ­later campaigns, but also came up with new approaches, including free-­produce stores and socie­ties. The late 1820s and early 1830s saw the formation of the Philadelphia ­Free Produce Society (1827), the Colored F ­ ree Produce Society (1831), and their ladies’ auxiliaries. In 1838 the Philadelphia-­based American ­Free Produce Association was founded as an umbrella organ­ization to coordinate members’ efforts around the

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country and centralize commercial operations. ­T hese socie­t ies lasted, with varying degrees of success, through the American Civil War. Julie Holcomb’s Moral Commerce has joined other impor­tant studies of ­t hese organ­izations to broaden the focus beyond the national story of American or British abolitionist movements. 9 This contribution, part of a wider undertaking to situate abolition as part of a broader transnational moment, has helped reframe the Quaker contribution to abolitionism as deeply practical as well as ideological, and has expanded discussion of the free-­produce movement to incorporate the contributions of black activists. I ­w ill build on that understanding of the practicality of the abolition movement, and its reliance on transnational business relationships and black activism, as well as on the deepening historiography of American connections to the wider world in the nineteenth ­century.10 As Walter Johnson asks, “­Doesn’t it make more sense to think about the po­l iti­cal economy of the eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Atlantic as a single space, its dimensions defined by flows of ­people, money, and goods, its nested temporalities set by interlocking (though clearly distinct) ­labor regimes, cyclical rhythms of cultivation and foreign exchange, and shared standards of calculability and mea­sure­ment?”11 This book takes up the call to bring the Atlantic World’s moral po­liti­cal economy during the age of abolition into one frame by including West Africa. The practicalities of enacting ethical commerce in and with West Africa led firms and traders, consumers and producers, to calibrate and adjust the princi­ples of exchange supposed to guarantee mutual benefit. As historians including Gareth Austin, Padraic Scanlan, and Sven Beckert have recently articulated, the development of Atlantic capitalism was reliant on experimentation “on the periphery,” in places like West Africa.12 Access to certain consumer goods was a power­ful force integrating Atlantic ports, challenging some forms of po­liti­cal and cultural authority, and reinforcing ­others. In large part, shared material experience of the consumer revolution reflected the growth of an Atlantic economic, po­ liti­cal, and cultural community, something historians of the Iberian Atlantic and the Haitian Revolution have been at the forefront of demonstrating. The study of Spanish and Portuguese Africa and the Amer­i­cas (especially Brazil and Angola) has articulated the ways in which complex

Introduction 

• 7

cultural inheritances of foodways and religious practices, as well as the shared institution of enslaved ­labor, ­shaped the emergence of creolized or hybrid cultures, and fed back into the metropole.13 Similarly, studies of the Haitian Revolution have expanded our understanding of the interplay between French, African, and Creole intellectual histories and cultures in the New World.14 Forced migration of African p ­ eoples was, of course, crucial to the transmission of African practices and ideologies to the New World, and historians have identified significant contributions from slavery to the development of the modern world. Joseph Inikori argues in his study of Africans and the Industrial Revolution that “the growth of Atlantic commerce during the period is explained in terms of the employment of Africans as forced specialized producers of commodities for Atlantic commerce at a time when the prevailing conditions encouraged small-­scale subsistence production by legally ­free producers.”15 The role of Africa in powering the Industrial Revolution is almost always characterized in this way: the productive power of its enslaved ­labor force in the Amer­i­cas and, sometimes, the “productive” power of enslaved ­labor as an export commodity for African economies. Including this productive force has been an impor­tant corrective to the idea of the growth of Atlantic economies (or Eu­ro­pean empires) as endogamous, or a result of a par­tic­u­lar “work ethic.” However, emphasis on the production of enslaved l­ abor in fueling the Industrial Revolution overshadows some of the other impor­tant ways the trade in enslaved p ­ eople integrated certain aspects of the Atlantic economy. New work in the history of slavery and capitalism has revived interest, particularly in the American and metropolitan Eu­ro­pean context, of the other ways in which the Atlantic system of slavery fostered developments in financial and institutional capitalism.16 Inikori emphasized the importance of the slave trade, for instance, in the development of new instruments for issuing long-­term, long-­distance credit in the City of London.17 And David Richardson and Robin Pearson have explored the ways institutions—­African and Eu­ro­pean in origin—­responded to the particularities of the cross-­ cultural trade in ­people.18 The slave trade was part of a system of global commerce in which a number of West African socie­t ies w ­ ere participating, innovating, and

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changing, in similar ways to the transformations occurring elsewhere in the Atlantic World. The complex trading patterns and the role of consumer demand within West Africa ­shaped the Atlantic trade in metal, cloth, alcohol, weapons, and beads, all integral to Afro-­European commerce from the seventeenth ­century onward.19 But historian Christopher Brown, for one, notes that as the eigh­teenth ­century came to a close, t­ here was “an emerging tendency among antislavery enthusiasts to seek in Africa solutions to the prob­lem of slavery in the Amer­i­cas.”20 In tackling the questions of the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, then, it should be no surprise that West Africa played an impor­tant role in conceptualizing global commercial relations, developing alternatives for the slave-­based Atlantic economy, and articulating the relationship between ideas of “civilized” morality and business and consumer self-­interest. As the global economy transitioned from mercantilism to industrialization, West Africa’s place in the po­liti­cal economic imagination reflected changing economic proj­ects and ideas. This book, then, ­w ill re-­center West Africa in the story to illuminate some of the wider implications of this other­wise somewhat marginal, consumer-­focused strand of abolitionism for ideas of global consumer-­producer relationships as they evolved in the nineteenth ­century. At the same time that free-­produce campaigns tackled the question of demand, supply became the focus of campaigners looking at Africa’s role in the slave trade. Legitimate commerce was an approach pursued by British, French, American, and West African merchants. P ­ eople engaged in the slave trade—­both Eu­ro­pean and African—­relied on it to sell and to purchase global consumer goods. By finding alternative sources of income for slave traders, abolitionists hoped that traders would no longer need to produce slaves for Atlantic trade. Plans included accepting alternative goods as payment, setting up plantations in African colonies, and expanding wage l­ abor. T ­ hese plans reflected both fear that the abolition of the slave trade would permanently damage socie­ties eco­nom­ically dependent on it, and hope that Africa could provide a wealth of new economic opportunities.21 Historians of legitimate commerce w ­ ere, for a long time, occupied with the question of ­whether the shift from slave trading to commodity production created a “crisis of adaptation” that led to the establishment of

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colonial rule.22 The idea was that African polities, which had monopolized the slave trade in the eigh­teenth ­century, ­were disrupted by the Eu­ro­pean shift in demand to forest products like palm oil and groundnuts, which ­were easily gathered or cultivated by ­free peasants. This conclusion was challenged by investigating the continuities in trading partners through the transition period, a more nuanced understanding of how African polities conducted the slave trade, and research on the impact of abolition on the price of enslaved captives sold internally in West Africa. Ultimately, t­ hese conclusions undermined a simplistic notion of the crisis of adaptation but did not fully eliminate the possibility that gradual disruption of the slaving economy did coincide with West African po­liti­cal crises. However, it has become clear that the West African changes ­were often as much a product of local po­liti­cal and economic dynamism as they w ­ ere a reaction to changing Atlantic commercial forces. West Africa was not uniformly producing enslaved captives for the slave trade, nor was it uniformly experiencing po­liti­cal or economic changes. Therefore, like in Eu­rope, the economic changes of the eigh­teenth and nineteenth ­century could be seen to have had broad impacts on the region, but they played out locally, entangled as they ­were in the par­tic­u­lar dynamics of place.23 Despite the separate lit­ er­ a­ t ures treating ­ t hese two economic approaches—­free produce and legitimate commerce—­many of the businesses involved in aspects of the free-­produce movement ­were also involved with aspects of legitimate commerce, and vice versa. The businesses involved in new African plantation schemes had to find markets for their produce; the free-­produce shops had to find sources of free-­labor goods; and both groups of ethical entrepreneurs wrote justifications and arguments about their approaches to convince consumers, suppliers, and governments. ­These movements ­were attempts by antislavery activists to use the power of consumers to put pressure on slave traders and planters to end the practice of Atlantic enslavement. Following the new logic of the consumer revolution that had ­shaped the emergent po­liti­cal economy writing of the late eigh­teenth ­century, the movement’s leaders argued that as the end user of the products of slavery (sugar, cotton, coffee, rice) or of the slave trade (in the case of Africans receiving consumer goods in exchange for selling slaves), the consumer was responsible for the slave’s

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plight. The businesses involved in procuring slaves, and in using them to grow t­ hese commodities, ­were by this reasoning only rationally responding to the demand created by consumers.

Ethical Commerce Looking at the consumer and producer ends of the question together reconnects the global supply chain, and shows that ideas about producers and consumers w ­ ere not geo­graph­i­cally sealed off from each other. The slave trade had created an Atlantic, even global, system of commerce. Consumers around the Atlantic ­were smoking American tobacco, drinking Chinese tea, wearing Indian cottons, and eating Ca­r ib­bean sugar produced with enslaved African ­labor.24 Long-­term credit financing, maritime trading practices, ideas about customs duties or customary payments or tariffs and free-­trade alternatives, and plantation agriculture had developed through the trial and error of Atlantic business, although they w ­ ere locally accented by culture.25 So when it came to making arguments about dismantling the Atlantic supply chain, abolitionists had to think hard about what to replace it with and how to keep the parts they liked intact while removing the keystone. Connecting the African arguments illuminates how thinking about and experimenting in African ethical trade informed the arguments made in defense of the market as both the place to enact politics and the place from which consumers could dictate po­liti­cal morality. This book does not go back to the argument that the end of the slave trade led to a “crisis of adaptation” in Africa, but it does point out that the par­tic­u­lar businessmen and ­women involved with “ethical capitalism” ­were often trying to promote continuity, rather than change, by selling abolition as something that would be in vari­ous stakeholders’ self-­interest. Consumers would benefit, they argued, from the lower costs of commodities produced by f­ree ­labor; industrialists would benefit from cheaper global commodities and expanded world consumer markets; merchants would benefit from cheaper goods; planters would benefit from lower costs of l­abor; the nation would benefit from occupying the moral high ground; and the enslaved would benefit from being ­free. They painted a picture of West Africa’s po­liti­cal economy that helped them make t­ hese

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arguments, and they left an enduring legacy of confusion about what it was that ­really drove abolitionist ideology.26 This book ­will examine how the commercial developments associated with legitimate commerce and ­f ree produce w ­ ere subtle adjustments, responding to the po­liti­cal and moral demands of ­these vari­ous “interests” as they attempted to make ethical commerce profitable, convincing, and po­liti­cally ­viable. As the global economy was transformed by the rise of industrial capitalism over the course of the nineteenth ­century, economic thinkers, businesspeople, and consumers reflected on questions of ­labor, global interconnection, and morality. Historians working on the relationship between nineteenth-­century plantation slavery and the emergence of innovations in capitalism have shown that t­ hese ideas and practices w ­ ere by no means fixed by the end of the eigh­teenth ­century. Abolitionists like the evangelical Zachary Macaulay or the American Quaker George W. Taylor saw the market as the solution to both the supply side and the demand side of the slavery prob­lem, b­ ecause in the economic theories of the late seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries, calm (doux) commerce was the best way to counteract the greed and “passions” of excess accumulation and consumption—in the private as well as the national interest.27 In a moment when ­people ­were thinking and writing about the implications of global luxury products’ availability, wages, consumer responsibilities, economic policy in republican systems of government, and the relationship between supply and demand, abolitionism became a new focal point for imagining mechanisms that would restrain capitalism’s potential for selfishness. Calling on and shaping the po­liti­cal economy writings of the era, what emerged in ­these movements was not simply a discussion of commercial ethics, but an attempt to use the system of capitalism itself to generate reform. The thinkers involved in t­hese movements believed that—­ unencumbered by tariffs, by mono­poly, by market failures, by information asymmetry, by unfair access to capital—­the market, and individuals’ self-­interest, would show logically that slavery was wrong. Slavery may have ignited capitalism, but the abolitionists discussed ­here tried to shape and refine midcentury arguments about what was acceptable global capitalism. ­T hese movements, which combined free-­produce and legitimate-­ commerce arguments against the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, ­were

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consistent with historian Thomas Haskell’s assertion that capitalism gave rise to a certain bourgeois morality. For him, the peaceful transactions of the marketplace generated humanitarian sensibility. While I agree with the princi­ple that spreading marketplace interactions (the commercial revolution of the eigh­teenth ­century) w ­ ere impor­tant for shaping the abolition movement, it was the consumer revolution, and the development of vari­ous Atlantic pockets of consumer capitalism, that atomized individual consumers, giving them a new sense of their individual economic—­and therefore political—­power. Arguments for ethical commerce tapped into this, and pushed it further, by focusing increasingly on the “consumer interest.” A movement that was ostensibly about the conditions of l­abor oriented its most persuasive critique around consumer value ­because the movement was ultimately about reforming consumer capitalism, rather than reforming consumers. But abolitionism was not a “Eu­ro­pean moral awakening” followed by Euro-­A merican action followed by African reaction. It was a pro­cess of change and continuity around the Atlantic World. Although many of the early leaders of the abolition movement ­were evangelicals and Quakers, and in Africa many slave-­trade abstainers ­were participating in an Islamic revival, the sense of moral outrage about the excesses of the commercial revolution, which centered on the slave trade, gave way among some participants to an argument that recognized individuals as having a personal po­liti­cal power in their purchases and in their marketplace be­hav­ior. Abolitionists in Africa and America tapped into the same source of economic thought that led Adam Smith to understand that, while the market ­wasn’t inherently moral, it could be used to promote “public goods” (what economists now call positive externalities). Advocates believed that consumers and producers could be “nudged” into self-­interested be­hav­iors that would improve society.28 Price was crucial to the argument for abolitionist commerce. Eu­ro­pean and American traders in Africa wanted to keep prices for export commodities low to make profits at home and demonstrate the economic value of legitimate commerce as an alternative source of tropical production for their home markets. But they also wanted to keep African consumers as a market for their trade goods, which meant giving them access to increasing amounts of Atlantic imports, at lower prices. Credit facilitated

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both of t­ hese goals, but could also create de­pen­dency and new risks of default and bankruptcy. Monopolies and government subsidies w ­ ere seen as barriers to the logic of ­free ­labor, keeping the price high for consumers in uncompetitive industries. But this relentless argument that morality would be demonstrated by consumers following their interest meant that proponents of t­ hese movements found themselves searching for lower and lower cost inputs to keep consumer prices low, or having to restrict f­ ree trade and encourage migration to keep domestic ­labor values high. The abolitionists involved with colonial—­and, I w ­ ill argue, especially African—­trade thought of themselves as being at the forefront of shaping a critique of commodification, one that reflected and ­shaped the spread of what Haskell referred to as “market thinking” into moral decision making. Looking at debates about ethical trade, credit, the supply chain, government regulation, territorial expansion, and property rights as abolitionists tried to do business with Africa shows how their ideas and arguments ­were formulated. At the heart of it all was an evolving morality around the consumer—­protecting the consumer, policing consumption, providing consumer value—­that highlights the place of consumer capitalism in the shaping of nineteenth-­century Atlantic po­liti­cal economy. As the economic liberalism of the moral marketplace engaged with questions of overseas trade, however, the potential contradictions of ethical capitalism as a consistent liberal philosophy becomes clear. On the one hand, government tariffs could prevent the discovery of new products from Africa b­ ecause of the weight of customs duties. Monopolies, loathed by Smith and other anti-­mercantilists, ­were argued by Macaulay, by Brown, Benson & Ives, and by American ­Free Produce activist George W. Taylor, to be protecting the profits of Ca­rib­bean slaveholders at the expense of free-­labor experiments elsewhere. But protectionist and nationalist instincts ­were also pre­sent, even among businesses and merchants actively trading with Africa. West African states had also built significant state power and wealth through the tariff systems that operated throughout the slave trade. The erosion of ­those taxes over time weakened the states that had dominated the slave trade, undermining legitimate-­commerce arguments for maintaining continuity for African slave traders to encourage their transition away from slave trading by appealing to their interest.

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­Because free-­labor arguments had rested on consumer value, and the politicization of individual consumers’ commercial “votes,” polemicists and campaigners began to discuss not only how to withdraw consumer support from the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, but also who and what kinds of ­labor should be supported by consumers’ spending. France and the United States both had free-­trade traditions, but by the late 1840s their moral commerce arguments ­were aligning with wider po­liti­cal trends that favored the protection of national industry. Proponents of the movement in ­these countries saw an opportunity to withdraw from the colonial economies, in the French West Indies, and informal imperial entanglements, between Britain and the United States, by supporting national industry and agriculture. Britain’s abolitionist merchants and commercial theorists, on the other hand, turned to the empire—­formal and informal—­and thus promoted f­ ree trade as a means of reaching the cheapest pos­si­ble ­labor in order to maximize consumer value. In France and the United States, protectionist po­liti­cal economists framed arguments around avoiding Britain’s staggering domestic in­equality.29 As moral commerce proponents strug­gled to align consumer interests with an idea of consistency, they also faced the question of who was supposed to benefit from abolitionist policies. New definitions of African slavery and wage slavery, and growing ambivalence about the relationship between the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, emerged in ongoing debates with both pro-­slavery and radical abolitionists. Ideas about who should benefit from this new moral commerce ­were frequently contradictory, reflecting the complications inherent in conflating “interest” and ethics. An ethical global cap­i­tal­ist philosophy might be in the interests of smallholders freed from slavery and competing in the marketplace on fair terms, but it would not be in the interest of ­those who had accumulated capital and power in the slave-­based economy. This was as true for the United States as for West Africa. Looking to West Africa can remind us that the relationship between capitalism and antislavery was about more than industrial development. The arguments being developed t­ here ­were not exclusively about the Industrial Revolution. Businessmen and ­women w ­ ere also thinking about consumer interests and agricultural production, which still dominated most po­liti­cal economy writing of the period, and cash crop goods pro-

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duced with large ­labor inputs rather than mechanized production.30 They sought answers in local production, as well as in imperial proj­ects. This was not the inevitable rise of a prepackaged Liberal ideology, with its twin pillars of f­ree ­labor and f­ree trade. As numerous historians have demonstrated, capitalism and slavery w ­ ere not incompatible. This demands, then, a reinvestigation of the arguments of commercial abolitionism; since we can no longer assume that capitalism and slavery were antithetical, these cap­i­tal­ists had to support ­free l­ abor and had to turn into abolitionists.

Shifting Ideas and Practices The companies and individuals making money through antislavery reveal how an ethical consumer movement aimed at disrupting the slave trade and ending enslaved ­labor ­shaped and was s­ haped by the practical realities of business on the ground. Dif­fer­ent approaches to making money ethically all helped to shape abolitionist commercial middlemen and ­women’s ideas about the relationship between commerce, production, consumption, and morality in ways that affected how imperial and international humanitarianism viewed the market economy, and how slavery and freedom came to be defined within that market economy. Incorporating West Africa into the story shows not only how Africa fit into wider developments of colonial po­l iti­cal economy—­including in India or the Caribbean—­but also how businesses operating in West Africa ­shaped wider arguments about ethical commerce. As Helen Tilley has written for the history of science as it developed in African colonial contexts, “national, imperial, and international scientific infrastructures ­were constituted si­mul­ta­neously.”31 The same holds true of the Atlantic economy and the thought and practice that went into it in the period when the “Image of Africa,” as Philip Curtin termed it, was also being formulated.32 This book uses the experiences of traders involved with Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, ­because t­ hese ­were the sites of early experiments in legitimate commerce conducted by abolitionist businessmen and ­women. But it also draws on examples of po­liti­cal economic thought and po­liti­cal change in the wider Upper Guinea Coast region, as ­these informed both commercial practice on the coast and the perceptions and realities of West Africa. 33 ­T hese developments had a lasting impact on

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thinking about enslaved and ­free l­abor, the moral value of trade versus agriculture versus manufacturing, the relationship between f­ ree produce and ­free ­labor, and the choices of products and sourcing locations ultimately sought by ethical consumers. The “abolitionists” in this book are a diverse subset of the larger, even more diverse abolition movement, with a loose common interest in the abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of enslaved ­labor, or both. ­Because tactics and arguments w ­ ere reused and evolved from ­earlier campaigns against the slave trade to ­later movements against enslaved ­labor, they ­w ill be considered together within the broader “age of abolition” spanning roughly 1770 to 1885.34 Within that period, Vermont outlawed the Atlantic slave trade in 1777, Futa Toro in 1785, Denmark in 1792, Haiti in 1792, France in 1794 (and again in 1818 ­after a brief resumption in 1802), Britain and the w ­ hole United States in 1807, Portugal in 1838, Brazil in 1851. Forms of unfree ­labor, however, continued in all ­these places, or their colonies, for years, and sometimes de­cades, ­after the abolition of the trade. Some activists involved in campaigning against the slave trade hoped that the end of cheap enslaved ­labor would put pressure on ­those using enslaved ­labor to “ameliorate” the conditions in which the unfree worked. ­Others found ways to justify slavery in some contexts but not all. And still ­others transformed the tactics and arguments of the anti-­slave-­trade movement into campaigns against enslaved ­labor.35 Aside from the variety of their interests in the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, the abolitionists represented ­here are largely also a middle-­to upper-­ middle-­class, well-­connected group, made up of w ­ omen and men, black and white, from around the Atlantic. They produced what David Todd has referred to as “middle-­brow” economic philosophies.36 They associated with influential members of government. Elizabeth Heyrick, Thomas Clarkson, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, and Nana Asma’u w ­ ere among ­those who produced the arguments that brought together the commercial realities of consumer life in the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries with the popu­lar appeal of a more moral marketplace. Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy set up a newspaper called The Genius of Universal Emancipation, which became a major mouthpiece for the free-­produce movement, articulating the middlebrow po­liti­cal economic argumentation. 37 The paper, published sometimes weekly, often quarterly or

Introduction 

• 17

monthly, between 1821 and 1835, was, before William Lloyd Garrison’s radical Liberator, the most popu­lar antislavery publication in the United States.38 It embraced a variety of abolitionist ideas, ranging from colonization to ­free produce to immediate emancipation. The writings of the ­women and men of ­these movements highlight the ways they used their understanding of the relationships between the consumer and the global supply chain to shape an argument for a new moral economy. The businesses themselves also generated ­great quantities of evidence for the practical ­running of ethically oriented trading partnerships. Zachary Macaulay was a prolific letter and pamphlet writer, and as an influential member of the Clapham Sect, had impor­tant friends in Parliament, on the board of the East India Com­pany, and scattered throughout the worlds of colonial governance, philanthropy, and business. George W. Taylor, president of the American ­Free Produce Association, was also a contributor to the Genius of Universal Emancipation and a correspondent of vari­ous suppliers and customers in the United States, Britain, the Ca­rib­bean, and West Africa. The partners of Brown, Benson & Ives had ­family members in Congress, and w ­ ere connected to the worlds of commerce, philanthropy, and industrialization. Their papers are also full of glimpses of the day-­to-­day purchasing and production of t­ hose responsible for the quotidian practicalities of ethical capitalism. Throughout, this book looks at how ideas and practices of ethical commerce shifted and evolved in dialogue with West Africa. This is not, however, a book about all the trade in the Atlantic World in the age of abolition. Legitimate commerce was not a major part of the Atlantic economy in the first half of the c­ entury; free-­produce stores made almost no impact on the total economic value of trade during the period. But for both of ­t hese branches of ethical commerce, their impact was outsized ­because of the moral case proponents made and the volume of writing they produced to justify their claims. The slave trade—­both ­legal and illegal—­ continued essentially unabated long ­after formal abolition went into effect, and this obviously s­ haped the total commerce of the region, as well as government policies t­ oward that commerce. In fact, it was the continued commercial successes of the slave trade and enslaved l­abor that drove much of the middlebrow abolitionist economic writing, as proponents of the movements w ­ ere repeatedly faced with the real­ity of the slave trade’s

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economic power. This is also not a book about the Iberian Atlantic, largely ­because Spain, Portugal, and their American colonies did not participate in the development of new arguments for and about ethical commerce. Fi­nally, France appears at the margins throughout. French experiments in Senegal are relevant to the legitimate-­commerce story, as is their increased po­liti­cal interest in the region. But ­because they had only a weak (occasionally non­ex­is­tent) popu­lar abolitionist movement, it is largely through French colonial policy debates that they engaged with questions of f­ ree and unfree ­labor.39 Even among ­t hose interested in connecting an ethical supply chain, ­there was never one idea of abolitionism. T ­ here w ­ ere dozens of competing ideas about what abolitionism meant, whom it affected, and how it should take place. Many of the abolitionists in this book w ­ ere exclusively focused on ending the transatlantic slave trade. Some found the full range of slavery objectionable. ­Others’ views evolved over time to incorporate arguments against enslaved ­labor. ­T here ­were many ideas about how changing consumption and production could undermine the slave trade and enslaved ­labor. Although rarely articulated as a complete vision of ethical capitalism, it was threaded through works on po­liti­cal economy, newspaper editorials, shop advertisements, product labels, private letters, poetry, fables, society reports, business plans, and purchasing decisions. ­Because of the nature of the West African sources used—­ranging from archaeology to trade statistics, economic anthropology to collected poems and fables, individual receipts to colonial archives, oral archives to probate inventories—­this book relies on a fairly wide range of po­ liti­cal developments, ethical traditions, and economic trends in West Africa as they intersected with the “everyday economy” in the Atlantic ports of the Upper Guinea Coast.40 It combines the free-­produce movement’s demand-­side arguments with the legitimate-­commerce arguments about the supply side. By looking at supply and demand, consumption and production, f­ree produce and legitimate commerce together, we can see how p ­ eople’s everyday engagements with the Atlantic economy helped enact and refine the politics of ethical consumption that are still with us ­today. Including West Africa in the picture of the consumer revolution of the eigh­teenth ­century reopens the question of what catalyzed the dramatic outpouring against the slave trade at the end of the eigh­teenth ­century,

• 19

Introduction 

Chinguetti

Richard Toll FU Cape Verde Islands

TA

Saint-Louis

WAALO

St Jago

Timbuktu

TO

RO Fort SSaint Joseph

Gorée

ene

ia

ga l

Ga m b

Bathurst

M

A Nig

SI

N

A

er

Sokoto

KAABU

S O K O T O

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Rio Nunez

Rio Pon gas

FUTA JALLON Timbo

Iles de Los MORIA

Forekariah Freetown

Nige

Sherbro Island

ASANTE

DAHOMEY

Monrovia Accra Elmina Cape Coast

FANTE Town

SOKOTO Polities/country

0

200 miles

Ouidah

GULF OF GUINEA

r

Abeokuta Lagos Old Calabar Bonny

300 km

Map I.1  Relevant places and polities in West Africa, ca.1770–1870.

and helps explain the direction taken by some of the early arguments about abolitionist commerce. Chapter 1 begins by exploring the development of ideas of consumer power and responsibility. The consumer revolution of the eigh­teenth ­century brought global goods into daily use in the port cities and their hinterlands around the Atlantic World. In large part, however, t­ hese purchases w ­ ere made pos­si­ble by slavery: enslaved ­labor made sugar cheap enough to purchase in Britain; selling slaves allowed Africans to consume Indian cloths. By the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, a series of po­liti­cal revolutions accompanied a moral shift that saw the excesses of this consumption epitomized by the trade in commodified p ­ eople. Unsurprisingly, in an economy united by consumption, moral reformers turned to consumers to undermine the slave trade. Anti-­ consumption was one alternative. Abstention campaigns, nonconsumption movements, and refusals to trade in certain goods ­were some of the strategies used by ­those who objected to the Atlantic slave trade. The establishment of consumer responsibility, the explanation of the ethical relationship between consumers and producers, and the use of commercial

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actions like boycotts helped cement the idea of ethical consumption as a consistent approach to infusing morality into the global economy and asserting po­liti­cal objections. The early chapters explore the ethical dilemmas facing the commercial abolitionist movements working in overseas markets as they negotiated business practices in the new abolitionist environment. As Jonathan Glickman has demonstrated, consumer movements have used similar tools repeatedly with ­little reference to or acknowl­edgment of the histories of t­ hese tools. Over the “age of abolition” from the late eigh­teenth ­century through the late nineteenth ­century, the same ethical prob­lems and practical solutions ­were encountered by a variety of individuals, organ­izations, and firms. I take a comparative approach to the ways t­ hese prob­lems ­were encountered, looking for patterns as well as change over time. For ethical-­commerce advocates involved with global supply chains, ethical commerce was determined not only by national or even Christian norms, but also by the commercial ethics of the ­people and places they ­were trading with. I ­w ill explore points of tension when traders, merchants, and shop­keep­ers found themselves on shaky moral ground as a result of changes in trading norms, questions about the kinds of goods that could count as “ethical,” contested approaches to credit and debt, and uses and abuses of government connections. Chapter 2 looks at how ethical consumers identified ethical commodities and s­ haped ideas about the commodity currencies that had dominated African Atlantic exchange. It considers the question of how traders in Africa thought about what goods w ­ ere ethical to sell to African consumers. Chapter 3 turns to the prob­lem of counterfeiting and fraud, and the solutions that businesses and traders came up with to overcome it. Chapter 4 examines the contested role of credit and debt in legitimate commerce with Africa. Chapter 5 discusses how businesses used their networks and government connections to search out new free-­labor supplies of tropical slave-­produced goods like sugar and rice, which raised questions about their own business ethics and the role of monopolies and monopsonies in global commodity trading. Chapters 6 and 7 look at the implications of ­these arguments and practices and their development over time in conceptions of consumer and ­labor value. They examine how commercial abolitionist proponents engaging with African trade a­ dopted and put into practice new ways of

Introduction 

• 21

thinking about global producer–­consumer relationships. As economic arguments against the slave trade and slavery proliferated, the supposed beneficiaries of abolition multiplied. The search for new sources of free-­ labor cotton gave rise to new confrontations between pro-­and antislavery leaders. If the beneficiaries of global commerce w ­ ere supposed to remain the same as during the slave-­trade era, then fundamental global ­labor relationships would prob­ably not change very much. In order to demonstrate the “value” of f­ree ­labor, British proponents of ethical commerce made arguments about the nature of the global supply chain and the ability of global commerce to improve living standards by increasing industrious consumption. This proliferation of supposed beneficiaries of abolitionist commerce led many American abolitionists to support a vision of antislavery whose primary beneficiary would be white yeoman farmers. Fi­nally, the Epilogue looks at the implications of ­these developments in the long run. Ultimately the slave trade was replaced by other forms of commerce with Africa, and enslaved l­ abor was gradually, legally abolished. But how did the arguments that had developed about the relationships between consumption and production, and the nature of ethical commodities and corporate responsibility, persist or change at the end of this long age of abolition? Throughout, I aim to weave together the two historiographies—­the African side of the trade (“legitimate commerce”) and the mostly British and American efforts to promote “­f ree produce.” Bringing ­t hese well-­ established lit­er­a­tures together does more than simply re­unite the supply chain of producers and consumers. It also highlights the role of West Africa in shaping nineteenth-­century ideas of global commerce and ethical consumerism. “Reciprocal comparison,” outlined by Kenneth Pomeranz and developed further by Gareth Austin, argues that we ­will decenter our understanding of the pro­cesses of modernity in the West by framing comparisons that do not assume Western experiences to be the standard against which other countries and regions are assessed.41 Although Atlantic (and global) connections have been at the heart of the reevaluation of the relationship between slavery and capitalism—­particularly in the recent British lit­er­a­ture—­there have been fewer studies that attempt to connect African economic change to t­hese developments. In large part this is a result of the per­sis­tence of de­pen­dency theory as a frame of understanding the impact of the slave trade on Africa outside of Africanist

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circles. But this lacuna also results from the pervasive idea of Africa’s lack of growth as a chronic and inherent prob­lem, rather than as a temporal phenomenon associated with a par­t ic­u ­lar thirty-­year period in African economic (and po­liti­cal) history.42 Together, t­ hese under­lying ideas of African economic history have created the tendency to neglect Africa in comparisons of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century trends in urban development, industrialization, ideas of moral economy, expansion of capitalism, commodity production, and fashion.43 Within West Africa, this is a story of how a system in which many African merchants and slave-­trading states that had a fairly power­ful role at the end of the eigh­teenth ­century saw their fortunes diverge markedly by the end of the “age of abolition.” This “African G ­ reat Divergence”—­ referred to in the lit­er­a­ture as the “reversal of fortune thesis”—­has been the subject of a re­nais­sance in African economic history. It largely has focused on historicizing the question of African growth (or lack of growth) in the late twentieth ­century. But African economic historians have begun to challenge some of the premises on which arguments about the development of capitalism—­and industrial capitalism especially—­are grounded.44 The renegotiation of the fundamental terms of trade over this roughly hundred-­year period occurred as Eu­ro­pean advocates of moral commerce with West Africa found themselves promoting policies that increasingly marginalized African consumers and producers as the beneficiaries of their trade in order to convince home markets of the ability to purchase ethically and cheaply. But equally, this was a period in which an argument for ­labor value and the in­de­pen­dence of the “yeoman” or “peasant” farmer worked as a counternarrative to the “wage slavery” of industrial production and urbanization. Looking at Africa and the United States together suggests that t­ here may have been similar responses to the possibilities provided by the occupation of “new” lands by peasant farmers seeking to take advantage of (apparent) land abundance and ­labor scarcity to participate in global commodity production (and consumption) at a small scale. Considering the interplay between dif­fer­ent forms of moral economy, dif­fer­ent ideas of wealth and poverty around the Atlantic, and the developing arguments for an ethical capitalism driven by self-­interest highlights the tensions between vari­ous interest groups within the Atlantic commercial system.45 Business practices ­were integral to the debates happening within the abolition movement contemporaneously with their emergence in po­liti­cal

Introduction 

• 23

economy more generally: long-­distance credit financing; assessments of consumer demand; sourcing of suppliers; global logistics; how to fairly price goods in international markets fairly; how to think about the moral and economic impacts of ­labor practices; ­whether distant ­others or laborers closer to home ­were to be the beneficiaries of economic growth; how to “vote” with your dollar or pound or franc; ­whether ­free trade or tariffs w ­ ere ultimately “better” for l­abor or consumer value. This was not coincidental, of course, and as Williams, Haskell, and ­others have argued, the emergence of industrial capitalism was incredibly influential in shaping the circumstances in which the abolition movement arose, as well as the mentalities of the abolitionists themselves. But this argument can be taken further.46 As Andrea Major, Jonathan Connolly, Richard Huzzey, Padraic Scanlan, and ­others have all argued in dif­fer­ent ways, antislavery sentiment was extremely persuasive in setting the tone of nineteenth-­century debates and in shaping po­liti­cal discourse.47 Abolitionist arguments responded to currents of thought circulating in the late Enlightenment, but they also helped shape the sentimentalist backlash. They responded to the urgency of the Second ­Great Awakening, but they also formulated hard-­nosed economic critiques. In essence, abolitionists ­were a quite diverse group of ­people, especially when considered in a broader Atlantic context, agitating for an end to the Atlantic slave trade, amelioration, gradual emancipation, colonization, immediate emancipation, racial equality, racial nationalism, Liberalism, Radicalism, feminism, communism, capitalism. By the end of the “age of abolition,” essentially the ­whole population had rejected “slavery,” in much the same way that in the mid-­twentieth c­ entury, the world came together to reject fascism. In both cases, p ­ eople from across the po­liti­cal spectrum agreed in theory that they objected to the practice. But they had very dif­fer­ent ideas of what constituted that practice, ranging from the narrowest to the broadest interpretation.

when he tried to hide the wet tobacco from Zachary Macaulay, Martin Benson tried to get away with a fairly unethical business move, but it was in ser­vice of a wider, ethical goal. When Macaulay used his abolitionist credentials to build a business fortune, he profited from a popu­lar cause he had helped to create. And when West Africans turned

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to retailers in the abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone to trade nonslave products for tobacco, they supported legitimate commerce and undermined the slave trade while using their goods to purchase tobacco, a slave-­produced commodity. Ethical capitalism was premised on being the most consistent way to oppose slavery, but following through with that consistency was nearly impossible. The attempts by businesses and consumers to do so gave rise to numerous innovations in branding, managing global supply chains, and theorizing po­liti­cal economy. This book is about the ongoing strug­gles to mitigate the externalities produced by market capitalism. As ­people created new arguments about how the marketplace could generate moral outcomes, they created new standards and arguments about what a theoretical ethical capitalism would and should look like. This “platonic ideal” of capitalism was (and is) constantly changing and contradictory, in large part ­because it was (and is) created on the fly by businesses making practical as well as ideological decisions.

chapter 1

Anxious Consumers

I

n October 1796, Zachary Macaulay paid a visit to a trader on the Bullom Shore, a short boat ­ride away from Freetown. While ­there, the king of Bullom country came to visit him. Macaulay wrote in his journal that he “had come prepared with a pre­sent for him which consisted of a scarlet coat embroidered and the rest of the suit corresponding.” Describing the king’s response, he noted: He was soon equipped in his new finery and being placed before a glass he shewed a joy which was quite extravagant. This was the more laughable as he is a very old man, not less than Eighty years of age. He continued admiring himself a long time, and could scarce find time to eat his dinner so occupied was he in contemplating his new honours. How vain do we e­ very where find men in their imaginations?

While his observation initially appeared to be quite a condemnation of the king’s lust for material goods, Macaulay continued in an unexpected vein: “Is folly so extravagant confined to Africa? Ask the demoiselle of Quality, who escaped from a boarding school is about to make her entrée into life, decked out in all the pride of dress. Or ask the graven Senator whose back was adorned on some Gala day with the very coat which now caused such a flutter in the heart of an African King.” As Macaulay 25

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saw it, it was only practice at appearing unconcerned that differentiated the two: “Had they learnt to disguise their sentiments as ­little as he has done we should prob­ably perceive in them the same vanity, only more preposterous in its kind & more extravagant in its degree.” At the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, ­a fter de­cades of expanded consumption of luxury goods, Macaulay was reflecting a growing concern among radical evangelicals that “surely man even in his best estate, estranged from God’s favour, is altogether vanity.”1 By the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, po­liti­cal economists had built up a strong case against the passionate pursuit of gain, and the perceived commodification of every­thing. This critique increasingly included the commodification of ­people through the slave trade.2 Historian John Ashworth argues of the burgeoning anti-­slave-­trade movement that its proponents sought “a rigid separation between ­those areas of life where the market could rule and ­those where it was forbidden” and historian Philip Gould explains anti-­slave-­trade writings as expressly defining acceptable and unacceptable (or “barbaric”) commerce.3 Ashworth’s comment was responding to the argument put forward by Thomas Haskell that the emergence of capitalism generated new sensibilities and perceptions through the “intensification of market discipline, and the penetration of that discipline into spheres of life previously untouched by it”—­what economists might call the “crowding out” of other forms of “intrinsic” motivation, and nonmarket values.4 The expansion of the market, Haskell argued, “changed a perception of causal relations.”5 This is also known as the “commercialization effect.”6 But ­these historians ­were attempting to explain the relationship between the emergence of industrial capitalism in Britain (and, to a lesser extent, Amer­i­ca) and the rise of po­liti­cally popu­lar abolitionism ­after millennia of complete moral ac­cep­tance of the existence of slavery as a ­human institution.7 The link between a perception of overcommodification, concern about luxury consumption and moral dissipation, and the Atlantic slave trade is something that was pre­sent not only in the American and British evangelical and Quaker movements, but also in the reformist jihads that s­ haped a new po­l iti­cal landscape in Western Africa. The flow of commodities around the Atlantic World illuminates a shared consumer revolution in Africa and other parts of the Atlantic World that generated a shared moral backlash at the end

Anxious Consumers 

• 27

of the eigh­teenth ­century, which in some places manifested as a boycott of the trade in ­human captives. By looking beyond the British (or even British and American) development of po­liti­cal uses of and responses to the slave trade, it becomes clear that the politicization of the slave trade was more complicated than a sudden moral awakening caused by a shift t­oward industrial production, or even a par­tic­u­lar Enlightenment, Christian moment of po­liti­cal triumph. ­There ­were grounded, practical ways in which ­people around the Atlantic felt the creep of commodification and “market thinking” (or the relationship between supply and demand). The proliferation of new ­things in ­people’s lives accompanied an awareness of the po­liti­cal and economic forms of de­pen­dency that had been created by global demand for ­those ­things, and the unsavory practices—by parliaments and kings, by East India Com­pany nabobs, by the gross excesses of West India planters, and by apostate West African military regimes—­that had emerged to satisfy that demand. ­There was a deeply unpleasant side to the “unintended results of h­ uman action” that so fascinated Adam Smith.8

An African Consumer Revolution When Zachary Macaulay was writing about the king of Bullom country, the moral turn against the consumption of luxury had already begun in popu­lar culture. But his concerns about luxury and excess, vanity and commodification, w ­ ere a response to the rapid expansion of Atlantic consumption that had developed si­mul­ta­neously in a variety of port cities and imperial centers in the eigh­teenth ­century. African consumers w ­ ere part of a wider trend shaping the development of global commercial links and fashion that have been described by Ann Stahl as “Atlantic taste.”9 Atlantic taste in Africa was not a straightforward importation of British or French or Portuguese styles. As Eu­ro­pean travel writers encountered the local, culturally specific fash­ion­able use of shared Atlantic commodities, they noted the variety of Eu­ro­pean, Asian, American, and other African goods in circulation and in demand.10 The types of guns, the preferences for certain liquors, the style, print, and length of fabric: all ­were specific to each market.11 An early eighteenth-­century travel account by British naval surgeon John Atkins explained that in 1721 “the Windward

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and Leeward Parts of the Coast are as opposite in their Demands, as in their distance. Iron Bars, which are not asked for to Leeward, are a substantial Part of Windward Cargoes.” He continued on to note that “Crystals, Oranges, Corals, and Brass-­mounted Cutlasses are almost peculiar to the Windward Coast; as are brass Pans from Rio Sestos to Apollonia,” while “Cowreys (or Booges) at Whydah. Copper and Iron Bars at Callabar; but Arms, Gunpowder, Tallow, old Sheets, Cottons of all the Vari­ous Denominations, and En­glish Spirits are e­ very where called for.”12 But what r­ eally impressed arriving traders, government officials, and travelers was not just the insatiable consumer demand, but also the use of t­ hese commodities. The imported goods coming into African economies through Atlantic ports w ­ ere incorporated into local use patterns, “selectively combining” goods to create new “consumption bundles.”13 Consumption bundling was an impor­t ant aspect of the consumer revolution, which fueled the development of parallel industries, as well as consumer industriousness to make or buy the accompanying goods locally. New luxury imports—­r um, sugar, tea, tobacco—­communicated cultural meaning and sociability through a shared world of goods and the rituals of serving, displaying and consuming together. Glass ­bottles to serve rum could be imported, but ­bottles or other types of vessels could be made locally and reflect local tastes. Tobacco pipes ­were manufactured in places like Sierra Leone and Ghana as early as the 1560s to smoke imported (and slave-­grown) tobacco.14 Increasingly over the period, ceramics ­were imported as well, though local production remained impor­ tant in ­every region of the Atlantic. Consumption bundles can be seen, for instance, among the Temne in Sierra Leone. British traveler Anna Maria Falconbridge reported on her travels in Sierra Leone in the 1790s that when she visited the Temne near Freetown, King Naimbana did not serve coffee or tea to his guests “for want of sugar.”15 Another description of the Temne of Sierra Leone from a visitor in 1792 explained the way imported goods w ­ ere incorporated into daily use and combined with local fashion and industry: “The clothing of the w ­ omen consists of a piece of cloth, generally blue or white, which is fastened about their ­middle, and capable of being brought up round their shoulders. The ­children adorn their ­middles with a net made of [imported] glass beads. The men’s dress differs but l­ittle from that of the ­women’s; but they are

Anxious Consumers 

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very partial to Eu­ro­pean cloths, and appear proud and pleased when they are attired in them.”16 African consumers, like consumers in the Amer­ i­cas and Eu­rope, had tastes that changed over time, and that adhered to fashions dictated by local culture.17 Rhode Island rum, for instance, displaced Madeira and brandy as the alcohol of choice in late eighteenth-­ century West Africa.18 For t­hose living in the Islamic kingdoms of the Sahel, the coarse Indian cotton blue bafts w ­ ere particularly in demand in the late eigh­teenth c­ entury, becoming known as “Guinea cloth,” though as fashions changed, Byrampauts—­a fine quality linen—­became more in demand on the coast in the 1810s.19 The signares of Senegal—­African and Eurafrican ­women in Gorée and Saint-­Louis—­were famous for their fash­ ion­able dresses and headdresses, which used fine imported printed fabrics and combined West African and Eu­ro­pean fashions.20 The spread of Indian cloths of vari­ous kinds, and their impact on fashion and its multidirectional velocity across the Atlantic, has been an impor­tant source for understanding the interconnected nature of the Atlantic and global economy before the nineteenth ­century.21 African demand for “guinée cloths” stimulated production in India and drove Atlantic traders to par­ tic­u­lar markets in order to assort the correct supply for their customers. As Marion Johnson recorded in her exhaustive study of African trade, “by the 1770s some 2 million wrapper-­lengths a year” of India piece goods ­were being imported into West African markets, supplementing, but not replacing, locally produced cloths.22 Differentiation within consumption suggests that t­ hese Atlantic consumer goods w ­ ere given po­liti­cal, fash­ion­able, and moral value that reflected the emergent po­l iti­cal economy of slave trading. Archaeologist François Richard suggests that in the West African region of the Atlantic slave trade, alcohol consumption was widespread and differentiated: while “the bulk of the b­ ottle glass assemblages” in the Siin region of Senegambia ­were associated with gin and brandy, sites of elite alcohol consumption (at feasts, for instance) featured primarily wine ­bottles.23 The emergence over the eigh­teenth ­century of new states in West Africa oriented around control of the slave trade, and the tariffs and income that accompanied it, had begun to alter the po­liti­cal landscape of the region. Philip Curtin explains that the increase in brandy imports in the mid-­eighteenth ­century suggested a shift in po­liti­cal power among and within Senegambian

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socie­ties ­after the late seventeenth-­century jihad of Nasr al-­Din, “as the ceddo and the military generally increased in wealth and power at the expense of the clerics and the Muslim peasantry.”24 ­These “ceddo” ­were the aristocratic states—­essentially the ancien régime—­against whom the jihadi states of the late eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries contrasted themselves. They ­were often “pragmatic,” in Michael Gomez’s description: tolerant of Muslim clerisy, they did not observe injunctions against the consumption of alcohol, and they also followed some traditional practices, including matrilineal inheritance; they gained wealth and power through their role on the frontier of both the trans-­Saharan and the transatlantic trades.25 And primarily they w ­ ere defined by their control of large numbers of slaves. The emergence of new states to direct the slave trade was in part a response to local po­l iti­cal economic circumstances. With abundant land and a relatively low population density, state wealth was accumulated through the ability to control p ­ eople. Part of this was achieved through slavery and kinship relations, but another part was achieved through the pre­sen­ta­tion of gifts to subjects. Producing t­ hose gifts was part of the productive function of the state, achieved through raiding, annual exchange or tribute, and increasingly, for the states participating in the slave trade, Atlantic commerce.26 As archaeologists Cameron Monroe and Akin Ogundiran have argued, “the commercial revolutions of the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries dramatically reshaped the regional contours of po­liti­cal organ­ization across West Africa.”27 While new states w ­ ere emerging to direct the slave trade and generate wealth, the impact of the goods being imported was more diffused than the centralizing tendency of the state would suggest. Differentiation occurred, and elite status was reinforced by gun owner­ship, access to ­horses, and alcohol consumption. But this did not mean that the wider population was not part of the consumer revolutions of the Atlantic World. Archaeological research in the West African slave-­trade regions has revealed the extent of economic expansion, the development of Atlantic taste, and the spread of Atlantic luxury into the interior.28 Although locally produced goods far outnumbered imported goods in the archaeological assemblages from Upper Senegal, for instance, the proliferation of the goods, and their impact on the quality and styles of locally produced goods, has been noted

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by archaeologists.29 Similarly, the decline in Saharan trade goods in local assemblages attests to the shift in commercial focus ­toward the Atlantic.30 Closer to the coast, in the Siin region of Senegal, “the same objects—­ beads, glass, and tobacco pipes—­largely turn up on sites across the region, and no major disparities in wealth emerge in the regional settlement system,” suggesting that for the region’s Serer farmers and fishermen, selling their additional produce to French traders was a means of participating in Atlantic consumer culture.31 The ability to sell produce like millet, or ­labor, was an impor­tant part of the increasing access of the wider coastal population to the consumer goods on offer. W ­ omen in Saloum, south of Gorée, ­were able to sell their millet for “baubles.”32 The state of Bundu, located at the head of the Senegal and Gambia rivers, was also a millet production center, centralizing the production of food for export in trade for slaves, firearms, and salt.33 Millet was required to provision the slave traders on the coast, their ships, the towns from which the slave trade operated, and the enslaved captives awaiting transport. This demand tied the hinterland to production for Atlantic markets as well as trans-­Saharan and local markets, and gave states operating at the littoral of both trading zones a privileged position in controlling both trades.34 ­Those new urban trading centers, like Saint-­Louis and Gorée, in Senegal, as well as the commercial zones around the trading forts like Cape Coast and Elmina, also developed in response to Atlantic trade, shifting at least some of the po­liti­cal and commercial power in the region to reflect the emergence of two trading frontiers. Enslaved laborers could be rented out to the Eu­ro­pean trading companies based on ­these islands or trading forts, generating access to consumer goods that could be consumed or distributed to the followers and families of their ­owners. In t­ hose towns, new waged forms of employment arose, new architectural styles ­were developed by generations of Euro-­African families, and, by the late eigh­teenth ­century, power had begun to be located in the commercial dynasties based h­ ere, rather than in the traditional po­liti­cal heartlands of the interior.35 In West Africa, the ethical questions raised by Atlantic slave trading ­were at the heart of a number of institutional and po­liti­cal innovations in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries. As John Thornton has argued

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for an ­earlier period on the Angolan coast, “simply recognizing that the making, holding, use, and sale of slaves w ­ ere legally permissible did not mean that the slave trade did not pose ethical prob­lems for African leaders.”36 Many of t­ hose ethical prob­lems stemmed from the questions of who could be enslaved and who could profit, and how. Among the Temne, in Sierra Leone, in tandem with the expanding slave trade ­there arose laws that allowed someone accused of witchcraft to be traded into slavery rather than killed.37 Debt joined witchcraft and war as acceptable grounds for enslavement in non-­Muslim areas. But t­hese ­were not supposed to be arbitrary accusations: as several dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­pean travelers attested, t­ here was a pro­cess for determining when witchcraft had been used, and a system for determining guilt—­one highly contingent on a person’s power and networks within the moral community, as with witchcraft accusations in Eu­rope and the Amer­i­cas, but that nonetheless had an aura of both worldly and divine authority. Slave trading was empowering some new middlemen, but it was at least partially regulated by local ethical frameworks. Although it is perhaps conceivable that the integration of African coastal and hinterland polities into the Atlantic economic system had l­ ittle impact on per capita income (as suggested by Eltis and Jennings)38 the impact of the slave trade on communities, families, and individuals no doubt made a rather large impression on culture.39 Certainly the structure and architecture of vari­ous groups in the path of the slave trade reflected a material change in defensive response to raiding, with communities forming denser settlements, protecting elites through town planning, or establishing Islamic “­free settlements” that rejected the materialism of ­those involved in the slave trade.40 The accumulation of slaves for sale into the Atlantic market in exchange for Atlantic goods also combined with the demand for new commercial agriculture to change settlement patterns in trading areas. In Moria, Sumbuya, and Benna—to the northwest of Freetown—­travelers’ accounts from the 1780s and 1790s describe slave villages where cotton, salt, and rice ­were produced for trade to growing African port areas, as provisions for slave ships, and for export.41 ­These villages ­were separated from ­free areas. In Fula villages in Senegambia, oral tradition reports that so-­called captive Fulas ­were placed in the western part of the village.42 Archaeo-

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logical investigations of the state of Segou, in the ­Middle Niger, similarly reveal eighteenth-­century settlement hierarchies in which agricultural villages w ­ ere established by the state and settled by captives whose l­abor was used for food production.43 Slavery itself was proliferating within a number of po­liti­cal regimes as a way of defending against slave raids, as a form of ­labor for the growing commercial agricultural sector that provided food and commodities for emerging port towns and slave forts, and as a store of value and investment.44 In a variety of ways, the landscape and settlement patterns and the cultures of slavery that emerge in this period supplement the trading evidence to demonstrate that ­peoples and economies in West Africa w ­ ere responding to and shaping the Atlantic system in dynamic ways that paralleled developments in other regions of the Atlantic World.45

Anxious Consumers With a series of famines in the 1750s and 1760s, Senegambia began to experience the effects of producing millet and other foodstuffs for sale to urban slave-­trading ports along the Senegal River and the Atlantic coast. Rather than storing surplus grain, as had been the ­earlier practice, ­people ­were encouraged to sell to slave traders, a practice that proved to be extremely devastating ­after more than three years of drought annihilated the production of millet in the region. Individuals fled famine into the arms of their enemies, and soon found themselves sold into the Atlantic slave trade in order to pay for food imports, or b­ ecause f­amily groups found feeding enslaved domestic workers impossible.46 As historian Michael Gomez argues, the unequal distribution of wealth as a result of the explosion of trade, and the very vis­i­ble impact of the Atlantic trade on the decisions and prosperity of elites, may have led to the development of a militant Islamic backlash in Bundu and in Senegambia more widely.47 The speed of the commercial changes, and the po­liti­cal impact of shifting populations and increasing access to consumer goods, created new anx­i­eties ­these regions also shared with other parts of the Atlantic World. As the eigh­teenth ­century came to a close, the proliferation of slave traders responding to the increased price of slaves in the Ca­rib­bean led to an intensification of practices of enslavement on the coast. Responding

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to the growing Ca­rib­bean demand, slave prices on the West African coast correspondingly reached a peak in this period, meaning that African slave traders w ­ ere receiving unpre­ce­dented amounts of goods in exchange for slaves sold to Atlantic traders. Slave prices in the region from Senegambia to Sierra Leone, especially, which had been a less impor­tant slave market before the mid-­eighteenth ­century, ­rose from around £16 in the mid-1780s to £25 in the first de­cade of the nineteenth c­ entury. In the 1760s and 1770s, Eu­ro­pean traders had begun to exploit this region as well as the traditional “Slave Coast” and “Gold Coast.” Senegambia at its height exported only two-­thirds of what the Gold Coast was exporting, reaching a peak of 27,586 enslaved ­people exported in 1771–1776 before dropping back down. From 1760–1770, Sierra Leone’s trade increased to about one-­half the Gold Coast’s and around a third of the Bight of Biafra’s trade.48 This increase in the region’s participation in the slave trade l­ ater helped to draw the attention of reformers, who saw the potential in Sierra Leone as an area for a colony that would help suppress the trade. Rising prices for slaves in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century also expanded the range and penetration of consumer goods in the region. This had impor­tant implications. David Richardson estimates that around eighty-­seven ships from Bristol and Liverpool alone brought more than 360,000 tons of imported cargo to West African ports between Gambia and the Cameroons, the vast majority of which (60 to 95 ­percent) consisted of textiles, bar iron, hardware, beads, arms, gunpower, and liquor.49 Rudolph Ware writes that “consumer goods—so crucial for maintaining a following—­were advanced on credit as well, stoking a wildfire of debt and competitive consumption that swept inland, fueling the slave trade.”50 As Ty R ­ eese has noted for the Gold Coast in this period, “the slave trade . . . ​glutted the regional market with goods” from Eu­rope and India, effectively leading to inflation for arriving slave traders. 51 The En­glish terms of trade with Africa declined significantly a­ fter the introduction of ­free trade, reduced by half from the beginning of the c­ entury, as Africans received increasing amounts of commodity currency per slave.52 The volatility of prices in West Africa, as opposed to ­those in Angola, for instance, may have been one explanation for the reactions against the slave trade in the region. Increasing demand for slaves to be produced and exported from a region that had previously been marginal to the wider

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Anxious Consumers  6,000,000 5,000,000

£ sterling

4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000

0

0

Woolens

80 –1 91

17

–1

79

0

81 17

71

–1

77 17

–1

Gunpowder

78

0

0 61 17

51

–1

76

0

Alcohol

17

–1

75

0 17

41

–1

74

0

31

73

India goods

17

–1 21

–1

72 17

10 17

16

99

–1

70

9

0

0

Iron

Fig 1.1 ​Value of major En­glish exports to Africa, declared and official values. Declared values sourced from TNA CUST 3 and CUST 17 reflect a constant official valuation, which allows the series to reflect growing volumes. Data source: H. A. Gemery, Jan Hogendorn, and Marion Johnson, “Evidence on En­glish / African Terms of  Trade in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Explorations in Economic History 27 (1990): 157–177, t­ ables 1, 2, and 3.

slave-­trading economy may have raised questions about the morality of the trade. Equally, the high prices (an increasing number of Atlantic commodities) changed perceptions of the role of Atlantic luxuries like rum, tobacco, and fash­ion­able cloths in the economies of affected polities.53 In African-­ Atlantic trade, the relationship between production and consumption was particularly obvious in some of the forms of payment received. In Combo country, in Gambia, a local translator at Yindum replied to a visiting missionary that “our king good man, no fall upon poor ­people; no do bad ­thing” and instead of resorting to the slave trade, the king would “teach his ­people spin cotton, sow corn, keep bullock, and e­ very t­ hing good for them; no hurt any body” b­ ecause he “wishes e­ very one to have enough, but no want them to be rich. Where plenty riches, ­there the ­people much sick. Plenty money no good.”54 Directly exchanging enslaved ­people for Atlantic goods like rum, tobacco, guns, and cloths linked t­hese commodities

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explic­itly to the production of enslaved ­people. But the Gambian translator was also identifying concerns over the power of local kings in a globalized system: Could he ­really withdraw from trade, if protecting one’s subjects from enslavement necessitated the importation of guns? He also points to the broader discussions of po­liti­cal economy si­mul­ta­neously occupying the dif­fer­ent polities operating within this commercial world: What was the “right” level of wealth for a ­people? At what point did excess wealth start to make p ­ eople “much sick”? Concerns about greed w ­ ere not l­imited to Combo country. As Rosalind Shaw writes of the Temne, of Sierra Leone, “­those who accumulate wealth are . . . ​subject to witchcraft accusation, but they can avoid such accusation if they constitute themselves as moral persons through gift-­ giving, patronage, and feasting.”55 And the leaders of the Futa Toro and ­later Fulani jihads that spread throughout the Sahel region of West Africa also regularly condemned greedy and materialistic p ­ eople as undermining the state and not following the Sunna (“right path”), suggesting that this needed to be repeatedly highlighted in order to assert the moral princi­ples of trade.56 For ­these reformers, creating an ethical marketplace meant regulating greed and overconsumption through recognition of one’s own guilt and absolution through correction.57 Slave rebellions north of Sierra Leone also became flashpoints that highlighted the connections between consumption and moral revolution. From 1785 to 1798, a series of slave revolts in the hinterland of Sierra Leone coincided with religious reform movements to disrupt the trade of this region of the Upper Guinea Coast. The initial slave revolt—by rice-­ growing Susu and Bago slaves of Mandinkas in Moria—­saw leaders executed and a new stronghold for maroons and ­free Susu alike established at Yangekori.58 Foreshadowing the more familiar burning of the sugar crop in the Haitian Revolution, participants in the Moria revolt “set fire to the rice which was ready to be cut,” rice that would have been sold to feed enslaved captives awaiting sale into the Atlantic.59 Into the m ­ iddle of this rebellion, in 1789–1791, emerged an Islamic revival and reform movement in the state of Moria, centered on “cleansing and correction” and led by the Mandinka religious leader Fatta, which shared much in common with providential movements and evangelical revivals in Britain and North Amer­i­ca.60 Fatta gathered a huge following

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(estimated at 15,000 ­people) on the coast at Moria, and set about revolutionizing the po­liti­cal landscape, giving official recognition to villages of maroons, beheading Morian and Susu leaders for heresy, and leading to “massive desertions” of slaves to Fatta’s camp.61 Fatta also directed all his followers to dress in the locally produced plain yellow and orange cloth in order to distinguish themselves and identify his movement. Fatta formed an alliance with the Yangekori rebels, and together they attempted further cleansing and uprooting of the region. The ruling elite eventually formed an alliance to combat Fatta’s power base and to re-­enslave deserters and maroons. Zachary Macaulay noted that “the pre­sent combination of African chiefs to crush ­these ­people and the gallant strug­gle it is likely they ­w ill make for their liberty ­w ill form a parallel to the history of Eu­rope at this moment.”62 The parallels with the revolutions for “liberty” echoing around the Atlantic World are striking, but given that the impetus for this moral and anti-­slave-­ trade crusade was coming from an Islamic tradition and from the interior, it seems likely that all of the component parts of the Atlantic ­were reacting to shared phenomena—­the slave trade, the increasing commercialization of cultures in contact with the Atlantic, the growing military-­fi scal states, and a perception of excess—­rather than that West Africans ­were “copying” moral revolutions from the Eu­ro­pean or American examples.63 But ­t hese West African movements also cast a dif­fer­ent light on po­ liti­cal, as well as economic, liberalism. Fatta and other jihad leaders like the reformers of Futa Toro in Senegal or Uthman dan Fodio’s Sokoto Caliphate, ­were not necessarily advocating individualism (or individual self-­reliance, or a lack of de­pen­dency). As P. B. Clarke notes, theirs was an idea of freedom from the tyranny of desire and de­pen­dency on competitive consumption, the liberty offered by institutions and within a moral code, a version of liberty shared with Hegel. 64 Dominique Lamiral, a French ­f ree trader describing the Futa Toro jihad, noted, “The Peuls [Fula], on the contrary, commanded by priests, wanted to ravage every­ thing not to take slaves, they said, but to submit them to the cult of Mahomet: They cried liberty everywhere: they said that they wanted nothing from the p ­ eople, that on the contrary they came to set them f­ree. They said to them, so long as your king is not a marabou, you w ­ ill not be f­ ree.”65

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Freedom was offered through religious law and virtuous rule, and through a state that would prioritize the benefit of its subjects (or citizens) over the temptations of trade.

The Luxury Debate ­ hese developments in West Africa ­were paralleled around the Atlantic T World, amongst both intellectuals theorizing po­liti­cal economy, and p ­ eople 66 involved with more practical, quotidian commerce. Consumers in the second half of the c­ entury found themselves in a rapidly changing world of goods. New foods, new fashions, new cultures of consumption sprang up relentlessly.67 The decline of royal mono­poly companies, or the pressure they faced from increased private trader competition and growing competition between empires, had facilitated a new era of global trade.68 What Neil McKendrick and J.  H. Plumb dubbed “the consumer revolution” saw shopping become a pastime of an increasingly middle-­class market.69 Connections between Eastern and Western empires allowed consumers to access an overwhelming variety of novel goods, ranging from Indian calicoes, to Chinese tea, to Javanese coffee, to African ivory goods, to Ca­ rib­bean sugar.70 In France, a trade in fake indiennes (printed calicos) and siamoise (a cotton and silk blend) sprang up to respond to unmet demand for Asian fabrics.71 In E ­ ngland, consumption of tea increased from 9.8 ounces per capita in 1722, to 21.5 ounces in 1784–1786.72 “In a good year,” P. J. Marshall writes, “the British imported about 750,000 pieces of Indian calicoes and muslins.”73 But of course, British imports ­were not all intended for British consumption: many of the global goods carried on British ships w ­ ere transported elsewhere—to the Amer­i­cas, Africa, and Asia— to be traded again, for other products, for cash, or for credit. In American port cities, but also in the hinterlands, men and ­women ­were importers of ­these new fash­ion­able luxuries, as well as more basic staple goods controlled through mercantilist policy.74 Of course, this was part of colonial mercantilist po­liti­cal economy, and even more so a­ fter the Seven Years’ War: Britain (and France and Spain and Portugal) wanted the colonies to buy their goods, essentially exclusively, which led to similarities in the material culture of diverse colonies.75 But a close look at North American imports, and their use in American colonial and early

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Republic life, suggests that ­these goods ­were not uniformly consumed in ­every place touched by British commerce, just that a similar composition of imports—­whose quantities w ­ ere determined by local culture and taste, and the availability of locally produced complementary goods—­could be seen in the vari­ous port cities touched by Atlantic commerce, particularly ­after the explosion in En­glish ceramic production from the 1760s.76 The archaeological “assemblage”—or repeated grouping of goods—­found around the Atlantic was similar, even if the quantities or uses varied in dif­fer­ent cultural contexts.77 For instance, Americans drank more coffee and less tea than their En­glish counter­parts; American consumption of sugar, imported from the British Ca­rib­bean, was 16.7 pounds per person in the 1770s, compared to ­England’s 23 pounds. The North American colonies made up for that in consumption of spirits, including rum, of which they drank 13.25 liters, per person, in 1770 (compared to roughly half that in E ­ ngland).78 They used, increasingly from 1760 onward, ceramic plates and chamber pots imported from En­glish potteries; textiles, like calicoes, imported by the East India Com­pany; and locally made tobacco pipes for smoking globally produced tobacco.79 And consumption itself took on new meanings. In the first half of the ­century, and stretching back into the seventeenth ­century, thinkers expounding on national wealth and the emerging field of po­liti­cal economy ­were mostly concerned with the question of balance of payments. To Eu­ rope’s seventeenth-­century economic writers like Mun, Malynes, Misselden, and Vaughan, aggregate demand was inelastic and consumption was a danger to the balance of payments.80 ­Because global resources ­were ­limited, commerce was a zero-­sum game. Therefore, international commerce could advance a country’s wealth only by drawing it away from ­others. Consumerism could be beneficial, but only if it was foreign consumers buying the goods produced in the home country. The new ways in which capital created more capital w ­ ere only beginning to be explored, and so domestic consumption of imports was mostly seen to be a drain on national wealth. Over the course of the eigh­teenth ­century that position changed, as mercantilism was called into question and the role of consumers in stimulating economic growth through their productivity became an influential counterargument. ­People began to think of consumption as spurring

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a work ethic—­but as McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb argue, “not u­ ntil the 1770s did the idea of the increased propensity to consume assume its rightful place in models of economic growth which recognized the vital contribution of the elasticity of demand.”81 For t­ hose, like David Hume, who found much to like in the consumer revolution, “a commercial society driven by consumer demand could escape the cycle of luxury and decay and offer a stable f­ uture based on moral choice” b­ ecause “the desires arising from active, industrious persons not only serve their passions but, more impor­tant, shape ­future output through the refinement in production techniques and designs, which, in turn, go on to stimulate the arts and sciences more generally.”82 That is, it was understood by some emerging po­liti­cal economists that consumer society itself would provide the check on the deleterious effects of commercialization. Consumerism could benefit the nation. Consumerism had also helped to create an Atlantic of everyday economists. Patterns of l­ abor and shopping had helped ­people around the Atlantic—­not just in Africa, where commodities ­were currency—­ conceptualize money in the form of the consumable commodities it represented.83 But thinking about commodities in this way was also the result of the interconnected nature of imperial commercial empires. Distant events could impact the cost of a new necessity, or could reduce the price one’s own production would receive.84 And so, as Ellen Hartigan-­O’Connor writes, “commerce had become a common idiom for understanding all kinds of ­human interactions.”85 Men and ­women wrote in terms of po­ liti­cal economy in personal letters; they kept diaries that doubled as account books; they thought about credit and debt and consumption and commodities as meta­phors for daily life, and in ­doing so, they brought the economy into the remit of the personal and of personal morality, and personal morality into their understanding of national po­l iti­cal economy. 86 But by the late eigh­teenth ­century, ­after the shock of Britain losing the American colonies, the argument about “nabobism” in Anglophone po­ liti­cal culture reflected widespread concerns that gross consumerism would crowd out virtuous be­hav­ior and the nation (or empire) would be punished for it.87 Cartoons of “West Indian Luxury” circulated in Britain, where the slaveholding “nabobs” w ­ ere pilloried for their laziness in re-

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quiring slaves to do the most basic tasks for them.88 Concerns about “feminization” through dependency—on global luxury, on ­others’ ­labor— abounded. Critiques of the excesses committed in the name of cheap sugar, especially, tied the slave trade to the failure of British rule in North Amer­i­ca, but the concerns ranged more widely than just the slave trade, with o­ thers pointing to the rise of “nabobs”—­East India Com­pany traders who had become conspicuously (and perhaps suspiciously) wealthy— in British India. The lengthy public trial over the late 1780s and 1790s of the head of the East India Com­pany, Warren Hastings, was both cause and consequence of a spiraling concern over the commercial morality of colonial trade.89 The British MP and phi­los­o­pher Edmund Burke argued, in his critique of East India Com­pany rule and in his prosecution of Hastings before Parliament, that intercultural trade was having detrimental effects on the morality of British subjects, and destroying Indian civilization. A lack of ethical framework, and l­ittle government oversight, had led to “avarice” and “excesses” corrosive to public life.90 The demand for global commodities—­and for lucrative investment opportunities—­had fostered unrestrained commercial be­hav­ior in order to supply them. In France, similar anx­i­eties about “globalization” w ­ ere preoccupying physiocrats writing about the progrès du commerce, who ­were concerned about “the rise of commerce and the development of mobile assets at the expense of landed wealth and power.”91 Voltaire, for one, defended the rise of luxury and consumer society. In a move that would be echoed by proponents of ethical commerce, he argued that moralistic critics of the luxuries of the age (which he noted w ­ ere already on their way from “luxuries” to “necessities”) w ­ ere hypocrites, ­because their own lives ­were inescapably bound to the spread of ­these goods into everyday life. 92 Madeleine Dobie argues that t­here was a direct connection between the physiocrats’ emerging liberal economic discourse—­concerns about dependence on colonial production, the expansion of luxury and in­ equality, and the rationality of l­ abor and investment—­and the emergence of abolitionist ideologies among thinkers like Du Pont de Nemours, Condorcet, and Say.93 A ­ fter the shock of the loss of colonies at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, phi­los­o­phers called for a reexamination of the role of the colonies in supporting the nation or in creating new forms of commercial de­pen­dency and excess.

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But a few incidents focused international attention on the par­tic­u­lar cruelty of the commodification of ­human beings, and coincided with more general concerns over national trade deficits, mercantilism, and both the protection of and power of the consumer. The case of the slave ship Zong especially seemed to encapsulate the excess and cruelty of the slave trade. In 1781 the Liverpool-­based slave traders responsible for the Zong’s cargo of enslaved Africans realized that they had miscalculated their journey. Short of drinking ­water, they de­cided to throw 133 ­people overboard and reclaim their loss on their insurance. The pursuit of the insurance money, the subsequent l­egal b­ attles, and the attention drawn to the case by the anti-­slave-­trade campaigners Olaudah Equiano and Granville Sharp raised the Zong’s profile and made the slave traders notorious.94 Ian Baucom argues that the Zong is illustrative of how monetization was creeping into ­every interaction. The case was unique, in a sense, in its gross application of financial claims for insured lives, but one of the reasons it became a cause célèbre for abolitionists like Granville Sharp was that it perfectly demonstrated the situation as anxious consumers perceived it: the financial accounting of every­thing, the transformation of not only ­things and then time, but also ­people, into commodities with a monetary value had gone too far.95 In Amer­i­ca the disastrous voyage of the Sally, a slave ship or­ga­nized by Nicholas Brown & Co. in 1764, had served a similar role for Moses Brown and the Quaker antislavery movement of Rhode Island.96 In the 1790s the abolition campaigners’ reprinting of the plan of the slave ship Brooks and the circulation and display of slave shackles helped to build the case that the slave trade commoditized ­human beings to sate the greed of slave traders, of plantation ­owners who “consumed” slaves too quickly by neglecting their health, and consumers who had made a luxury—­sugar—­into a necessity. Fundamentally, the new commercial networks that tied the global economy together ­were reliant on the slave trade, and ­these incidents drew attention to that de­pen­dency, bringing new awareness of the relationships between supply and demand: demand for tea drove demand for sugar, which drove Eu­ro­pean demand for enslaved captives. African demand for Indian cloths, American tobacco, Eu­ro­pean firearms, African gold, and vari­ous Eu­ro­pean and American alcohol products drove the supply of enslaved captives.

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Commodification of ­people through the Atlantic slave trade was of course about l­ abor, but also about property relations and market interactions. For traders engaged in African exchange, enslaved ­people ­were not only laborers, but also commodities, largely exchanged for other commodities. The arguments they made to abolitionist audiences tended focus on commodity value and consumer power, rather than l­ abor value or ­labor power. For instance, the jihad of Uthman dan Fodio, which established the Sokoto Caliphate in 1804, was particularly concerned about “the enslavement of freeborn Muslims and their sale to Christians who ­were involved in the Atlantic trade”—­particularly through the Oyo empire, to the south.97 The establishment of the caliphate on the basis of the elimination of social injustice and the promotion of Islam—­including ending the enslavement of practicing Muslims by po­liti­cal warlords—­was an attempt to redefine the po­liti­cal order.98 The existence of enslaved ­labor, on the other hand, was not necessarily the prob­lem for ­these religious and po­liti­cal leaders, although Rudolph Ware suggests that ‘Abd al-­Qadir Kane’s Futa Toro revolutionary regime “freed the slaves and commissioned them to fight” and Paul Lovejoy finds similar evidence in the spreading Sokoto Caliphate ­after 1804.99 Rather, it was the association of the Atlantic slave trade with the excesses of the old regimes—­the proliferation of goods, the dependence on alcohol, the growing military states, the amorality of selling coreligionists—­that led to the injunctions against slave trading. Nana Asma’u, the d ­ aughter of Uthman dan Fodio and an impor­tant and prolific scholar in the Sokoto Caliphate, wrote a number of works that reflected on the morality of commerce in Islam. In “The Way of the Pious” in 1820, Asma’u wrote that “excessive materialism distracts you u­ ntil you reach the grave,” and so “moderation—­the avoidance of ostentation or extravagance—is necessary in food, drink, and dress.”100 Excessive luxury, in part driven by the trade in enslaved Muslims, was anathema to ­these reformers. More specifically, several Islamic scholars pointed to the Atlantic trade of Muslims to Christians as problematic. Ghyslaine Lydon notes regarding an Islamic jurist, “Sidi ‘Abdallah was asked to write an opinion concerning the slave trade: ‘is it lawful to sell slaves to another trader knowing that in turn this trader is ­going to sell the slave to the Nasara [Christians / Eu­ro­pe­ans]?’ He answered that it was forbidden to sell slaves

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to a trader who engaged in slave trafficking with Christians. His brief ­legal response reveals a mounting concern at the turn of the nineteenth ­century with cross-­cultural trade among traders of dif­fer­ent faiths, and presumably with entirely dif­fer­ent business ethics.”101 Slavery itself was not necessarily the problematic institution—­either for the West African reformers or for the moderate, “gradualist” anti-­slave-­trade activists in Britain and Amer­i­ca who also objected to the excesses, the indebtedness, and the commodification of ­humans. Especially in this early period, domestic slave trades, for instance, ­were not targeted by successful campaigners in ­either West Africa or North Amer­i­ca, who ­were largely focused on the Atlantic trade and its associations with excess. This was not, by any stretch, the first moment in history when morality and commerce had been in conflict. But once p ­ eople began to question the globally interconnected consumer economy of the eigh­teenth ­century (due to other, locally inflected moral and po­liti­cal crises), the Atlantic slave trade was the natu­ral place where morality met global commerce. What was new was the place of the consumer in this economic system. Concerns about the slave trade helped to identify the responsibility of consumers, not only to their own moral or religious beliefs, but also to the l­abor that had made pos­si­ble the commodity they ­were consuming. That could be the ­labor that had generated a newly captive enslaved person for trade into the Atlantic (and the potential opportunity costs of engaging in slaving rather than more “industrious” forms of ­labor), or the ­labor of that enslaved person in the plantations of the New World. Changing social relations, an influx of global commodities, and po­ liti­ cal regimes and economies founded on the slave trade and enslaved l­abor: ­these ­were the anx­i­eties of late eighteenth-­century consumers. As Stephanie Smallwood argues, “The modern freedom envisaged by Locke and produced by Anglo-­Atlantic capitalism not only easily accommodated and protected slavery, but in fact found its fullest expression in the commodification of the person.”102

Boycotting Trade and the Abstention Campaigns Given that the Atlantic was commercially linked, it should not be too surprising that similar po­liti­cal consumer responses developed in reaction to ­t hese shared anx­i­eties. In 1795, Captain Martin Benson of Rhode

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Island reported, on a trip to stock the Sierra Leone Com­pany in West Africa, that “[­because] the ­people throughout this Country are daily Embracing the Mahometan Religion, Rum of Course is no longer wanted, three shillings sterling is the coast price.”103 Slave ships from Rhode Island, which had traditionally brought rum used by French and Eurafrican traders on the coast, also recorded no slaves from Senegambia between 1774 and 1793, with a further cessation of slaving between 1797 and 1804.104 Boycotts ­were a compelling first response to the commodification crises of the late eigh­teenth ­century. Withholding l­ abor and consumption w ­ ere ways around the commercial power exercised by the state monopolies. As conceptualizations of the po­liti­cal power of consumption w ­ ere expanded, activists framed new arguments about how consumers ­were fundamentally responsible for production practices and the morality of commerce. The reform movement of Futa Toro, which was responsible for Benson’s lack of rum sales, began in the Upper Senegal River in 1775. It aimed at spreading Islam and reforming the ceddo state, which was developing into a full-­fledged military state, dependent on the Atlantic slave trade and the commodities trade brought. The leaders of the reform movement drew on the inspiration of Nasr al-­Din’s late seventeenth-­century revolution and the zwaya movement, which had spawned the creation of schools at Pir and Coki, to the southwest of Futa Toro, where f­ uture leaders of the Futa Toro reform w ­ ere educated. Throughout the coastal region touched by Atlantic slave trading, Islamic leaders w ­ ere concerned about the rise of secular military states whose power and wealth w ­ ere based on slave trading, and contemporaries and historians alike have cast the po­liti­cal revolutions of the period in comparison with the po­liti­cal revolutions taking place in other military-­fiscal empires like France and Britain.105 Joseph Miller, for instance, identifies “scattered moments” of “bourgeois revolution” in Africa in the early nineteenth ­century in response to overextended credit and the increasing militarization of po­liti­cal rule.106 Futa Toro’s new Almaami (Commander of the Faithful) ‘Abd al-­Qadir Kane, de­cided to prohibit certain forms of commerce he deemed unethical, including the slave trade with the French and the importation of rum.107 But the trading treaty between the French and Futa Toro was not a prohibition of trade in its entirety. Futa Toro was interested in directing

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the trade to continue the importation of certain goods, while prohibiting the importation and exportation of other commodities. The injunction against slave trading, made law by a 1785 treaty with the French and, ­after 1794, by the French revolutionary government’s own laws as well, led the remaining traders in the port city of Saint-­Louis to focus on their millet and, especially, on the growing gum trade on the Senegal River.108 In Senegambia the slave trade as a w ­ hole from Saint-­Louis dropped significantly between 1778–1783, with Saint-­Louis’s merchants selling their own slaves to make up for some of the shortfall from the interior.109 However, a­ fter the re­introduction of slavery and the slave trade by Napoleon in 1802, French and Saint-­Louisian traders conducted slave raids on the Almaami’s kingdom in 1804, in explicit contravention of the treaty. With the decline of the jihad a­ fter Kane’s capture in the late 1790s, the French believed this an opportune time to reengage in slave trading. However, the local population retaliated with attacks on the French convoy in 1805, leading to a renegotiation of the non-­slave-­trading terms in 1806.110 But despite record-­high prices for slaves, Senegambians did not respond to the incentives of increased demand, and slave trading from the region remained low. Boycotting the slave trade was a common Atlantic trope of discontent, as often a tool of politics as an object of concern. When the American trader Saltonstall arrived at Anomanbo, on the Fante coast, in West Africa, during the American Revolution, the British governor, James Morgue, prevented his ship from landing at the trading post. In protest, the Fante refused to trade with the British, ­until they ­were ultimately pressured by the arrival of British gunboats.111 In fact, vari­ous West African trading ports ­were closed to vessels of dif­fer­ent kinds throughout the eigh­ teenth c­ entury, in protest against what they believed to be unethical conduct in trade. Accra s­ topped allowing slave traders from the interior access to the coast in the 1720s, to prevent rivals from gaining the weapons needed to overthrow the Asante. And when a Bordeaux slave trader kidnapped p ­ eople from the coast at Keta, the king t­ here ceased trading with the French altogether.112 But this was not only an African tool of protest. In response to the British Intolerable Acts, intended to punish Boston for its rejection of the mercantilist East India Com­pany’s importation of tea, part of the Continental Congress’s non­importation agreement declared

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that the united colonies would “wholly discontinue the slave trade” ­after December 1, 1774.113 In cases like this, the slave trade was a tool of protest rather than the object of the protest. Concerns about commercial excess—­and the relationships among economic de­pen­dency, state excess, luxury consumption, and the slave trade—­gave rise to po­liti­cal nonconsumption movements in a number of dif­fer­ent contexts as the consumer revolution touched vari­ous Atlantic actors. T. H. Breen explains that at the start of the American Revolution, ­people “began to communicate their po­liti­cal grievances through common imports,” imports that previously had helped to create an Atlantic “common framework of experience.”114 Commercial connections in the Atlantic World had pulled at the threads of po­liti­cal authority as much as they had reinforced it. The mercantilist Navigation Acts for the British colonies and the exclusif for the French had real economic effects, despite rampant smuggling into and out of colonial ports, largely by propping up demand within the imperial network. This meant that commercial traders who wanted to profit in the empire had to build networks of influence within the po­liti­cal institutions that determined tariff rates and the broader rules of the mercantilist game.115 As the old mono­poly companies declined, they ­were replaced by dif­fer­ent lobbying interests, like the Com­pany of Merchants Trading to Africa, whose economic power could be wielded to shape new policies on, for instance, regulation of the slave trade, importation of foods, and regional trade in North Amer­i­ca and the Ca­rib­be­an.116 What could individuals without this corporate and institutional power do, then, to exercise influence over imperial economic policy? Boycotting offered an obvious recourse. The Boston nonimportation agreement of 1768 declared that “to promote industry, frugality, and economy, and to discourage luxury and ­every kind of extravagance” the merchants of that city would refrain from buying all but the named goods—­salt, coals, fish-­hooks and lines, hemp, duck, bar lead and shot, wool-­cards, and card-­ wire. By abstaining from goods, p ­ eople could communicate their discontent with the po­liti­cal values of ­those goods, or convince governments (or producers) to listen to their grievances.117 But total abstention from trade was basically impossible, a real­ity that all tied into the Atlantic World economy w ­ ere sensitive to.

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In calling attention to the links between their own demand and the spiraling excesses of commerce, boycotts and prohibitions on trade like ­t hose enacted by Futa Toro ­were attempted assertions of commercial power to disrupt global supply chains. The customary payments recorded by the French for Futa Toro when they regained Saint-­Louis from the British in 1782 included no alcohol in the payments received by the Almaami, ‘Abd al-­Qadr Kane, from 1783 onward. This was notable as compared to the much more secular Damel of Kajoor (a Wolof leader based nearer to the Senegal coast, who fought against Kane in this period), who received 100 pints of rum at Saint-­Louis for ­every Muslim holiday.118 Given that alcohol made up 7 to 50 ­percent of foreign imports by British ships into West Africa in this period, this is a striking absence from the customary payments. The combined Qur’anic injunctions against alcohol consumption—­which did not stop the Damel of Kajoor—­and alcohol’s extremely obvious connections to the Atlantic trade suggest connections between the rise of Islamic reform movements and the perceptions of excess engendered by the Atlantic trade.119 Powerlessness and alcohol consumption w ­ ere widely understood to go hand in hand. Outside of Freetown, Zachary Macaulay reported that a local Susu leader initiated a palaver with some slave traders, complaining, “You bring us rum indeed to spoil all our heads, but take it away, it has done us mischief enough.”120 And so beyond blocking the sale or purchase of enslaved ­people, consumers could also avoid buying the products ­those enslaved ­people w ­ ere forced to make, or abstain from goods “tainted” by association with the slave trade. Similarly, a sugar “frenzy” in the late eigh­teenth c­ entury raised p ­ eople’s awareness of the place of sugar in the economy, and the place of the slave trade in the production of sugar, as the British sugar boycotts in support of anti-­slave-­trade mea­sures attest. The 1790s saw a peak in sugar prices— as a result of the revolution in Saint-­Domingue—­and speculation in Jamaican sugar production that brought about a rapid expansion of the slave trade, and high prices for slaves on the coast of West Africa.121 With nearly 60,000 tons of sugar exported from Jamaica alone in 1798, and with a British public consuming 16 to 24 pounds of sugar per person per year, this was a clear way in which every­one was implicated in the slave system.122 William Fox’s Address to the ­People of ­Great Britain, on the Propriety of

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Percentage of Total Sugar Imports for Home Consumption

20% 18% 16% 14% 12% 10% 8% 6% 4% 2% 0%

1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 East India Sugar Imports

West India Sugar Imports

Fig 1.2 ​British sugar imports. Account of sugar imported by East India Com­pany from Madras and Bengal, 1790–1821, 1823, and quantities of rum, sugar, coffee, and cotton exported from British West India Islands, 1793–1805, 1806. West India sugar accounted for nearly the remainder of the 100 ­percent. Data source: House of Commons Papers, 70, XVII.97, vol. 17; House of Commons Papers, 141, XII.427, vol. 12.

Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum, with more than 70,000 copies published in 1791, brought about a boycott of West Indian sugar and rum throughout Britain, largely led by ­women. Historian John Oldfield estimates that 300,000 families from across the po­liti­cal and socioeconomic spectrum participated.123 Fox, a Baptist, argued, “We have planted slavery in the rank soil of avarice.”124 It was the consumer’s duty to abstain from sugar and rum in order to undermine the economic argument for the continuation of the slave trade. In 1792 a widely publicized po­liti­cal cartoon, “Barbarities of the West Indies,” showed a slave being boiled in a sugar vat for insolence, making the link between consuming sugar and consuming slaves explicit.125 Despite the popularity of the boycott, East India sugar imports accounted for less than 10 ­percent of West India sugar imports into Britain at the peak of the boycott. The lack of economic impact did not dent the enthusiasm of the market-­ approach proponents. Thomas Cooper’s 1791 pamphlet Considerations on the Slave Trade, and the Consumption of West Indian Produce promoted the idea of a boycott of rum, alongside sugar, ­because “a f­amily

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that uses five pounds of Sugar per week, with the same proportion of Rum, ­will by the abstaining from the consumption of West India produce for 21 months, prevent the slavery or murder of ONE fellow creature.”126 Cooper also drew on the arguments of slave l­abor’s inefficiency and the perverse incentives it created in the West Indies economy: “The unwillingness of the slaves to work, is proverbial; and how can any one expect them to be industrious? Idle or active, their wages are the same: they have no rational motive for exertion, but, on the contrary, ­every motive for deceiving the driver. ­Here we have two sources of immorality naturally flowing from the system, viz. Idleness and deceit, with, of course, all the evils which usually follow in their train.”127 ­These observations would be influential in shaping the emerging theories of moral economy promoted by a wide range of abolitionist businesses. Although in the 1790s sugar and rum ­were boycotted as products of enslaved ­labor, the real po­liti­cal aim of the movement was to press for an end to the trade in enslaved ­people by invoking consumer power elsewhere in the supply chain. It was the publication in 1811 of the pamphlet Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendants, and on the Use of the Produce of Their ­Labour, by American Quaker Elias Hicks, that articulated for Quaker audiences the connection between the goods produced by enslaved laborers and the theft of their l­ abor.128 Quakers, who dominated the abolitionist movement in Britain and Amer­i­ca (though not elsewhere), had deep mercantile roots, and although their doctrine did reject luxurious fashions in f­avor of a plainer aesthetic, they did not reject the commercial revolution as a ­whole. But enslaved ­labor was “stolen” ­labor, and therefore anything made with it was a violation of the commandment not to steal. For many Quakers, as Julie Holcomb writes, abstention from the products of enslaved ­labor was an attempt to respond to the threat posed to Christian values by the proliferation of luxury and wealth that had seeped into ­every transaction over the course of the ­century, but also to have some effect on the supply of ­those goods. For Quakers, this protest was as much about the use of morality to moderate markets as it was about the use of markets to promote morality.129 The complexity of global trade required constant vigilance, and a constant reminder, as British abolitionist Elizabeth Heyrick wrote in her

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blockbuster 1824 pamphlet, Immediate, not Gradual Abolition: “We are all guilty (with shame and compunction let us admit the opprobrious truth) of supporting and perpetuating slavery . . . ​­because we furnish the stimulant to all this injustice, rapacity, and cruelty, by purchasing its produce.”130 Heyrick, like o­ thers, also highlighted the specific role of ­women as organizers of the ­family’s consumption, addressing An Appeal to the Hearts and Consciences of British W ­ omen in 1828.131 Combining ­women’s position as the supposed moral conscience of the home and their apparent propensity ­toward frivolity, the appeal to ­women as consumers directly emerged out of the luxury debates’ concerns about excess luxury leading to feminization of the nation through de­pen­dency on other trading partners. Boycotting was a way to “take back” that moral power through abstaining from tainted luxury. ­These campaigners all also linked the production of the commodity produced by enslaved ­labor to the demands of the consumer. In part this was a response to the idea put forward by Smith in The Wealth of Nations that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.”132 If that was the case, then consumer responsibility in the supply chain was obvious. In An Address to the Members of the Religious Society of Friends, on the Propriety of Abstaining from the Use of the Produce of Slave L ­ abour, the logic of the supply–­demand calculation was spelled out: “For, let us inquire, why does the slaveholder keep his subjects in their pre­sent condition? The answer is obvious. To raise sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, and other articles, to produce goods to supply the demand created by the consumers. It must be admitted that ­those who partake of ­these articles are not clean-­handed, for so long as we continue to consume slave produce, we are aiding and abetting the system in affording the very means by which it is supported.”133 The Philadelphia Society of Friends established a committee on requited ­labor, which met annually to encourage abstention from “the use of the products of slave ­labor or stolen goods,” on the premise “that we (the consumers) are in a more guilty condition than the slaveholders themselves.”134 More worryingly, though, was Adam Smith’s argument that consumption and production created unintended consequences. Producers ­were assumed to be acting in their own self-­interest (to make a profit, or at least

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a living). Consumers ­were also self-­interested, responding to the dictates of fashion and price. But in d ­ oing so, they incentivized producers and promoted “an end which was no part of his intention.”135 Smith’s optimistic view that individuals’ self-­interest would add up to the “wealth and prosperity” of the nation was not shared by all of the moral campaigners who thought commerce could overcome the slave trade and enslaved ­labor, but many did believe that if ­people could only be convinced of the unintended consequences of their purchasing, they would adjust their be­hav­ior to change the incentives offered to producers. This was an echo of the French physiocratic belief that self-­ interest “is always in accord with the most severe justice” whereas “wickedness and oppression . . . ​are but the result of poorly understood interests.”136 It was the responsibility of moral campaigners to identify the interests of consumers and point out their role in creating incentives in the supply chain to realign commerce and morality. Supply and demand w ­ ere crucial to abolitionist conceptions of the role of the consumer in creating slavery. The phrase coined by the British abstention campaigner William Fox, and repeatedly rolled out by abolitionists, business interests, newspapers, and free-­produce socie­ties throughout the age of abolition, was that “the slave-­dealer, the slave-­holder, and the slave-­driver, are virtually the agents of the consumer.”137 Culpability for slavery, therefore, could not be l­ imited to the ­actual ­owners of slave ­labor. A writer identified as “Agnes” in the American Quaker abolitionist paper Genius of Universal Emancipation made this de­pen­dency on slave ­labor clear: “Do you not receive as much benefit from his oppression as the individual who is his nominal owner, but in fact, for that length of time, only your agent?” The owner of the slave was “nominal.” That person was only responding to the incentives created by the inexorable operation of supply and demand within a market economy. For the slave trade and slave ­labor to end, consumers around the world had to take responsibility for the demand they created. “Agnes” argued, “You must excuse me for considering that for the time that is necessary to produce the articles you consume, you are a slave-­holder; or that you are d ­ oing worse, by paying another for the commission of a crime which you would not dare to commit yourself!”138 Consumer power was

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responsible for the plight of the slave, and so consumer abstention from the products of enslaved ­labor would be an exercise of po­l iti­cal power through commercial means.

an atlantic consumer revolution reshaped the geography of commerce over the course of the eigh­teenth ­century. But it also contributed to the growth of a shared culture of material goods that ­shaped ­people’s ideas about the connections between an act of consumption and an act of politics. In several dif­fer­ent parts of the Atlantic World in the eigh­teenth ­century, the boycott of trade was used as a tool to combat a sense of po­ liti­cal powerlessness. As boundless consumerism was celebrated by travel writers and merchants, a backlash was already ­under way, raising concerns about national interest and the balance of trade, the function of the state in regulating morality, and the rampant commodification of every­ thing, including h­ uman life. Looking to the West African regions touched by and driving the same consumer capitalism highlights the connections between the material and the ideological in the emergence of new po­liti­cal responses to the Atlantic slave trade. Globalized consumer goods brought new questions about commercial ties and international trade into the homes of ordinary men and ­women around the Atlantic World. They made overseas merchants increasingly aware of tenuous lines of interdependent credit and government favoritism. They s­haped the relationships between ­people and governments, and among governments. And when ­people felt powerless to effect change in other ways, goods offered them a pos­si­ble ave­nue of control. As Atlantic consumers began to see the proliferation of connections between the slave trade and other parts of global commercial life, some became increasingly worried about the unintended consequences of purchasing on the supply chain. Boycotting the slave trade, or sugar made with enslaved ­labor, was apparently straightforward enough, but what about secondary or tertiary layers of the supply chain—­rum or cloths produced to trade for slaves in West Africa? Abolitionists in Amer­i­ca w ­ ere

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increasingly concerned about the depth of slavery’s influence in the growing industrial supply chain. If the slave trade was implicated in every­ thing, was it unavoidable? As Amy Dru Stanley argues, “the intent of abolitionists . . . ​was hardly to discredit all commodity relations but rather to isolate the market in slaves as a unique and singularly evil form of ­human commodification.”139 For the majority of the proponents of ­free ­labor and legitimate commerce, the logic of commodification infused even attempts at reform. The campaigns to abstain from the slave trade—­from the rum and sugar produced by slaves—­and the commercial experimentation and theorization that went with ­those campaigns, helped to shape new ideas of the consumer’s responsibility. Slave-­produced rum and sugar ­were “blood stained,” and had created an excessively greedy market that needed correction. It was the responsibility of individual consumers to take action, ­because such action would make a specific and quantifiable difference. Abstaining was certainly one way to avoid implication with immoral consumption. But in Africa, as in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca, the moral community could also provide new ways to ensure that consumption and accumulation of wealth ­were pos­si­ble.

chapter 2

Goods of Questionable Morality

F

reetown’s governor Zachary Macaulay reported back to the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s Court of Directors in London in 1797 that, at a palaver—­a locally used term for an official dispute—­near the com­pany’s legitimate commerce trading post at Freeport, a Susu leader’s deputy inveighed against the slave traders: “It is you slave traders who cause all our palavers. It is you who set the p ­ eople in this country one against another. And what do you bring us for this? We have Cloth of our own if you w ­ ere gone tomorrow we should not be naked. If you ­were gone we should want but ­little guns and powder.”1 A crisis of overcommodification had led a variety of actors in the Atlantic World to reassess the place of ­things in their lives, and the morality and po­liti­cal values associated with them. Commodity currency became an impor­tant source of concern for African, British, and American abolitionists who saw the demand for ­things as a fundamentally corrosive ele­ment of African participation in Atlantic trade. The Susu deputy pointed out that through new, legitimate commerce “the Sierra Leone boats ­will bring us all we want. They do more for us already than you do. Your money goes up the Country for Slaves. We see none of it but the Rum that turns all our hearts. They [Sierra Leone] buy our Bulls our Goats, our Sheep, our Cloths. And whose child have they taken away? Whose wife have they troubled? What mischief have 55

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they done?”2 Sierra Leone’s legitimate commerce would bring them all they wanted in return for goats, sheep and cloth, instead of setting the ­people against each other and plying them with rum, guns, and powder. Determining what was ethical within a newly emerging consumer and industrial cap­i­tal­ist economy was difficult enough within the nation-­ state—­the primary unit of discussion for many of the most influential early po­l iti­cal economists. Although Mandev­i lle and Voltaire, Montesquieu and Smith, all wrote about international trade, they did so largely with the wealth and prosperity of the nation in mind. The idea of doux commerce promoted trade as a moderating force between nations—­nations that traded w ­ ere less likely to go to war against each other.3 Trade had made war between Eu­ro­pean and African traders unlikely on the Guinea Coast ­because it was being conducted to mutual advantage. But doux commerce alone was not able to promote any specific ethical values other than the mutual peaceful pursuit of economic gain. The application of specific cultural values within trade required intervention through the power of individuals, companies, or states. Ethical conduct in trade, then, was determined by mutual advantage, but also by cultural power. Misunderstandings about the ethical regulation of the slave trade led abolitionists to make assumptions about how new forms of trade would benefit both African states and the captives t­ hose states w ­ ere enslaving. If the demand for enslaved captives from Africa was creating chaos and war in order to generate t­hose captives to be traded for commodities, a new form of commerce would need to be introduced to allow Africans to access the commodities they ­were accustomed to getting through the Atlantic trade. Paradoxically, however, ­there ­were ethical concerns about the types of “legitimate” commerce—­especially the trade in guns—­that stemmed from ­those same assumptions about the state of war caused by the slave trade and the supposed lack of consumer markets in Africa. In providing former slave-­trading states with “all we want,” legitimate commerce could reinforce some forms of global consumerism and undermine ­others. Believing that vio­lence was endemic in Africa as a result of the slave trade, and that this had prevented the proper development of industrious agricultural production, the Sierra Leone Com­pany had an ambivalent relationship with the guns and powder that ­were impor­tant items of trade. Arms dealing may not seem like the kind of business that a com­pany

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founded to abolish the slave trade should be involved in, but over the course of the long nineteenth ­century, abolitionists would change their positions not only about what business approaches or economic ideologies would work best to advance their cause, but also what kinds of trade ­were ethical at all. For many participants in the movement, this meant boycotting certain products produced by slave l­ abor. But for o­ thers it meant promoting one kind of unethical trade (the gun trade) in support of ending another (the slave trade).

Commodity Currencies and the State of  War The slave trade itself was not ethical, and its effects ­were contested by a variety of African, Eu­ro­pean, and American po­liti­cal and social movements. But for the traders themselves, by the late eigh­teenth ­century a system had come into practice to overcome agency prob­lems and ensure that it was conducted to the satisfaction of both African and external traders.4 In part this was a result of the balance of power in the conduct of the trade. Eu­ro­pean traders relied on the support of local rulers. Historians of West Africa have referred to this as a cross-­cultural “moral community.”5 On the Guinea Coast, Eu­ro­pe­ans married ­women from local ruling families so that they could access trade networks, but also to be protected u­ nder the laws of the polity. The arrival of Eu­ro­pe­ans also led to the adaptation of the existing landlord–­stranger relationship—in which traders w ­ ere ­adopted as “strangers” of local rulers (“landlords”), who received annual payments in return for representing the traders in the ­legal system. Trading socie­ties like the Efik in Calabar also gained prominence as local regulators of trade. Or rulers kept Eu­ro­pe­ans at arm’s length by requiring that they remain in forts on the coast. And Eu­ro­pean companies w ­ ere rarely given any kind of mono­poly power, in order to generate competition among slave buyers and keep prices high.6 The evolution of new long-­distance, long-­term credit and mechanisms to ensure quality and price transparency also evolved from a combination of Eu­ro­pean and African approaches. By controlling aspects of the trade, groups along the Guinea Coast could also control some of its ethics. The Oyo state in western Nigeria, for instance, created a system of insiders and outsiders that regulated who

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could be sold.7 The Aro, in Old Calabar, sold po­liti­cal dissidents into the Atlantic slave trade a­ fter they had been found guilty. Although Eu­ro­pean travel writers and slave traders believed that many of the criminal cases ­were staged purely for profit, this mechanism had an impor­tant state function in minimizing dissent and ensuring state authority.8 In Muslim areas, Islamic commercial law (Malīkī) was responsible for shaping the moral community. Long-­distance diaspora networks managed the commerce between the Sahara, the Sahel, the forest zone, and the coast, just as they did from the coastal trading posts across the Atlantic and into Anglo-­A merican and other commercial networks. But the attenuated nature of the trading chain meant that diaspora traders w ­ ere particularly vulnerable to po­liti­cal changes of the type affecting West African states in the late eigh­teenth ­century. Muhammadu Bello, son of Uthman dan Fodio, and Muhammad al-­A min al-­K anemi from the neighboring Muslim state of Borno wrote extensively to articulate the specific definition of “good Islamic practice” in order to determine who could and could not be enslaved, for instance.9 But ­these laws could also impact the types of legitimate commerce that ­were pos­si­ble. For instance, if a legitimate produce commodity could be considered food, then using it in credit-­based exchange would be prohibited. This was b­ ecause, as in Christian teaching, the practice of trading the same type of good in dif­fer­ent quantities (one type of food for another, for instance) and with a delay in payment could be seen as riba (usury).10 This classification was impor­tant b­ ecause consumable goods like food or money could not bear interest, which would be usurious and therefore unethical. Trade in legitimate produce, then, would need to account for ­these restrictions. Ghyslaine Lydon recounts, “Mahand Baba Wuld ‘Abayd (d. 1860), a jurist from Trarza,” the region just north of the Senegal River, which was deeply involved in the politics and commerce of that river, “wrote an influential fatwa on gum arabic debating its quality as a food or condiment. He established that it was considered food ­because it was used in medicine, drinks, and dishes and during times of food scarcity.”11 ­Because gum arabic was the legitimate product overtaking the slave trade even before the end of the eigh­teenth ­century in Senegambia, in part ­because of the revolutionary activities in Upper Senegal, this was an

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impor­tant fatwa with potentially harmful implications for the success of legitimate commerce. Luckily for observant traders, then, “his own student, al-­Harith b. Mahand b. al-­Shuqawi, took the opposite view, declaring that gum arabic, which was a major trade item in western Africa, could be exchanged with a payment delay, and therefore could be defined as nonfood, and thus Muslims could trade it for food without fear of committing usury.”12 This interpretation of how to classify commodities—as food or currency—­allowed the gum trade to flourish at the end of the eigh­ teenth ­century, an example of a successful and smooth transition to legitimate commerce in Senegal, growing from 12 ­percent of Senegambia’s exports in the 1780s to 71.8 ­percent in the 1830s, while slaves as a percentage of exports dropped from 86.5 to 1.9 ­percent in the same period.13 But it was an interpretive choice, not an inherent moral quality of the product, which determined ­whether the Trarza could continue trading the item. As the nineteenth ­century progressed, po­liti­cal leaders could still make choices about how they wanted to interpret the moral values associated with vari­ous trade goods. Commodity currencies raised a variety of ethical questions about the ability to trade with a payment delay, and what the inherent moral value was of a good. In Eu­rope, abolitionists became concerned that p ­ eople in Africa ­were willing to sell other ­people for what amounted to, in their telling, “a few baubles”—­other­wise known as the “geegaw myth.”14 During the slave trade, standard mea­sures of the commodity currencies used in trade had come into effect by the mid-­eighteenth ­century: the “bar,” the trade ounce, the ackie. ­These mea­sures ­were dif­fer­ent on dif­fer­ent parts of the coast, but ­were roughly standard. For each, a quantity of consumer goods (especially cotton cloths and other fash­ion­able items) was valued at a fixed rate. Enslaved p ­ eople, then, ­were also valued at that rate. So, for instance, in Accra in the late eigh­teenth ­century, a trader of the Com­ pany of Merchants trading to Africa spent a total of 4 ounces, 7 ackies for one girl, in the form of “1 anker Liquor, 1 Chintz, 14 Bll powder, 8on knives, 2on peter, 2 cases, 2 Romals, 1 Gun, 1 Brawl, 1on Tankard; Dashed 1 cotton” and one boy for 4 ounces, one ackie, in the form of “1 roll tobacco; 2 guns; 1 Anker; 7on flints; Dashed 1 / 3 chintz” plus a “custom of 2 trade oz.”15 The trade ounce fluctuated in real terms, like any exchange rate, throughout the eigh­teenth ­century, but by the 1820s it had gone out

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of use in the Gold Coast.16 In Senegambia, imported goods from Eu­ro­ pean ships w ­ ere assessed in hides, while slaves ­were denominated in bars of iron, with one bar of iron being equal to eight hides.17 The exchange rates w ­ ere somewhat negotiable but ­were understood to consist of certain qualities and types of commodities. Not only was this a regulated and fairly stable form of exchange, but it was also driven by expanding consumer demand, contrary to abolitionist arguments. But abolitionists believed that the value of the commodities arriving in Africa was minimal, and to them the apparent reliance of African coastal economies on t­ hese commodities demonstrated their underdeveloped and subservient nature. James Searing notes, “From the African perspective Eu­ro­pe­ans paid high prices for slaves in scarce imported goods.”18 But the abolitionists’ misunderstanding of the commodity currencies was stoked by the supporting evidence provided by slave traders like Malachy Postlethwayt. An employee of the Royal Africa Com­pany, Postlethwayt wrote prolifically on the state of African trade, agricultural potential, and consumer markets in the mid-­eighteenth ­century. He hoped to undermine the f­ree traders who had supplanted the mono­poly of the Royal Africa Com­pany in the mid-­eighteenth ­century and to encourage state investment in African colonization plans. Deregulation, he argued, would “ever spirit up wars and hostilities among the negro-­princes and chiefs for the sake of making captives of each other for sale,” obstructing “the civilizing of ­these ­people” and preventing the extension of “trade into the bowels of Africa.”19 ­These wars ­were caused by the temptations of the Eu­ro­pean slave traders’ wares, according to one of the abolitionists’ most impor­tant sources, the former slave, Olaudah Equiano.20 Both slave traders and formerly enslaved Africans agreed: demand for Eu­ro­pean goods caused wars to generate captives for sale. This was impor­tant ­because one of the standard agreements in ethical princi­ple between Eu­ro­pean and African po­liti­cal philosophies was that war captives could be sold into slavery.21 Other forms of slavery in Africa ­were stringently regulated, in theory if not always in practice. In Senegambia, war captives ­were frequently sold into the Atlantic trade, but second-­generation slaves ­were supposed to be legally protected from sale.22 The African Muslim view at the end of the eigh­teenth ­century was that enslavement of Muslims was unethical and forbidden.23 Nasr al-­Din,

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who conquered the Senegal valley for Islam in the 1670s, declared that “God never allowed Kings to pillage, kill, or make their p ­ eople captives,” 24 particularly for sale to Christian Eu­ro­pe­ans. When the Fulani jihad of Uthman dan Fodio took up the mantle of al-­Din and ‘Abd al’Qadr Kane’s revolutions, he issued a number of injunctions against enslavement, several of which linked enslavement to the seizure of property.25 Specifically, the enslavement of freeborn Muslims, the enslavement of “heathens” with whom a peace treaty had been signed, the enslavement of captives from a war started by someone ­else, and the enslavement of oppressors ­were all “unlawful by assent.”26 A text laying out the moral princi­ples of the caliphate, written by dan Fodio and ­later translated by his ­daughter, Nana Asma’u, stated that “the enslaver of a freeman who inflicts on him harsh treatment” would suffer a fate of enslavement by the Fires of Hell.27 The exception to ­these prohibitions was war against apostates. As justification of enslavement practices in the Sokoto jihad, an injunction ruled that “to make war upon the congregation of the apostates ( juma’ at al-­murtaddin) is obligatory by assent, and that their property is booty ( fai’un), and that in the ­matter of their enslavement ­there are two opinions, the widespread one being its prohibition, and the other that the perpetrator of this act does not disobey (the law) if he is following an authority which asserts its lawfulness.”28 As the regulations of the caliphate suggested, though, this was not a free-­for-­all. Although enslavement was sanctioned, West African Muslims ­were very clear that only specific circumstances—­warfare against apostates, or birth into slavery—­allowed a person to be enslaved, and ­those conditions ­were regulated both by the legitimate government and by God.29 It was the realization—­a mong African, Eu­ro­pean, and American abolitionists—­that warfare was being caused by the search for slaves that began raising moral objections: as Thomas Clarkson ­later put it, “it was not the war which was the cause of the Slave Trade, but the Slave Trade which was the cause of the war.”30 Even in 1822, a visitor to the Gambia commented, “Yet ­there is no doubt, that where a king can dispose of his prisoners to slave-­dealers, he ­will do so, even when the war may not have commenced for the purpose; for it is well known, that where ­there is a regular demand for slaves, as at Senegal, &c the chiefs go out for that purpose alone; and that not merely to fight with other chiefs, but even to

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surprise the towns in their own kingdoms. Well may the cultivation of the soil be so ­little attended to, as it appears to be where I have been.”31 If this was the case, then wars ­were being started to steal ­people for the slave trade. Julie Holcomb has argued that Quaker biblical arguments “against man stealing” paved the way for an understanding of slavery as theft in the British and American contexts.32 ­These Quaker protests initially took place in the 1680s and 1690s, roughly con­temporary with Nasr al-­Din’s reforms in Senegal, and at the same time John Locke provided further rationale to argue that if they w ­ ere captured explic­itly for sale, slaves ­were therefore illegally and unnaturally deprived of their right of “property in his own person.”33 Locke wrote that “a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself ­under the absolute, arbitrary power of another.”34 Examples of “person stealing” w ­ ere observed by Eu­ro­pe­a ns or reported to them in hopes of retribution. Throughout the age of abolition, visitors and residents on the West African coast reported to Eu­ro­pean and American readers about the prevalence of this practice. In 1822 a visiting commodore wrote, “The system of ‘Panyarring’ or stealing of p ­ eople is very general in some parts. Whilst we w ­ ere at Cape Coast a w ­ oman belonging to that Town was stolen by a man of a Village about five miles off, as she was returning from her Rice Plantation.”35 And on a visit to Sherbro Island, southeast of Freetown, in 1793, Zachary Macaulay said that “Addow” (one of the leaders) was ­eager to trade with the antislavery colony ­because “Altho occasionally engaged in the slave trade, he seems to rejoice in the prospect of its Abolition. Some years ago his town was destroyed by James Cleaveland and many of his ­people carried away into slavery. He still waits an opportunity of revenging this injury.”36 This was a power­ful argument against the morality of the Atlantic slave trade, one regularly tied to the broader commercial case. Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, had described Africans as existing in “continual danger” that made them unable to think beyond their own immediate wants and needs.37 “Person stealing” prevented the development of any industry, investment, property laws, or consumer markets, ­because ­people could not make long-­term plans. Zachary Macaulay, as chairman of the African Institution in London, wrote to Benjamin Rush,

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chairman of the Philadelphia-­based Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the United States, recommending that the two organ­izations work together in Africa to overcome “that insecurity of person and property which pre­sents an insuperable bar to the pro­ gress of Improvement.”38 Malthus much more explic­itly explained that the arguments of the abolitionists must be right by his reasoning b­ ecause “all the facts which I have mentioned, and which are taken principally from [Mungo] Park, if they do not absolutely prove that the wars in Africa are excited and aggravated by the traffic on the coast, tend powerfully to confirm the supposition. The state of Africa, as I have described it, is exactly such as we should expect in a country where the capture of men was considered as a more advantageous employment than agriculture or manufactures.”39 This reading hardened into truth for the po­liti­cal economists who framed the wider understanding of global trading interactions in the early nineteenth ­century. By the 1820s it was commonly argued that the slave trade had devastated the economies of Africa by inciting and exacerbating war, undermining Africans’ ability to efficiently participate in global exchange b­ ecause they could not be effective consumers without being industrious producers. As Malthus, Smith, Ricardo, and ­others argued, ­there ­were doubts that other socie­ties would be able to operate efficiently or industriously without Eu­ro­pean intervention. One writer stated, in an 1821 summary of the available lit­er­a­t ure on Africa, that the slave trade caused uncertainty and a state of “apprehension of captivity.” Describing Senegambia in the early nineteenth ­century, Frederic Shoberl commented, “We should at once conclude, that the very insecurity of person and property which such a state of society implied, would of itself extinguish all the motives to regular industry, and limit the culture of the soil very nearly to what was required for supplying the immediate wants of nature.” 40 This echoed both Smith and Malthus, who saw the apparent lack of property as being at the heart of what they believed to be African underdevelopment.41 Abolitionists made an argument for economic intervention in the economies of this region by building an image of Africa as violent, war-­ torn, and chaotic as a result of the slave trade, a site of backward and illogical commerce that created uncertainty and undermined productivity and the ability of families to build wealth and accumulate ­t hings. The

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state of war created by the slave trade was the opposite of legitimate commerce, which, if introduced, would allow Africans to “become” civilized consumers.42

Legitimate Commerce The traders engaging with Africa, however, knew that the demand for consumer goods was growing at the end of the eigh­teenth and beginning of the nineteenth ­century, and that Africans would not have to be taught how to be good consumers. It was the abolitionists’ natu­ral allies in Africa, in fact, who ­were driving some of the conditions abolitionists believed ­were fundamental to African po­liti­cal economy. The disruptions caused by the revolutionary activities and Islamic state-­building of places like Futa Toro and Sokoto, which included ideology opposed to the Atlantic slave trade, w ­ ere causing migration, enslavement, and shifting commercial and po­liti­cal alliances, which contributed to much of the warfare abolitionists heard reported. Concerns about the consumer’s responsibility for the sale of p ­ eople into the Atlantic slave trade to produce (­either literally, or in the form of payment) luxury goods led to nonconsumption movements in order to break the demand side of the equation. But savvy traders ­were aware that the demand side was not wholly to be found in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca: demand for consumer goods was also part of the driving logic ­behind the sale of enslaved ­people in Africa. A former slave trader wrote of his time in West Africa that he had encountered “the inexhaustible store of valuable articles, which they could substitute for the unnatural traffic in ­human flesh; and showed incontestably that they could improve their produce to a state worthy the return of British luxuries.” The improvement of their agricultural produce for export would be necessary b­ ecause “the glare and relish of ­t hese luxuries . . . ​now grown essential to them by use, they cannot easily forego; but if the inhuman pro­cess ­were abolished, they would be ­under the necessity, and would be desirous of meeting your exports with some more valuable and more guiltless branch of trade.” 43 When the slave trade was legally abolished, the variety of laws passed by Atlantic states attempted to codify into law what was unethical about the trade. ­These laws made reference to international trade (internal slave

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trading in all markets was unaffected), but had very l­ imited enforcement mechanisms, as is highlighted by the continuation of illegal Atlantic slave trading through the c­ entury. What was needed to enforce the ­legal abolition of the Atlantic slave trade was still international cooperation among traders and on-­the-­ground negotiation. Opinions generally w ­ ere divided on the best way forward. In Britain, some abolitionists thought their focus should be on convening treaties with Eu­ro­pean powers and capturing and prosecuting Eu­ro­pean traders. In Sierra Leone, “eventually Macaulay was to be convinced by an ‘intelligent native’ that African law ensured that an escaped slave became the property of the headman with whom he had sought refuge: one property law was superimposed upon another.” 44 ­Others thought the best way forward was to convince—­t hrough commerce or through force—­African merchants and rulers to abandon the slave trade. Instead of forcing anti-­slave-­trading states like Futa Toro to cut themselves off from trade, legitimate commerce would give t­ hese states access to consumer goods without their having to trade in slaves. This commercial argument was essentially the exact opposite of a boycott—­ what would l­ ater be called a “buycott.” 45 As Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt have written, “it was recognized that African rulers and merchants could not be expected to give up the slave trade ­unless they ­were offered alternative means of obtaining the imported Eu­ro­pean and American goods which they had become accustomed to consume.” 46 Abolitionists believed that African merchants and consumers would react rationally to the end of the slave trade if they w ­ ere provided with an alternative. In the Gold Coast, where the Fante had been impor­ tant trading partners of the British for much of the eigh­teenth ­century, as well as serving as wage laborers, paid in goods, at Cape Coast C ­ astle, abolition was condemned “as it deprives them of the means of acquiring ­t hose articles of Luxury, with that fa­cil­i­t y they ­were accustomed to.” 47 This was deeply worrying to abolitionists who ­were concerned that the ­legal suppression of the slave trade would not be enough to cut off the supply of slaves to the Amer­i­cas. This fear accorded well with Zachary Macaulay’s own experience in the wider Sierra Leone region when he was acting as governor for the Sierra Leone Com­pany. Sierra Leone (actually Freetown colony) was a mainland settlement chosen by philanthropists and colonizers based in

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London for its good harbor and supposedly fertile land. The colony was settled by ­people of African descent resident in London, as well as a handful of white settlers, in 1787, before being reestablished in 1791 with the settlement of more than 1,000 Black Loyalists who had fought alongside the British in the American Revolution.48 The settlement was at first self-­governing, and then, beginning in 1791, run by the Sierra Leone Com­ pany, and it maintained a commitment to fight the slave trade throughout its early history. Since it was not an island settlement, positive interactions with local, established African towns ­were deeply impor­tant to the survival of the colony: the settlers and their government, with no family-­ based claims to territory or trading rights, relied on the protection of a local “landlord” in any po­liti­cal or commercial disputes, and unresolved palavers could, and did, spill into vio­lence on several occasions.49 The city’s dependence on the goodwill of the Temne, from whom they leased their land, was mirrored in their Atlantic-­facing commerce: although the Sierra Leone Com­pany was British, they reached out to American traders for goods as a result of reduced Eu­ro­pean shipping in the British-­French wars. American ships could provide trade goods essential to the colony’s interaction with the Temne, Susu, Bago, and more distant Fula in Futa Jallon, whose visits to the coast became an obsession for early Freetown governors. But ­there was also high demand for American goods among Freetown’s residents, who had once lived in the American colonies. The colony at Freetown operated as a sort of sporadic market town for legitimate produce, but it also disrupted local trading practices, distorted prices, and created new winners in the local economy. While governor, Macaulay supported the legitimate-­commerce depot at Freeport, on the Rio Pongas to the north of the colony, in addition to the colony’s trade with other emerging commercial centers, like Kankan in Guinea. Capitalized to the tune of £150,000, the Com­pany expected a significant trade, as well as rental income from lands leased out to settlers for agricultural purposes. They sent out a statement of their intentions, which began, “The Sierra Leone Com­pany established by the British Parliament do hereby declare, that they ­will send out goods from ­England and take all kinds of African produce in exchange; that they w ­ ill not deal in slaves themselves, nor allow of any slave trade on their ground.”50 It was clear that they both believed ­there was a significant demand for goods in Free-

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town and the surrounding area, and they did not r­ eally know what kinds of “African produce” to anticipate in exchange. As Suzanne Schwarz has described, “The first cargo of produce carried to Britain on the Amy in June 1793 was greeted with enthusiasm, as it was ‘neither degraded with injustice nor stained with blood.’ ”51 By 1812, four years a­ fter Freetown had become a Crown Colony, Sierra Leone returned over £11,000 worth of African produce to Britain, consisting of vari­ous kinds of wood, beeswax, tortoiseshell, hides, rosin, rice, guinea pepper, palm oil, gum, ostrich feathers, elephant teeth, copper, and coffee, ranging in value from nearly £4,000 for some goods, to a mere 12 shillings for the ostrich feathers.52 Consumer demand and the extremely valuable Atlantic consumer market was not something merchants wanted to give up. The scale of greater Sierra Leone’s consumer value was demonstrated by ships’ invoices in the trade. Brown & Ives’s captain, Martin Benson, was sure that a cargo of India goods and nankeens “suitable for the African Market” valued at “a thousand or twelve hundred pounds” would make “a very handsome profit.”53 When the American brig Ann was captured by the French in Senegal in 1809, it was carry­ing what the French government determined to be 169,777 francs worth of consumer goods and provisions, including 81,085 francs of clothing, 11,409 francs of tobacco, 13,200 francs worth of rum, and 7,972.50 francs worth of sugar.54 When the Olive Branch sailed from Rhode Island for Gorée and Sierra Leone in 1800, 60 ­percent of the ship’s cargo by value was cotton goods. On ­t hese cotton goods alone, the voyage of the Olive Branch made a $554 profit (equivalent to about $10,000 in modern purchasing power), and that’s assuming that the invoice cost had not been marked up, which was unlikely as it looks like the India goods w ­ ere about $9,000 to import, which would mean a $3,500 profit before costs. They also sold 58 ladies’ parasols on the Windward Coast (primarily in Gorée and Sierra Leone).55 Settler Mary Perth owned her own shop in the colony, which was robbed in 1797 “of goods to the amount of about sixteen pounds,” but this amount of merchandise underestimates the scale of the retail trade, as “the thieves narrowly missed a Drawer containing some hundred dollars.”56 Settlers also bought retail from the Brown & Ives brig Maria: 1 box of 240 china bowls (for $60), 1 box of china cups and saucers (for $64), 6 half-­barrels of butter biscuits (for $36), 96 nankeens (for $144), and 22 short checks (for $44).57 Such was

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the purchasing power of the urban, service-­providing class of Freetown, particularly when the settlers banked their money together to make bulk purchases.58 As abolitionists tried to turn away from commodity currencies and their negative connotations, the Sierra Leone Com­pany store in Freetown and its factory in Freeport both attempted to move t­ oward issuing their own hard currency. This was one means of controlling the trade to ensure a closed system, which would prevent the slave trade from sneaking into the exchange. Anna Maria Falconbridge commented on the colony’s currency “that the neighbouring Factories and casual Traders receive it for what our Settlers purchase for them.”59 Wage l­abor would allow African consumers to access t­ hese global goods with cash, instead of by bringing slaves to market, and it would contribute to the wider proj­ect of demonstrating that industrious ­labor was stimulated by consumption. Macaulay ensured that the trade “is entirely transacted by the intervention in ­every case of a Money Medium. If a Stranger brings Ivory or Gold, he sells it at the current price and receives his money, which he again lays out to his taste. In the same way do all the Natives ­whether Timmanies, Bullams or Mandigoes manage their trade, and no objection is now heard made against the innovation. The articles brought by t­ hose last consist chiefly of Rice, Camwood, Live stock, yams, mats, Gum Copal, and fruit as oranges and pine apples.” The same system applied to the freed slave settlers, “many of whom have now boats carry­ing from two to Eight tons collect Rice, Camwood, and Live Stock, which they likewise dispose of for money with which to purchase a fresh assortment of Goods at the Store for trade.” And the Com­pany store ensured that it had even more customers by tying Com­pany wages (in cash) to purchases of goods from the Com­pany store.60 Even visiting ships that wanted contracted ser­vices in the port had to pay in Sierra Leone currency and buy provisions through the Com­pany store.61 So who ­were the Sierra Leone Com­pany store’s local customers? In 1801, Binah Jordan, a settler, was paid $9 in Sierra Leone currency (45 shillings) for baking 305 weight of flour into ship’s bread for the Olive Branch, a net profit to her of 11 shillings, or $2.20 in Sierra Leone Com­pany dollars.62 She likely did this to supplement the ­family’s income, but even if she did not, and even if she baked bread only for the vessels in and out of Freetown

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harbor that year (and not commercially for the other settlers), she could make $220 in a year, enough to cover subsistence at $115 per year, quit-­rent on property (the settlers w ­ ere all given plots), and have leftover monthly income that could be invested in property or capital goods. Given that several settler ­women traders had already purchased property investments of roughly £150 by the early nineteenth ­century—­turning them into boarding­ houses for colonial officials and visiting ship’s captains—­the scale of this profit was not unusual.63 Profits could also be spent on consumption. In 1802 the Sierra Leone Com­pany Store sold 1½ yards of flannel for $1.05; 1 yard of printed calico for 86 cents; 2 yards of white calico for $1.00; a pair of shoes for $2.10; and 2 pounds of sewing twine for $1.20.2 This gives a sense of the purchasing power of the urban, service-­providing class of Freetown. At ­these prices it is conceivable—­though unlikely—­that a person in Binah Jordan’s circumstances would have new dresses ­every season.64 With other ­family members to sew for, and other ­house­hold goods to be purchased, Binah prob­ably did not stretch to this e­ very month, but it is also impor­tant to bear in mind that her contribution was likely to be part of a larger f­ amily income.65 For ethical consumers around the Atlantic, fashion would not have to be sacrificed to morality. As this example from the ser­vice sector shows, the legitimate commerce taking place in the colony involved more than just exporting agricultural produce. It also required the establishment of regular commerce, security, and trust to promote the industrious consumption of imports. Macaulay reported, “In our immediate neighbourhood cultivation had languished much for two years past, in consequence of the g­ reat Demand for L ­ abour in the Colony, which the Natives found more profitable than labouring for their Chiefs.”66 The economic opportunities created by the town w ­ ere not always ­those Macaulay, Clarkson, and the other members of the Clapham Sect of abolitionist evangelicals would have chosen. In the early days of the Freetown colony, traveler Anna Maria Falconbridge reported, “The men are employed in the Com­pany’s ser­vice, and receive two shillings per day wages, out of which they pay four shillings per week for their provisions.”67 From occasional earnings as a pi­lot or hired hand for transatlantic ships, a man who sporadically hired himself out to local and Atlantic traders might earn something like £5 per year.68 In Freetown, that would be enough to buy 705 weight of Souchong tea from the Sierra

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Leone Com­pany Store; or twelve ivory tea chests (with 10 shillings to spare); or 27.5 yards of flannel, any of which could get an aspiring trader started.69 The colony’s ability to enrage its trading partners by harboring runaway slaves demonstrates that the commercial appeal of Freetown was often beyond the control of its authorities. Tying ­labor to the Com­pany store was one way to try to control ­labor and turn migration into a net positive for the colony’s development.

Gun-­Slave Cycle Despite the attempts to shift away from commodity currencies, Macaulay still believed that the Com­pany store needed to stock guns and alcohol alongside the other trading goods, like cloth, that made up the “bar”—­ that assortment of goods that made up the coastal currency. Abolitionists who championed the sale of arms believed that groups became involved in slave trading in order to acquire guns, which w ­ ere necessary 70 for defending themselves from other slavers. Abolitionists like Macaulay argued that participating in the sale of guns and alcohol was an impor­ tant way to help non-­slave-­trading groups in West Africa overcome what was known as the “gun-­slave cycle.” The “gun-­slave cycle” theory asserts that Africans involved in the slave trade acquired guns (usually purchased with slaves) in order to enslave more captives. But ­t here was a defensive aspect to the cycle as well, as ­people ­were driven to occasional slave trading in order to purchase the guns necessary to protect themselves from slave-­raiding attacks. For the communities living in the Guinea-­Bissau region—­the Balanta, Beafada, Papel, Bijago, Brame, Diola—­sporadic slave trading in order to purchase iron, cloth, and guns confirmed abolitionist fears that p ­ eople ­were drawn 71 into the slave trade in t­ hese ways. Oral tradition in the Gambia, as passed down by griots, holds that “in Niumi during the slave trade, ­those who had slaves sold them when they ran short of food. Also in times of war, when they ran short of gunpowder, they sold slaves and exchanged them for powder.”72 Sometimes t­ hose arms ­were even subsequently used to attack Eu­ro­pean slave traders.73 Equally, the frontier settlements on the Koinadugu Plateau, south of Futa Jallon, show that some groups encountered or engaged with

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Eu­ro­pean trade only through the gun trade. Archaeologist Christopher DeCorse notes that in the fortified settlements of the Koinadugu Plateau—­Limba, Yalunka, and Kuranko—­a ll of which w ­ ere occupied throughout the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries, “only ­limited amounts of Eu­ro­pean trade materials w ­ ere noted” with the “major exception” of gunflints, which ­were prolific, and which accorded with other rec­ords suggesting that only the trade in guns and gunpowder was conducted with the coast.74 Kankan (Guinea), which had emerged by the late 1820s as an impor­t ant commercial center, had strong links to Freetown legitimate commerce, including in the trade of gunpowder and guns, which w ­ ere sold regionally by the, at that point, nonviolent, religious-­commercial state.75 The Sierra Leone Com­pany and other legitimate traders argued that they should trade guns for nonslave goods ­because this would allow p ­ eople to avoid the slave trade while still defending themselves against slavers. As Rudolph Ware writes, “When we consider that an estimated 350,000–400,000 guns per year ­were entering West Africa in the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century, it becomes obvious that the fundamental dynamic that s­haped ethical action in Atlantic Africa was the fact that even if you w ­ ere not willing to trade in slaves, someone ­else was—­a nd soon he would be coming to make you a slave.”76 Since the seventeenth ­century at least, guns had made up an impor­ tant part of the trade assortment for slave merchants. Demand for guns manufactured in Britain grew beginning in the late seventeenth c­ entury. The manufacture of guns in Birmingham for the Africa trade has been seen as a classic example of African demand shaping manufacturing pro­ cesses in industrializing Britain.77 ­These muskets ­were known, according to length and model, as “Long and Short Danes, Dutch, Carolinas, and Spanish,” which indicated both that the African gun consumers had preferences for certain “brands” of gun, and that the British desire to satisfy African demand led to manufacturing innovation as the Birmingham gunsmiths worked out a piece system for assembling the dif­fer­ent models required for dif­fer­ent markets.78 Specific types of guns ­were in demand in vari­ous coastal trading ports, so a Eu­ro­pean merchant had to know which ports he hoped to visit, and what was preferred t­ here.79 In the 1790s, for instance, Dane guns ­were preferred in Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and

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the Windward Coast while Bonny guns and Angola guns w ­ ere popu­lar elsewhere on the coast.80 ­There was high demand for guns, gunpowder, and gunflints in the late eigh­teenth ­century, which coincided with the height of the slave trade and the expansion of slaving into new regions.81 British customs rec­ords reveal some seventy categories of goods exported from Britain to Africa in 1787, including 1,258,400 pounds of gunpowder, valued at £37,923. 82 Joseph Inikori has estimated that “between 1796 and 1805 a total of 1,615,309 guns w ­ ere imported into West Africa from E ­ ngland, giving an annual average of 161,531.”83 In 1815, seven years ­after the abolition of the slave trade took effect, and at the early nineteenth-­century peak of abolition enforcement, 4,184 guns ­were taken to parts of Africa (excluding the Cape and Morocco) by British ships.84 Even in 1822, long ­after Gorée had returned to the French, French officials on the island complained that the En­glish sold guns and gunpowder (and the Americans sold rum), undercutting French sales.85 In the 1812 customs rec­ords of Britain, shipments to Senegal and Sierra Leone are disaggregated from the rest of Africa, with 590 guns valued at £442 being sent to Senegal.86 No guns w ­ ere sent to Sierra Leone by British vessels that year. In fact, during the years of its operation (1791–1808) the Sierra Leone Com­pany very often failed to send the correct trade assortment, in vari­ous years leaving out guns or alcohol for moral reasons. Other years saw the Com­pany sending farming equipment in order to discourage trade in ­favor of settler agriculture, which the com­pany’s directors had de­cided would better demonstrate the civilizational mission of the colony and convince African leaders to abandon the slave trade.87 In 1799 the Com­pany commissioned a delivery from Brown & Ives in Rhode Island, which included rum and tobacco, but no guns. It was on his own initiative and knowledge of the Sierra Leone market that the captain, Martin Benson, brought out four carriage guns and a barrel of gunpowder.88 Benson also bought “5 Tower proof muskets and bayonets, 1 arm chest” from John Tilley, an agent at the slaving fort at Bunce Island, for $44.89 Even ­those not directly involved in the slave trade (as Benson apparently was not) still often found themselves forced to trade with slave traders in order to make up the assortment of goods needed for other parts of the coast, or to sufficiently provision themselves in the case of the colony.

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Guns ­were more impor­tant as customs payments to governments where Eu­ro­pean slave traders operated than they w ­ ere as trade goods used to 90 purchase slaves. Historians have concluded that the trade in firearms was prob­ably not exclusively tied to the slave trade, though the two did overlap. For instance, in twelve months of trading at Cape Coast in 1779, James Mourgue never recorded paying for a slave with a gun.91 In fact, in the second half of the eigh­teenth c­ entury, “arms” made up less than 10 ­percent of slave ships’ trading cargos in the major slaving regions of the Gold Coast, Bonny, Old Calabar, the Cameroons, and the Angola ports.92 However, farther up the coast, arms ­were a larger part of the cargo makeup in this period, ranging from 11 to 28 ­percent of cargos destined for Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Windward Coast generally. In Futa Toro in 1807, the Almaami of Futa received as customs payment 3 trade guns, 500 lead balls, 500 gunflints, another 7 trade guns, and 60 pounds of powder, alongside a safe and lock, 28 pieces of guinea cloth, one mea­ sure of scarlet cloth, 50 piasters, yellow cambrics, and coral. Additionally, he received annually, as pre­sents, 2 trade guns, 2 more guns, 14 pounds of gunpowder, 500 gunflints, 500 lead balls, alongside 6 guinea cloths, 8 pieces of paper, some scarlet cloth, a mirror, a padlock, and a pair of scissors, among other odds and ends.93 ­Because wars conducted explic­itly to capture slaves for sale to Eu­ro­ pean traders ­were at the heart of abolitionist arguments about the immorality of the Atlantic slave trade, the arms trade would seem to be a trade in obviously immoral goods that could also be boycotted by ethical traders both living in and trading with Africa. But guns ­were not necessarily being used in the ways abolitionists believed them to be, nor was the massive importation of weapons, powder, and bullets reflective of an increase in warfare. Guns ­were used for hunting, to protect crops, to protect trade caravans from attack, and for “victory cele­brations, funerals, royal ‘customs,’ religious ceremonies” and other forms of prestige use. 94 ­T hese multiple uses—­a longside their obvious roles as defensive and offensive weapons—­made them less problematic as moral goods for the African purchasers of guns than for the abolitionists contemplating the ethics of legitimate-­commerce assortments and the implications of commodity currencies. The disconnect between the two views of the gun trade highlights the shifting moral standards that disrupted previous trading ethics in Atlantic West Africa.

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Guns as Immoral Goods Despite the sophistication of the African consumer market, and traders’ knowledge of the specificity and quality of goods in demand, abolitionists began to argue in the late eigh­teenth ­century that the quality of the guns provided in the slave trade, and the fact of wars conducted as slaving raids, demonstrated the unethical nature of the gun trade. An account of the slave trade by an American consul in North Africa reported that “multitudes of slaves w ­ ere brought from the interior, and exchanged for brandy, iron, worthless firearms, and other trifles.”95 This was another rehearsal of the familiar argument that Africa’s consumers ­were naive and regularly duped into selling “their countrymen” for worthless goods.96 Despite the per­sis­tent “geegaw myth” that argued the guns being sent to West Africa in exchange for enslaved p ­ eople w ­ ere essentially worthless, a review of the ­actual guns sent in the late eigh­teenth ­century reveals that “on the w ­ hole, Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast, the Bight of Benin, Old Calabar, and Cameroon tended to import rather more of the fairly high quality types of firearms.”97 It is likely that, although ­there was certainly a specific gun made in Birmingham for the African market, it was not of a lower quality in the period before 1840.98 A ­ fter that period, however, the decline in quality was steep, as is demonstrated by the boycott of trade from the port at Lagos in 1855, when Igbo palm oil merchants refused to sell their palm oil in protest against the “substandard” guns they had received. 99 African traders did not find guns problematic as trade goods, ­unless they did not meet quality standards. To nineteenth-­century abolitionists, what was more impor­tant than the truth of the gun-­slave cycle, or the relationship between alcohol or luxury “baubles” and enslavement, was the convincing picture of global trade repercussions it painted: unscrupulous Eu­ro­pean slave traders arming despotic warlords who raided peaceful and defenseless villages for slaves to send to the Amer­i­cas to make sugar and cotton for ignorant consumers back in Eu­rope.100 Julie Holcomb, Lawrence Glickman, and other historians have pointed out that the free-­produce movement caused an impor­ tant shift t­ oward seeing consumers as ultimately responsible for production.101 In both legitimate-­commerce and free-­produce thinking, consumer

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power turned slave traders and slave o­ wners into amoral actors, who had no choice but to respond to the demands of the consumer. ­These purely self-­interested economic actors could not be moral actors in their own right, nor could they see the broader impact of their economic be­hav­ior. This helps to explain why intervention was required: if consumers w ­ ere responsible for the negative externalities of commerce, then they could be responsible for positive developments too. By claiming responsibility, though, both legitimate commerce and f­ ree produce minimized the role of state power, something consumer movements had been ­doing since the second half of the eigh­teenth ­century. Tariffs, subsidies, monopolies, military expansion, and ­legal regulation ­were fundamental to the shaping of the moral economy in ways the average consumer had come to believe was not the case. This went along with the legitimate-­commerce argument that the slave trade had had a deleterious effect on industry in Africa b­ ecause it sowed instability, fear, and de­pen­dency, preventing long-­term economic development (an argument echoed in debates over the effect of slavery on the American South’s lack of industrious development). Alcohol and guns ­were particularly easy to single out ­because of their associations with unproductive, or even anti-­productive consumption.102 Perhaps this rationale was the reason for Freetown’s lack of guns to trade, which Macaulay complained of in 1793, given that abolitionist policies, rather than practical trading considerations, seemed to dictate what the Sierra Leone Com­pany directors chose to send to the colony. Despite Macaulay’s willingness to compete with the slave traders, he wanted to attract the widest pos­si­ble participation in legitimate commerce and therefore was less keen to purchase the ­favor of local rulers with gifts of weapons. In 1797 he wrote to the Com­pany’s directors, “I had a Letter from a Mandingo Chief t­ oday of rather a singular nature. It contained a complaint of an outrage committed on him by some ­people of a neighbouring nation, expressed his resolution of seeking revenge, and requested that for that purpose, I would furnish him with Guns, powder and ball. The Messenger seemed surprised at my positive refusal of the Demand of arms & ammunition.”103 Perhaps the fact that he was not familiar with this par­tic­u­lar leader made Macaulay reluctant to give him the weapons. However, in the abolitionist rationale for trading in guns—to

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encourage their trading partners to abandon the slave trade ­because the same trade goods would be available in exchange for other commodities—­ trading firearms was dif­fer­ent from gifting firearms to power­f ul leaders, who could potentially use the weapons to enslave o­ thers. A gun as a trade good—­something purchased from the colony that could have been purchased from a slave trader—­was legitimate commerce; a weapon as a gift was a sign of corruption and bribery. Beginning in the 1850s, concern over firearms began to increase, possibly as a reflection of the growing success of legitimate commerce in moving African consumers away from the slave trade, and of the advancing technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution. In 1853,the popu­lar periodical Hogg’s Instructor, published in Edinburgh, addressed the prob­lem by proposing that “if traders from Eu­rope would come up the Zambesi [in East Africa], the slave-­dealer would soon be driven out of the market” by his ability to provide guns in exchange for goods like ­cattle and ivory instead of the “boys about fourteen years of age” demanded by the slave traders.104 The author acknowledged the unsavory connection between slave trading and the firearms trade: “But can the trade in firearms be prevented? So long as, according to Cumming’s statement, 3000 per cent can be made by it, it is in vain to stop it . . . ​We do not plead for the trade. We only say, stop that and stop the slave-­trade by coercion, if you can.”105 While some proponents of abolition, like Macaulay, wanted to sell guns to help ease the transition from the slave trade for t­ hose African groups that required guns to defend themselves, ­others just tolerated the gun trade as unavoidable. But in West Africa, French and habitant legitimate-­commerce merchants operating on the Senegal River ­were growing concerned in the early 1850s that a new jihad in Eastern Senegal, led by Al Hajj Umar Tal, was g­ oing to disrupt trade in the region. The new governor of Saint-­Louis, Louis Faidherbe, ceased weapons trading with Sheikh Umar Tal in 1854  in an attempt to both end the jihad and ultimately claim the territory Umar had taken. The ban on weapons sales to the movement led Umar Tal to source them from the British, to the south, and drove his conquest of towns that allowed him to intercept trade headed for the British in the Gambia River.106 Similarly, in the Rio Nunez and Rio Pongo, competition between the French and British legitimate

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traders interested in the region’s expanding groundnut trade saw them providing military support and conducting arms sales to the competing Landuman and Nalu in order to secure territorial dominance.107 Legitimate commerce was facilitated by gun sales, but it was also creating new power dynamics as revolutionary and colonial states used access to superior weaponry to control the new legitimate trade. In 1865 a Parliamentary Select Committee on West Africa questioned the former British consul to West Africa, Richard Burton, on the state of the slave trade in West Africa. Burton’s views on Africa proved to be extremely influential in Britain over the course of the 1860s and 1870s. Burton was deeply uncomfortable with the state of trade along the coast of Nigeria and Benin, commenting that “­there is very ­little difference” between the “condition of the country which is not exposed to the effect of the foreign and American slave trade and that which is.” This was ­because the legitimate trade Britons ­were pursuing in order to “diminish the slave trade” in Burton’s opinion “tends to diminish it with its own evils.”108 Burton’s testimony highlighted the ethical dilemmas facing antislavery activists in West Africa. Missionaries wanted to arm Abeokutans, who had forsaken the slave trade, to defend themselves against the slave-­trading kingdom of Dahomey. While the subsequent wars did curtail Dahomey’s power in the region—in large part ­because the British intervened on behalf of the Abeokutans and annexed Lagos—it also disrupted local power relations, which Burton and ­others increasingly found disconcerting.109 ­Those involved in the “civilizing mission” that had followed from attempts to intervene in the slave trade placed an emphasis on “order”—­especially as more ports came ­under direct colonial rule in the 1860s and 1870s. Alcohol and firearms, associated with the ­dying slave trade but also with unsavory de­pen­dency and corrupt consumerism, ­were believed to be undermining missionaries’ and reformers’ attempts to “improve” African socie­ties. With the decline of the transatlantic slave trade in the 1860s, it was no longer considered moral to sell to African consumers what­ever they wanted to buy. Just weaning them off the slave trade was no longer required, and morally conscientious cap­i­tal­ists should refrain from operating purely in search of profit. Responsible businessmen and ­women would need to consider the moral impact of the consumption or

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overconsumption or misuse of the products they ­were selling, such as alcohol.110 Of course, in the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury the moral stigma of alcohol also permeated domestic reform movements in Britain and the United States, where it was similarly argued that the “lower classes” should not be able to drink away their wages. But in Africa, where the gun trade had once been promoted as crucial to the “correct” assortment to undermine slave traders, and where abolitionists had championed providing guns to the defenseless to fight back in wars started for the slave trade, the shift in ethical standards by campaigners would have an impor­tant disruptive impact. In Senegal, where Sheikh Umar’s wars against the Wolof aristocracy, for instance, continued the reforms started by Abd al-­Qadr Kane in the late eigh­teenth ­century, he used French weapons against the enemies of his jihad. But in part as a result of the French ban on further sales and their attempts to stop his ascendancy to commercial hegemony of Eastern Senegal, Sheikh Umar ultimately ended up using his French (and increasingly British) weapons to fight the French, who had allied themselves with the Wolof state of Kajoor. Selling arms to anti-­slave-­trade jihadists was a successful policy as far as Africans fighting against the slave trade w ­ ere concerned. But the policy did not necessarily make African commerce safer or African states more stable or wealthy or “industrious.”111 Turning to law, as they had with the slave trade itself, Eu­ro­pean campaigners sought to make the newly unethical illegal. In Article I of the 1890 Brussels Conference Act, the Eu­ro­pean colonial powers restricted the importation of “sophisticated” firearms and ammunition in all areas of Africa affected by the slave trade. The liquor trade was banned as well, and in areas where it was permitted, it was subject to new minimum tariff rates.112 More than one hundred years a­ fter the beginning of the campaign to end the slave trade from Africa, the slave trade, the alcohol trade, and the gun trade ­were understood to be joint scourges on the morals of Africa, preventing its “civilization.” The connection of the three in the minds of the late Victorians suggests the heightened awareness of global supply chains that years of boycotts and free-­produce movements had created. But the act’s inclusion of the word “perfectionnée”—­improved or “sophisticated”—­suggests that more opportunistic agents of imperial expansion put to work in a dif­fer­ent way what was now the accepted im-

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morality of the three banned commodities. A lack of “improved” firearms would leave African p ­ eoples without a means of defending themselves from colonizers.

commodification was at the heart of the debates over African trade and the possibilities of ethical commerce to use consumers’ own interest to improve the morality of the supply chain. One of the reasons ­people had found the Atlantic slave trade so horrifying was its abject commodification of ­human life in exchange for luxuries—­meaningless baubles. Commodity currencies, which had been an impor­tant component of cross-­cultural African trade, became an easy target for campaigners who sought to paint the slave trade as a chaotic state of war with no rules, a vision of the trade that a number of pro-­regulation slave traders, like Malachy Postlethwaite, themselves had promoted in public discourse in the mid-­eighteenth ­century.113 But consumer demand was impor­tant in West African commerce, and fashion could not be ignored. The right cloths, the right guns, the right alcohol had to be assorted for trade, or trade would not take place, as Freetown was all too aware. Attempting to shift to currency-­based rather than commodity-­based trade was an impor­tant intervention of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, but it still relied on having the goods on hand in their Com­pany store to help promote the idea that African consumers would not be worse off without the slave trade. The standards that governed ethical commerce w ­ ere reflective of both the moralities of the socie­ties involved in the trade and the changing awareness of the global interconnections that governed modern consumer commerce. Assigning moral and po­liti­cal value to the commodities of the Atlantic World was an attempt to define the limits of what could be sold, and also to get ­people to think about the relationship between supply and demand, and the global connections between production and consumption. As the debate over weapons shows, this was not always an entirely straightforward connection, or an easy moral calculation.

chapter 3

Protecting Ethical Brands

A

t least one solution to the prob­lem of defining an ethical good was to label a good as ethical. The shops and traders who wanted to promote ethical goods faced a reputational dilemma. They wanted to use the market to promote morality, but the slave-­trade-­free (and increasingly enslaved-­labor-­free) goods they wanted to buy and sell ­were harder to source, they w ­ ere more expensive, and that price premium made them liable to fraud. They approached ­t hese prob­lems by relying on labels, building an abolitionist brand, and trading on their reputations. All of t­hese methods w ­ ere attempts to create ethical reliability within an international supply chain, protecting both consumers and the reputation of ethical commerce. In 1793 Zachary Macaulay wrote a letter to his employers in London, the Sierra Leone Com­pany, to complain that “it has become practice with slave traders to bring out Guns for trade marked SLC for which they get a rapid sale and a double price in the Rio Nunez [to the north of the colony].” Lamenting the lost income for the colony and the damage to the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s antislavery brand, Macaulay “wished the Gentlemen who adopt this plan could be indicted for forgery. It certainly comes u­ nder the spirit, if not ­under the letter of the law, which punishes a man for counterfeiting another’s Signature.”1 80

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As Macaulay’s letter highlights, ­there was a potentially problematic disconnect between ethical labels and brands, and the under­lying commodity, and attempts to regulate this relationship w ­ ere a prob­lem around the Atlantic. In a ­later letter to her husband, Selina Macaulay commented about one of her acquaintances in Britain that “her vanity is saying tell ­these good Ladies that I use East India Sugar,” b­ ecause sugar from India, rather than from the Ca­rib­bean, was assumed to be produced by ­free ­labor, and so became the acceptable “brand” of sugar for conscientious consumers.2 Even though she was not necessarily a proponent of the antislavery movement, Selina’s friend was driven by concerns of fashion to at least tell her friends she used East India sugar. The danger h­ ere, of course, was that without some obvious sign, label, or distinguishing feature, con­spic­u­ous consumption of ethical goods was always at risk of fraud. Selina’s friend could tell her friends she used East India Sugar, but how could they ensure she actually did? As historian Anna Vaughan Kett discovered, “Since slave and f­ ree cotton ­were visually identical, the ­whole operation relied on trust. In the 1840s suspicions ­were aroused, and The Friend reported worries over ‘impostor goods,’ or what it called ‘paying falsehood on a bounty.’ ”3 Long supply chains and the unpoliced nature of global commerce made fraud and counterfeiting a complicated prob­lem for abolitionists invested in ethical commerce. The emphasis on promoting individual “interest” (or self-­interest) to get the Atlantic supply chain to work ethically also required regulating. Activists could make antislavery fash­ion­able, but then they would need to worry about unscrupulous merchants responding to the price incentives of demand by sticking the brand of antislavery on unethical products. Ethical standards ­were a prob­lem at the very heart of the attempt to use commerce to solve the slavery prob­lem for producers, middlemen and ­women, and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, Amer­ i­ca, and Sierra Leone, labels ­were an impor­tant part of guaranteeing ethical standards, as ­were dedicated shops. This chapter ­will explore the development of new ways in which abolitionist merchants attempted to use branding, labeling, reputation, currency, and credit to self-­regulate ethical trade, first looking at the more familiar story of ­these developments in Britain and Amer­i­ca, before looking at how ­these same systems ­were negotiated in the cross-­cultural trade of the Sierra Leone Com­pany.

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Protecting Ethical Consumers One of the most repeated arguments for ethical commerce was that it was the most consistent way to tackle the issue of slavery ­because consumers could address the w ­ hole supply chain rather than targeting one t­ hing to abstain from while benefiting from enslaved ­labor in other areas. Elizabeth Heyrick praised the “consciousness of sincerity and consistency” that participation in the movement would bring. The Constitution of the American ­Free Produce Association described its efforts as being in support of “the sake of outraged humanity, and for the purpose of bearing a consistent, holy, practical testimony against a g­ reat national sin.” 4 The Genius of Universal Emancipation asked readers to “engage in an active and practical opposition to slavery.”5 Concerned about the appearance of hy­poc­risy, as well as the ­actual impact of their demand on the supply of slave-­produced goods, contributors to The Genius outlined that “if ­there ­were no consumers of slave produce ­t here would be no slaves” but reminded readers that “while they would not for the universe engage personally in the exercise of so much barbarity, they w ­ ill not relinquish one single iota of the comforts it procures for them . . . ​Guilty as the slaveholder may be, let them not flatter themselves that he alone is guilty . . . ​ The bribe which they have given him, the unrigh­teous mammon, hath “perverted his judgment”.6 The incentive offered by the marketplace was “bribing” slaveholders to enslave ­others and so, in order to be consistent antislavery activists, consumers would need to absolve themselves from the guilt of the supply chain. A member of the Buckingham Female Antislavery Society wrote just prior to the founding of the American ­Free Produce Association in the late 1830s, “If the numbers of Anti-­Slavery socie­ties are true to their princi­ples, we should be led to suppose that t­ here could be few who do not abstain from the product of slave-­labor in many articles which are in daily use!”7 Consistency operated as both the rallying cry to participate in the movement and as an excuse for its failure to effect any noticeable results as time went on. Ethical consumers required special protections ­because of this argument. In order for the movement to successfully shift supply and demand, abolitionist goods needed to become fash­ion­able. But fashionability, alongside attenuated and complex supply chains, created very

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real price incentives for a type of fraud that was beyond the scope of the usual quality controls that most trade was subject to. Normal consumer protections ­were in operation at ports where legitimate commerce was conducted. In African consumer markets outside of the port cities, captains ­were provided with detailed instructions about how to weigh, mea­sure, and assess African produce in order not to be tricked by experienced traders. Brown & Ives, the Rhode Island firm charged with supplying the Sierra Leone Com­pany, advised one crew, “Ivory is also an article that requires attention the larger the teeth, if sound and solid, the more valuable. Old teeth should be avoided and t­ hose that are hollow a considerable part of their length also. Small teeth ­under 20 lbs are called Scrivellos and are bought in Africa and sold ­here at half the price of the large teeth or what is called prime Ivory.”8 Traders w ­ ere also provided with tools. “You have a pair of Steelyards and a pair of Money scales also in your medicine chest a small b­ ottle of Aqua fortis to prove the Gold dust in this article care must be taken to prevent deception.” Even though ­these tools w ­ ere intended for use when trading directly with African merchants along the Gambia River or in the coasting trade, they could still come in handy to double-­check the urban merchants. In 1818 the Sierra Leone Gazette published a list of twenty-­four “merchants who have been using improper weights and mea­sures.”9 Reputational damage was intended to ­counter the incentive to cheat. The danger for consumers who could be unwittingly buying a fraudulent antislavery brand was not necessarily of the order that most regulation in the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries was preventing. ­There was very ­little danger to consumers’ lives posed by consuming West India sugar, or wearing cotton produced with enslaved ­labor, or wearing fake India cloths (although presumably ­there could be a potential prob­lem with fake weapons). Laws against cheating and fraud in trade in colonial and Early Republic Amer­i­ca, for instance, proliferated to ensure the quality of goods, determined by a system of inspection put in place by local and state governments.10 As Hannah Farber argues, the creation of recognizable inspection marks was an impor­tant aspect of the visual culture of commerce across the Atlantic World.11 Of course, quality control was still impor­t ant in forming lasting relationships and developing a good reputation in trade. But ­because the

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protection of the ethical consumer was not ­really about quality protection but about po­liti­cal values and consistency, merchants and consumers could not rely on normal trading protections. Instead, they turned to instruments like laws against forgery. When Zachary Macaulay invoked “the law against forging another man’s signature,” he was extrapolating ­legal protection that was, at this moment in Atlantic commerce, non­ex­is­tent. In fact, the very absence of l­egal mechanisms to protect intellectual property, brands, and copyright was helping to foster the simultaneous development of industrial capitalism around the globe.12 Moses Brown, ­uncle of the proprietor of Brown & Ives, had smuggled the plans for his own Blackstone Manufactory from E ­ ngland.13 And British designs for cotton cloth manufacturing had themselves imitated Indian producers.14 Debates over copyright and counterfeit proliferated in the post-­Revolutionary Anglophone Atlantic, as newly erected national borders created competing ­legal and commercial spheres.15 Forgery laws, in par­tic­u­lar, ­were part of a wave of reform in the early nineteenth-­century Atlantic, aimed at rationalizing and universalizing the penal code. In the eigh­teenth ­century, forgery had become a capital offense at the moment that “the government sought to protect the fiscal military state from the peculiarly subversive threat that forgery posed to paper credit.”16 The original British forgery statute, enacted in 1729, had proliferated to 120 odd crimes associated with forgery.17 In general, the early nineteenth-­century move away from punishing forgery with death went hand in hand with the liberal universalism of which abolitionism was a part—­that is, not only should states not apply punishments arbitrarily, but t­ hose laws should apply universally within the realm. The negotiation between local and national or imperial systems of management was clearest in the proliferation of fraudulent banknotes in the Early American Republic, but foreign protection was almost unheard of before the late nineteenth ­century.18 Macaulay’s desire to punish counterfeiters ­under British law—­which at that moment still made forgery a capital offense—in trade between Eu­ro­pe­ans and Sierra Leone’s noncolonial population revealed the wish for enforcement capacities at the heart of liberal antislavery. His appeal to “forgery” also showed that within the existing regulatory framework the protection of brand reputation was ­l imited to quality control, rather than the protection of reputations or

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identities. That was the role of labeling and branding, in much the same ad hoc way that applied to the reputations of banking institutions or commercial ­houses.19 The strategies designed to protect abolitionist consumers—­brands, labels, marks, dedicated stores—­were largely to build trust among them that a global ethical supply chain could be regulated, to ensure the consistency of consumer po­liti­cal action and to preserve the reputations of both merchants and consumers as truly and consistently adhering to their po­liti­cal princi­ples, not simply behaving faddishly or naively. The disconnect between the objects themselves and the claim to morality required some additional signifier of the ethical value of the good. A sugar bowl was neither inherently “good” nor “bad,” but giving it a label, marking its association with a po­liti­cal value, could work to convert it into an ethical object.

The Wedgwood Brand The first sugar-­a bstention campaign was impor­t ant in its early innovation and embrace of marketing and imagery b­ ecause it established a tradition of protest and a po­liti­cal culture of antislavery consumption that l­ ater campaigns would refer to. The Wedgwood design—­a kneeling slave in chains asking “Am I not a man and a b­ rother?”—­became the universally recognized logo of the abolitionists. Josiah Wedgwood, a Unitarian and a shareholder of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, who had been friendly with impor­tant early British abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, was an emerging name in the production of Staffordshire pottery. He had brand recognition throughout the British world in the late eigh­teenth ­century, thanks to his innovative decision to brand his creamware “queensware” ­a fter Queen Charlotte used it in the 1760s.20 At the cutting edge of the creation of fash­ion­a ble ceramics, Wedgwood was always on the lookout for new design inspirations. He also used celebrity endorsements in innovative ways—­advertising his sales to royal families throughout Europe—­a nd raising the reputation of the standard of British ceramic. And his showroom was as much a place to be seen as to purchase. Importantly, he did not compete on price: this was a luxury brand, but one accessible to middle-­class consumers.21

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Fig 3.1 ​The Wedgwood design on a creamware sugar bowl, 1825. Photo­graph © Museum of London.

His decision to produce the abolitionist image for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, then, was momentous. Historians, as well as modern business and design experts, have detailed the decision-­making pro­cess that went into the production of the Wedgwood cameo.22 Wedgwood’s se­n ior craftsman, William Hackwood, designed the image of the kneeling slave as a cameo using the Wedgwood signature black jasperware. The image became the seal of the British abolition society, and Wedgwood himself sent medallions with the image around the Atlantic World, including to Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, for use in antislavery work. This was the preeminent brand of the late eigh­ teenth ­century, and now it had produced an easily replicable image for circulation around the Atlantic. ­There was an economic as well as an ideological rationale to the production of the antislavery brand. It made sense for certain shop­keep­ers to advertise their association with a nonconsumption movement, to secure new,

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ethically aware customers, but also to generate sales of new products. During the commercial revolution of the eighteenth-­ century Atlantic 23 World, “advertising became part of everyday life.” In the early nineteenth ­century, the central role of marketing and advertising expanded in both Britain and the new American republic.24 Potters, engravers, and merchants repurposed the Wedgewood image of a kneeling slave in a variety of “­free produce” branded homewares.25 Abolitionist designs w ­ ere advertised on sample ceramics in shop win­dows and could be chosen by an abolitionist customer to customize their ceramic purchases, and shops made sure to alert potential customers to their ethical brands. Shop­keep­ers could advertise to consumers who ­were likely to already have a tea ser­vice, and who ­were not replacing broken pieces but ­were making sure that they could serve tea and sugar to guests while declaring their abstention from slave-­ produced goods. The design proliferated on newsletter mastheads, book jackets, and pamphlets, as well as on teapots, cameos, sugar bowls, quilts, and other assorted consumer goods around the Anglophone Atlantic. Businesses, like that of B. Henderson’s China Ware­house in Peckham, South London, appealed to new customers who might other­wise have been lost entirely in an outright boycott of sugar. Henderson’s advertisement, which featured a crude drawing of the sugar basins she had for sale, “respectfully” informed “the Friends of Africa, that she [Henderson] has on Sale an Assortment of Sugar Basins, handsomely labeled in Gold Letters: ‘East India Sugar not made by Slaves.’ ” The fine print below the ad had an unattributed quotation: “A F ­ amily that uses 5lb. of Sugar per Week, ­will, by using East India, instead of West India, for 21 Months, prevent the slavery, or Murder of one Fellow-­Creature! Eight such Families in 19½ Years, ­will prevent the Slavery, or Murder of 100!! ” 26 Hosts could be sure that their guests knew exactly how many producers they ­were helping by consuming East India sugar, instead of “blood-­stained” West India Sugar.27 This fash­ion­able awareness of the producer–­consumer link, drawing from the popu­lar tracts by Cooper and Fox, was supposed to protect consumers from accidentally eating West India sugar and corrupting their po­liti­cal and moral values, as well as accidentally ­doing distant harm. Consumers w ­ ere searching for ways to advertise their moral stance in the slavery debate, and recognizable brands w ­ ere emerging to respond

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Fig 3.2 ​Gold lettering on this 1825 sugar bowl reads “East India sugar not made by slaves.” Photo­g raph © Museum of London.

to that demand.28 A Staffordshire jug, described by historian Martha Katz-­ Hyman, shows the variety of dif­fer­ent transfer prints that could be included on ceramics made by the small pottery of Christopher Whitehead. The images included three abolitionist designs, alongside eight other popu­lar designs of the 1820s. As Katz-­Hyman puts it, “Since the pottery manufacturers w ­ ere in business, a­ fter all, to make money, they took some care to make sure that the prints they chose reflected the popu­lar culture of the day.”29 But although abolition became a “brand,” it was a brand that reflected po­liti­cal values, not just aesthetics, and ­those po­liti­cal values appealed to only a fraction of the market. In this period, as Ashli White has described, “manufacturers desired consistency” of fashions, b­ ecause that gave them a guaranteed market for which l­ ittle market information was required. Ceramic producers like the Wedgwoods or other Staffordshire potteries offered a variety of designs

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advertising their users’ vari­ous po­l iti­cal leanings, ranging from French and American revolutionary images to abolitionist and royalist ones. 30 They ­were happy to customize, to a degree, to appeal to consumers’ po­ liti­cal values, but the shop­keep­ers themselves often added the designs ­later. The shop­keep­ers then advertised their versions of the abolition design to draw in new customers. Advertising specifically abolitionist log­os was a way to use po­liti­cal fashion to attract new customers. Abolitionist branding could help advocates of abolitionism police the po­liti­cal commitment and consistency of their friends. ­Because creating consumer demand—­and thus incentivizing be­hav­ior in the supply chain—­was at the heart of the argument for supporting antislavery purchasing, ­there was an imperative within the movement to press for consistency of consumer po­liti­cal taste. The appeal to “taste” was part of a wider transformation in fashion. As consumer goods became increasingly widely accessible, taste came to play an increasingly impor­tant role in differentiating consumers.31 Knowledge, which was as impor­tant as sentiment in shaping abolitionist discourse, was also reflected through discerning taste: conscientious consumers should know about and understand the origins of their products.32 Differentiation through po­liti­cal values was another means of “virtue signaling” to other middle-­class consumers by turning morality into fashion.33 In recounting the history of the early abolition campaigns, Thomas Clarkson himself wrote that ­women wore the cameo design as hairpins and men used snuff boxes inlaid with the design—­although he ­doesn’t mention ­whether the tobacco in ­those boxes was produced by enslaved ­labor.34 In contrast to ­those who felt that an ethical response to the consumption crises necessitated restraint, simplicity, and a “plain” aesthetic, bourgeois do-­gooders could conspicuously consume the genteel branding campaigns that promoted the idea that it was the origin of the good that mattered. Sometimes, purchases of branded objects contributed to fund-­ raising for abolitionist charities, but just as often the design was merely added to normal fash­ion­able purchases in order to “advertise” the wearer as a supporter of the abolitionist cause. This was abolitionism as fashion, as critic Wendell Phillips Garrison (son of American radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison) noted, concerned with “outward style.”35

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Price Premiums The development of an abolitionist brand as po­liti­cal fashion created some price incentives to counterfeiting, or simply misusing, abolitionist wares. But concerns about fraud also arose ­because genuine participation in ethical consumption often cost more. The inability to determine the source of goods supposedly produced without slave l­ abor plagued ­those dealing in sugar and cotton, as suggested by an advertisement placed by London merchants Smith and Leaper. They listed their refiners and inspectors, pointed to the price premium, and gave consumers information about how to judge East India sugar by texture. But the firm also noted that “as it pays a much higher Duty than West India Sugar, t­ here can be no suspicion of the latter being collusively imported by the Com­pany or their Servants.”36 Charging premium prices for free-­ produce manufactured goods could make up for the high price of this type of manufacturing, or for the higher tariffs charged for nonprotected West India sugar, but high prices also incentivized counterfeiting, like that experienced by Macaulay in 1793. The difficulty of securing goods guaranteed to be f­ ree of enslaved ­labor generated a price premium, but advocates behind higher prices were justified. George W. Taylor, head of the American ­Free Produce Association (AFPA) and Philadelphia ­Free L ­ abor Ware­house, put it this way: “I believe t­here is no antislavery movement that tells efficiency as this, ­because in the first place none are consistent without it and in the next place it bears directly as far as it goes upon the market value of slavery and against the system. And it is a constant fin­ger board pointing out the way in which slavery might be broken down if antislavery ­people as a body ­were in earnest.”37 Taylor, an Orthodox Quaker shop­keeper, began ­r unning his free-­produce store in 1847, at the age of forty-­four. He had been involved in the Philadelphia Committee on Requited ­Labor, the ­Free Produce Association of Friends, as well as the Philadelphia ­Free Produce Society, before becoming president of the AFPA. He ran the Non-­ Slaveholder, a free-­produce newspaper, acted as an agent for the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and contributed to William Lloyd Garrison’s radical abolitionist paper, the Liberator. Taylor’s extensive correspondence with customers and suppliers on both sides of the Atlantic reveals

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the commercial considerations of retailers involved in f­ ree produce. The imperative of the movement to demonstrate the profitability of ethical commerce, as well as to cater to the fash­ion­a ble demand of their consumers, meant that ­these businesses, while altruistic in princi­ple, had to operate like normal shops in practice. The consumers whom George W. Taylor and other free-­produce merchants w ­ ere chasing ­were largely middle-­class. Taylor’s account books, receipts, and letters to potential store ­owners give us snapshots of how much he was selling his goods for at w ­ holesale and retail, and how much he was buying them for. In 1853 he told correspondents he had some linen cambrics available, for ­wholesale, at 38 and 40 cents per yard. In the same year, slave-­produced cotton cambrics in Mas­sa­chu­setts sold for 7 cents per yard. 38 West Indies free-­produce white sugar and molasses ­were roughly on a par by this point, ­because emancipation in 1838 and the equalization of sugar import duties in Britain in 1846 had dramatically driven down the price of sugar—­a disaster for West Indies planters, but a boon for free-­produce consumers. Maple sugar, which by this point was a less necessary item, cost about double the amount of West Indian white sugar in 1852, which suggests the kinds of price differences that might have been operating before the end of West Indian slavery and the reduction of the tariff. Maple sugar in 1837, the year before emancipation went into effect, and before the reduction of the West Indies tariff, was selling for 20 cents per pound, while white sugar was between 7 and 10 cents per pound.39 By the 1850s, then, consumers would not have had to make a big sacrifice to eat free-­labor sugar, but clothing was still likely to be a stretch for ­people on low incomes. Taylor’s accounts show that he received a commission of 5 ­percent for selling the goods sent by his contact, Stephen Benson, future president of Liberia. He remitted $511.38 from sales of Benson’s Liberian produce, less $25.57 for his own commission and $5 for the freight from Monrovia to Bassa Cove, where Benson lived.40 This suggests that the partnership at least was essentially a costless profit of $25.57 to Taylor. But profit could clearly be a point of tension. In an exchange with Ezra Towne, who opened a free-­produce store in New York City in 1852 at the request of the AFPA’s board of man­ag­ers, Taylor explained, “I name to thee uniformly the lowest prices I can afford.” He asked him not to try to negotiate

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him down, and bristled at Towne’s suggestion that Taylor “knowest” that 9 cents per yard for black muslins was “much more than the relative value of them.” Taylor argued that he was “in the practice of fixing the prices in agreement with the cost of the goods, without regard to prices in the general market.” This may have been true, but he was certainly keenly aware of what his customers would pay for vari­ous items, as letters to his manufacturers and producers suggest.41 But he could also drive up prices to suit producers. Writing to Benson, his supplier of Liberian free-­produce goods, Taylor explained, “I have sold a box or more of the Cassada Starch by retail by keeping no wheat starch thus making room for it at the same price. Not seeing any other way to get it sold except at far too low a price.” 42 Although this was not exactly fraudulent, Taylor was ensuring the sale of pricier cassava starch by refusing to stock the equally ethical but cheaper wheat starch. He knew he could pull this off ­because his largely middle-­class customers did not mind the substitution and could afford the higher price. The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the newspaper operated by free-­produce advocate Benjamin Lundy, included a regular column by Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, who was also a founding member of the Philadelphia Ladies’ F ­ ree Produce Society.43 The column regularly exhorted fellow ­women abolitionists, as ­t hose responsible for ­house­hold bud­geting and consumption, to participate in the free-­produce movement, outlining both the rational and the emotional reasons the movement was the “most consistent” form of abolition action. But Chandler was aware that the “increased expense, incurred by making use of the productions of f­ ree ­labor, is often among the reasons assigned for neglect of that method of opposition to Slavery.” The higher cost of free-­produce goods, though, should not deter the frugal ­house­wife, however, as “we do not conceive that it is any more excusable to make use of slave-­wrought articles, on account of their cheapness, than we have to indulge in what­ever e­ lse may please our fancy, at the expense of the unpaid creditor.” 44 Chandler advised making sacrifices for the cause of ­free produce “when the income of a f­amily is barely sufficient to cover its expenses” by forgoing “some paltry gratification.” Like many at the time, Chandler assumed that living on the edge of poverty was a choice, reflected in consumption be­hav­ior, and therefore it was not justification enough for buying cheap, slave-­made

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goods. By making tiny sacrifices in other areas—­possibly “wearing plain garb” or “eating coarse food”—­women could provide “proof of their devotion to the cause of emancipation”—of course, assuming that they ­weren’t already ­doing ­those ­things.45

Labeling When a consumer moved in certain circles, anti-­fashion could become fashion. And so wearing slightly unfashionable clothes or eating coarse food would act as a marker—as clear as the Wedgwood logo—­that the consumer was making purchases based on values, not value. One way proposed by the strictest adherents to ­free produce was to make f­ ree cotton cloth that was deliberately unfashionable and low quality.46 This approach may have been simply making the best of what was available, given that existing samples and merchants’ letters point to the fairly low quality of cotton materials on offer as a result of the loss of manufacturing scale and potentially even the amateur nature of its production by supporters of the movement who dabbled in business and had a potentially captive market.47 One reason for the poor quality and high price of ethical goods was that manufacturers who actively wanted to promote free-­labor goods had trou­ble ensuring that the goods w ­ ere actually ethically produced. American free-­produce merchants encountered this prob­lem. A merchant from Londongrove, Chester County, Pennsylvania, who sent samples of his cotton wares to the Genius of Universal Emancipation explained his pro­ cess: first, “We obtained three bales of cotton of Charles Collins, at New York, which had been forwarded to him by Francis Williamson of Murfreesborough in North Carolina, with certificates of its being the product of ­free ­labor.” ­After this, the cotton was taken to a spinner. But “as it was found much loss of time, and consequent a considerable increase in the expense of spinning, would result from keeping it entirely separate from other cotton in its passage through the vari­ous pro­cesses of the cotton mill, we agreed with a cotton spinner to take the cotton at cost (10 cts.), and spin it along with his own stock, taking care to preserve what would pass the mill unmixed, for our use.” Although the merchant was pleased that this pro­cess kept the price down “at the common price in the market,” it is clear that this method for spinning cotton risked mixing the f­ree

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cotton with slave-­produced cotton.48 ­Because of the very small amounts of ­free cotton available, and the low demand for it in the market, this was a regular prob­lem described by manufacturers approached by free-­ produce merchants seeking suppliers. One manufacturer who had been approached by the AFPA wrote, “From the nature of my manufacture it would not be con­ve­nient for me to work ­free cotton into goods for you, ­unless I could get sufficient to employ my machinery constantly; or at least, sufficient for a constant supply of twist; for which I should not use any inferior to the best Miss. Cotton.” 49 In other words, the quantity of free-­produce cotton was nowhere near enough to justify an existing manufacturer’s dedicating resources to its production, which would mean it would have to combine free-­and slave-­produced cottons. At first, manufacturers and merchants tried to address this prob­lem with their own individual labels. In the United States, Benjamin Lundy’s free-­produce-­supporting newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, published regular editorials supporting free-­labor merchants. In 1830 Lundy addressed the prob­lem of guaranteeing supply: “A paragraph, from the ‘Fredericksburg Arena,’ which has been copied into a number of other papers, in speaking of the Philadelphia ‘­Free Cotton Association,’ expresses some doubt as to ‘where,’ in our f­ ree country, cotton could be obtained untouched by the hands of slavery.” Although at this point many abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and the Grimke s­ isters, supported the free-­produce movement, questions ­were already arising as to how practical it was, in part ­because of the inability to guarantee a completely free-­labor supply chain. Lundy pointed to the use of certificate labels attached to the cotton. The labels w ­ ere produced by a North Carolina Quaker planter, Nathan Hunt Jr., who had been commissioned by the Philadelphia merchant Morris Longstreth to provide ­free cotton, and who would continue a long working relationship supplying Philadelphia-­ based free-­produce stores.50 Two examples of the certificates ­were provided, each declaring that the cotton was “exclusively the product of ­Free L ­ abor, as I personally attended to the picking of it.”51 Individual attempts by merchants and producers to ensure the “­free ­labor” provenance of their goods ­were amplified ­after the foundation in 1838 of the American ­Free Produce Association in Philadelphia. The

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AFPA issued its own label, using the classic Wedgewood kneeling slave design, which guaranteed that the products it was tied to ­were ­free from slave ­labor.52 When the AFPA s­ topped producing its own cotton in 1847, individual merchants resumed their labeling in order to avoid what one merchant referred to as the “disgusting deceptions” that occurred in the market for free-­produce goods. 53 Of course, warning potential free-­ produce consumers that the goods they ­were purchasing from other shops could be fraudulent had the added benefit of ensuring that ­people like Josias Browne, who issued their own label, could capture the market for free-­labor cotton manufactures. Not only did free-­produce merchants and consumers need to consider the issue of con­spic­u­ous consumption of free-­produce labels. They also needed labels as a guarantee that the higher-­priced good was actually as ethical as it claimed to be. For instance, even sourcing free-­labor cotton was tricky, as it typically relied on Quaker networks for domestically produced cotton for the American market, or lengthened supply chains to unreliable levels (increasing the likelihood of fraud) in international commerce. As with the manufacturing pro­cess, the separation out of free-­ labor from slave-­labor cotton created much smaller quantities and reduced the production efficiencies small producers relied on.54 This meant that ­there ­were on the market “­free cotton” goods of differing quality. Guarantees and labels could protect consumers from accidentally purchasing unethical goods, but they could also be fraudulent. Free-­produce merchant George W. Taylor received a letter from a correspondent who wrote, “If ­there is not some ­little attention paid to the kind of men that facilitating are given to use ­Free ­Labour Goods, to make capital out of to speculate in slave grown articles, I fear the cause ­will be much retarded &c.”55 In other words, ­people worried that the profits made by selling free-­ labor goods would be reinvested in slavery, undermining the w ­ hole proj­ect. B ­ ecause t­ here was no universal way to assign the “­free produce” brand globally, ­there was ample scope for merchants to counterfeit or consumers to fake participation in the movement. Adulterated sugar, West Indies sugar served in “East India Sugar” bowls, f­ ree cotton mixed with slave-­produced cotton: t­ hese ­were all prob­lems that undermined the purity of the free-­labor / free-­produce brand.

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Free-­Produce Stores In both the United States and Britain, free-­produce shops and ware­houses became another way to guarantee the ethical provenance of goods. Although ­t here w ­ ere ­earlier examples of religious communities opening shops to promote morality within commerce, what distinguished free-­ produce shops from their forerunners was that consumers’ purchases helped advance a cause not only through the proceeds of the sale but also through the “message” that act of consumption sent to f­ ree laborers.56 A dollar (or shilling) spent in a free-­produce shop was a dollar (or shilling) not spent on slave-­produced goods. This understanding of the role of the consumer in the supply chain helped to shape the approaches taken by free-­produce stores in selecting, pricing, and marketing their stock. This differentiated commercial abolitionists from ­those whose “notions of morality” led them to purely po­liti­cal or religious solutions to the prob­lem of slavery, rather than seeking answers in market economics. 57 Shop­ keep­ers promoting ethical commerce argued that once consumers w ­ ere given the right information, and other impediments ­were removed, the market would demonstrate the benefits of abolition to all commercial participants. The American F ­ ree Produce Association acted as a ­wholesale ware­ house for retail shop­keep­ers, and used subscriptions to fund proj­ects in the sourcing and manufacture of free-­labor goods. From that year, it became easier to source free-­labor sugar, which was available from the newly emancipated British West Indies. A parallel organ­ization, the British F ­ ree Produce Association, was formed by Quaker abolitionist Joseph Sturge in 1849, with stores appearing in Manchester, Bath, Street (southwest of Bath), and London, largely dedicated to the provision of free-­labor cotton.58 In Britain, at least four free-­labor “depots” ­were operating. In the United States, at least 52 free-­produce stores opened between 1817 and the Civil War, and at least 26 shops in Philadelphia ­were involved in selling free-­produce goods. T ­ here w ­ ere shops at vari­ous times in Maine, Mas­sa­chu­setts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Mary­land, in towns as well as in major cities.59 Free-­produce shop­keep­ers came from a variety of backgrounds: many, but not all, w ­ ere Quaker. The AFPA received a letter shortly a­ fter its

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organ­ization from a Hicksite Quaker in Galena, Ohio, stating that he knew of Daniel L. Miller, the Philadelphia merchant who kept the ­Free Produce ware­house, ­because they ­were both Hicksites, and that he was referred to the organ­ization by A. L. Benedict, another Quaker connection.60 Some shops w ­ ere general stores that included free-­produce items; o­ thers w ­ ere dedicated free-­produce stores. And several w ­ ere run by members of the Colored F ­ ree Produce Society, including James Pierce and William Whipper.61 Many free-­produce shops ­were ­family businesses, and the letters of subscription and supply between the American F ­ ree Produce Association and their network suggest that ­women played an impor­tant role as shop­keep­ers, as well as consumers, in the movement. Lydia White, for instance, was one of the most successful of the ­Free Produce shop­keep­ers in the American movement.62 Lydia White’s business demonstrates the role of reputation in building an ethical shop’s customer base. A North Carolina Quaker wrote specifically asking for a hundredweight of sugar from White, whom she trusted to get her the best price.63 Another w ­ oman, Elizabeth Jones, wrote to the American ­Free Produce Society asking them to “please secure for me the following named goods: 8 pieces unbleached muslin, 25 Ct Cotton lap, 5 Ct Candle wick. I w ­ ill expect them left at L. White store as soon as done and I ­will ­settle with her for them.”64 White’s reputation, and the backing of the AFPA, convinced skeptics like Joshua Ely, who wrote, “I have heretofore bought sparingly of goods said to be the product of ­free ­labour, on account of the belief I have had that ­there was much fiction used in palming them off to the public as ­free goods, and indeed this belief has been more than once encouraged by the statements of persons in whom I place confidence for veracity that in groceries at least gross frauds have been detected; but the source through which t­ hese goods come, ­will full remove this doubt and I ­shall be glad to purchase some of them at prices to suit my customers.”65 The shop­keep­er’s reputation could act as an ethical brand in its own right. Out of frustration with the supplies on offer and the creaky supply chain that conveyed them across the Atlantic, some shop­keep­ers, like James Mott of Philadelphia, became their own manufacturers. Lundy advertised Mott’s shop in the Genius of Universal Emancipation in his usual enthusiastic tone. But, adding his own testimonial, having “seen the

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goods,” he exhorted his readers to reward Mott and his manufacturer “as he brings his goods into the market upon a par with other manufactures of the same quality, notwithstanding the extra expense incurred by the difficulty, now existing, in procuring cotton, produced by ­f ree l­ abor, in considerable quantities.”66 But Mott was an in­ter­est­i ng case, and he represents an answer to one of the questions about what incentivized shop­keep­ers to participate in the free-­produce movement. Mott did begin manufacturing his own cotton cloth, but he was not new to the cloth market, nor did he rely exclusively on his newly manufactured cotton to draw customers to his ware­house. In 1842, while he was president of the executive committee of the American ­Free Produce Association, he advocated “total abstinence” from the produce of slave ­labor in the American ­Free Produce Journal. That year he was also listed in O’Brien’s Philadelphia Directory as a “­wholesale wool dealer.”67 ­People already trading or producing alternative, free-­ produce goods could embrace the movement without needing to switch supplies. Of course it is nearly impossible to discern the “true” motive for opening a free-­produce shop, but it was certainly the case that some shop­ keep­ers saw the advantage of appealing to free-­produce consumers. In the 1837 report from the Philadelphia Quaker committee on requited (paid) ­labor, businesses in Philadelphia that sold “requited ­labor produce” w ­ ere listed. The list included seven grocery stores, six “cakes and confectionary” shops, one dry goods merchant, and one stocking manufacturer. The committee had sent out a del­e­ga­tion to search out the shops in the city that carried this produce, and by publicizing their wares, ­these shops could attract value-­oriented shoppers even though they ­were not “dedicated” free-­produce stores. In fact, potential customers w ­ ere warned by the committee: “As other goods are sold at the store mentioned it is recommended that f­ ree goods be invariably asked for in order to avoid deception and ­mistakes.”68 ­Because free-­produce goods almost always cost more than slave-­produced goods, the implication that “deception” might take place implied that shop­keep­ers might attempt to pass off a slave-­ produced good for a free-­labor good to get a better price. Reputation was a crucial protection for ethical consumers, but, just as with labels, it required vigilance.

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The Reputation of the Sierra Leone Com­pany Store In West Africa, the development of a reputation for the Sierra Leone Com­ pany was fundamental to the mission of encouraging legitimate commerce. As abolitionist labels went, the SLC mark’s meaning on the coast was clear. Neighboring kings pledged their eagerness to stop slave trading (though how sincerely, Macaulay often wondered) in order to trade with the colony. B ­ ecause the Com­pany was expressly set up in order to promote the abolition of the slave trade, the Com­pany’s traders would not accept slaves in payment. Therefore the “double price” received by the slave traders who sold counterfeit SLC guns would have been in nonslave goods, or in the Com­pany’s own currency. Making its purpose even more clear, slaves ran away to the colony from surrounding towns. When a deputation of local worthies arrived in the colony in 1798, they claimed that the colony was “enticing” fugitive slaves. Macaulay “positively refused to interfere actively in the apprehension, with the view of reducing them to their former slavery, of individuals, whose only Crime was that they had escaped from slavery.”69 Macaulay’s letter to the Com­pany’s directors suggested that the purchasers of the fraudulent guns knew the SLC’s po­liti­cal label and valued it. In the wider Sierra Leone region, Moricanu, a leader of the Susu, told Sierra Leone’s Governor Macaulay in 1793 that “he had heard of our Settlement and views with plea­sure, and longed to know more of us. He wished to open a trade with us as his Queen would furnish rice and stock of all kinds.”70 Macaulay reported, “The principal Ivory traders in this River are Natives” rather than Eu­ro­pean or Euro-­African. Macaulay was pleased that several of ­these had turned to the colony to trade in legitimate produce: One of ­these and the chief of them named John Pierce is particularly attached to us and prides himself in being our friend and protector. His influence is very g­ reat in consequence of his wealth and f­amily which is one of the first. Our ­people alone meet with no molestation in this River and entirely thro this mans partiality to us. Mr Alexander Macaulay was indeed once struck by a Nalow, but Pierce beat him so severely for it, that a similar outrage has never been again committed. Pierce’s language on the occasion was worth noting: “­These

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­ eople come into the River to do us good: they hurt no one, they take p away no man’s child; they bring us good money, they give us fair price, they never have palaver with any, no one ever has palaver with them.”71

In his lament over the counterfeit guns, Macaulay’s worries for the colony’s reputation extended beyond the example he had witnessed, as he speculated that “the Cloths marked SLC are also in such repute in that river that the traders ­will prob­ably have recourse to a similar expedient with re­spect to them.”72 That the traders w ­ ere getting double the price for fake SLC guns indicates how impor­tant brand identity could be in this new practice of ethical consumption. In assigning the goods sold by the Sierra Leone Com­pany with a mark, the Com­pany was following standard Atlantic trading practice.73 The issuance of Sierra Leone Com­pany coins, their logo on bills of exchange, the marks on barrels, on guns, and on packages of goods destined for the colony, created a varied but clearly recognizable identity to the Com­pany’s servants and traders in exchange. Following closely on the heels of the pre­ce­dent set by Josiah Wedgwood and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the po­liti­cal value of this mark was what it signaled about the purposes of the Sierra Leone Com­pany and the types of payments it would receive. Macaulay and the Sierra Leone Com­pany knew that reputation was an impor­tant component of ensuring a market for their products. They worried that fraud “­will be followed by two bad effects: Our sale ­will be injured (but indeed we have no Guns at pre­sent) and the Character of our Guns w ­ ill be injured, as the Guns sold with the Colonys mark are in no re­spect superior to the ordinary Trade guns.”74 Commodity currency allowed the Africans a mea­sure of control over the trade since commodity currencies ­were difficult to counterfeit. Economic anthropologist Jane Guyer writes that “­there was ­great expertise within African socie­ties about the authenticity of metals and other commodities. For populations with such expertise the importance of ‘commodity currencies’ may not only have been that objects had alternative ‘use values’—as clothes, drink, tools, or weaponry—­but that counterfeit was so easy to detect.”75. British attempts to manufacture their own guinea cloths failed ­because African

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consumers could tell that the dyes w ­ ere dif­fer­ent.76 An early nineteenth-­ century commentator noted that Senegalese merchants “can accurately distinguish” Indian-­produced cloths “from ­t hose manufactured in Eu­ rope.”77 African consumers w ­ ere discerning. But if the visual clues of Com­pany marks on goods could not be trusted, Macaulay’s efforts would be wasted. The use of Sierra Leone Com­pany currency, for instance, may have curtailed slave trading, but it was subject to counterfeit as well. Macaulay reported, “Two forged Dollars w ­ ere stopt at the store and brought before us t­ oday. On examining them we perceived plainly that the handwriting was Elliot’s formerly King Naimbanna’s secretary, but as our opinion could not appear sufficient proof on which to proceed against him, we set ­every engine to work to procure adequate evidence.”78 Interestingly for Macaulay’s recourse to the law of forgery in the case of the guns, the issue at hand in both circumstances was trust. Both banks (issuers of credit in the form of banknotes) and ethical commerce relied on their reputations, embodied in their recognizable signature or brand. But fakes, like Macaulay’s gun or the Com­pany’s currency, w ­ ere not necessarily seen as fraudulent by African participants in the colony’s trade. Forged money could be as good as real money in a system in which credit offered by state banks or merchant banks was loosely regulated. Fake goods could have their place within consumer society, in Africa as elsewhere, where “originals” could be beyond the bud­gets or requirements of consumers. In fact, sometimes demand for a fake—­British printed cottons instead of Indian chintz—­could create an entirely new market.79 An excavation in the 1950s in Nigeria discovered an African-­produced imitation Wedgwood design from the early nineteenth ­century, suggesting that the fash­ion­able brand had appeal throughout the Atlantic, but that locally produced versions ­were acceptable as alternatives for the expensive wares.80 As Maxine Berg points out, even Adam Smith “argued that we take plea­sure in the ingenuity of the imitation.”81 For African consumers, and for consumers in the wider Atlantic, what was more impor­tant than fake or original was that the customer had access to someone they could trust who would not try to pass off a fake as an original, ­either in quality or in price.82 As Guyer argues, while fakes

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can be desired by consumers, “Fraud, by contrast, breeches criteria for the primary naming of the commodity. The goods turn out not to be what the seller said they ­were; they only resemble the real ­thing.”83 Trust in the shop­keeper could overcome the fundamental information deficit at the heart of transatlantic commerce.84 What African shoppers relied on was the reputation of their merchants. As the Sokoto Caliphate’s philosopher-­ poet, Nana Asma’u, wrote in 1831, “Be fair in all your dealings, even about the smallest ­thing. Do not dupe ­people headed to the market to sell. It is wrong, like reclaiming gifts you have given away. ­Those who are untrustworthy, Hereafter, ­Will have no trust left, Be sure of God’s Truth.”85 Developing a relationship in which consumers could trust shop­keep­ers and itinerant merchants not to try to pass off a fake as an original was a crucial part of the commercial pro­cess, one that states and colonies throughout West Africa ­were concerned about as commercialization spread and perceptions of corruption and greed proliferated. Macaulay was only too aware of the temptations to commit fraud in legitimate commerce. A significant amount of the “assorting” of goods for trade in West Africa took place between Eu­ro­pean (and American) traders on the coast, often in contravention of official metropolitan restrictions, ­because the demands of West African consumers ­were so specific, and it was hard for one firm, or com­pany, or trading voyage to provide the w ­ hole range of global goods needed.86 But the Sierra Leone Com­pany did not want to do business with slave traders. Prior to Macaulay’s arrival in Sierra Leone, t­ here had been some question raised publicly about the ethical nature of trade between the Mandinka itinerant traders who arrived in the colony and the Sierra Leone Com­pany. Equally, Anna Maria Falconbridge, the wife of one of the officers sent to establish the Com­pany, wrote in her account of her time in Freetown that then-­governor William Dawes purchased provisions from a French slave-­trading vessel as it left the nearby slaving factory at Bunce Island. B ­ ecause the slaving vessel wanted payment only in slaves, which was expressly prohibited by the Com­pany’s charter, Dawes paid the captain with a bill drawn on the account of the notorious slave trader Renaud. Falconbridge commented, “I think if this is not, it borders on an infringement of the Act of Parliament, for incorporating the Com­pany, which says; ‘the Com­pany ­shall not,

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through the medium of their servants, or other­wise, directly, or indirectly, traffic in slaves.’ ”87 Although ultimately the Com­pany would find ways to operate in the midst of the slave trade, Macaulay tried for a time to cut off all commercial relations with known slave traders. 88 But this left the colony at the mercy of the few legitimate trading voyages that brought goods, and therefore in a position of weakness in regulating the goods that would be sold in the Com­pany store, with the Com­pany’s brand and reputation on the line. In trading with Sierra Leone, for instance, Martin Benson bragged, “The chief commercial agent is my par­tic­u­lar friend and has passed with his seal marks many barrels flour that ­were very indifferent—if it be a sin I ­will take it with the profits to my own Account.”89 Still, even Benson found obvious attempts to cut corners frustrating, largely ­because they made it difficult to pull off his more stealthy cons. For instance, he wrote in his account of the same voyage, “Please tell the honest man who made our shoes that he forgot to sew the heels on and that it is not the fashion in this Country to wear shoes with holes . . . ​or without straps but perhaps he was hurried.”90 If abolitionists believed that Africans had been receiving poor-­quality, worthless baubles in exchange for ­human life, then perhaps this deception makes sense: poor quality shoes sent in exchange for something other than slaves would be an improvement for coastal commerce. But Macaulay, Benson and other African traders knew that fashion—­not necessarily hierarchical, metropolitan-­driven fashion, but fashion dictated by local taste—­was just as impor­tant for consumers in Sierra Leone as it was for t­ hose in London and Philadelphia. Facing the prospect of poor-­quality merchandise and attempted frauds by unscrupulous traders, Macaulay was concerned about maintaining control of the antislavery brand of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, and the po­liti­cal value of that name in West African commerce. He knew that the Com­pany faced stiff competition in the region and so would need to market itself and its goods effectively in order to make any kind of profit and thereby demonstrate the profitability of legitimate commerce—­not only to financial and government backers in Britain, but also to the traders in the neighborhood of Freetown, whom the Com­pany ­were trying to convince to abandon the slave trade in ­favor of legitimate commerce.

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As with other fash­ion­a ble consumer goods, price could be used to signal quality. Macaulay wrote that Pa London “and King Jemmie pressed much to have the price of Camwood raised from four bars (the price we have given since the war) to five bars, and they insisted on the example of Bance [Bunce] Island” but Macaulay told them “that our goods ­were of the best kind and we could afford no more than four bars.” Macaulay wanted to promote the brand of the colony by refusing to devalue the quality of the Com­pany’s goods. One way African consumers ensured that the quality of guns was not below their standards was through reputation: if the Sierra Leone Com­pany established a reputation for having good-­quality firearms, they would be able to continue to trade and charge a premium price for a reputation for quality. Macaulay feared for the “injury” to the character of the colony’s guns ­because he worried that the appearance of poor-­quality “ordinary trade guns”—­possibly made with industrial pipe or with a welded barrel, both of which could cause injury to the person firing the weapon—­with the colony’s mark would undermine their reputational premium.91 But even the pricing system in the colony had to respond to the practices of the slave traders in the region. Macaulay found the normal modes of ­doing business on the coast difficult to explain to the Sierra Leone Com­pany directors. He begged them not to add freight, insurance, and commission on the invoices for goods sent out for the Com­pany store, arguing that only by adding that amount to each article listed in the invoice would the Com­pany be able to charge the correct amount. This meant constructing an invoice that reflected the “prime cost of goods at Sierra Leone” including charges, which the store could use in the customary practice of showing the invoice on request. Macaulay outlined the practice: “For example, 100w of good Ivory is offered, for which they agree to take goods at the rate of 46£ to according to the Invoice price. It is in vain to say the charges must be added as constituting a part of the Invoice price. The Custom is other­wise and glad of the temporary advantage they oblige us to pay 25 or 30 ­percent more than other purchases.” He suggested that this new form of invoice be undertaken “In order to obviate e­ very appearance of fraud.” The Com­pany store was actually being remarkably up front about costs, compared to the practice of slave traders in inflating their invoices, but b­ ecause they w ­ ere not adhering to the customs of trade,

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it looked like they w ­ ere trying to defraud their customers, who knew to compare the sale price with the invoice price.92 The colony’s settlers who ­were setting themselves up in trade, like Mary Perth, and direct retail from visiting ships—­not to mention from neighboring Euro-­A frican or Eu­ro­pean slave traders, like John and Alexander Anderson based at Bunce Island in the Sierra Leone River—­ gave the Sierra Leone Com­pany competition in local trade, despite their attempts to tie commerce to their currency. This could potentially drive up the prices of the African commodities exchanged in the colony for export. Sierra Leone’s was a potentially valuable trade to protect, and damage to the SLC brand could ultimately damage the viability of legitimate commerce. With more competition in buyers for their produce, African traders would expect their prices to rise, and therefore their access to imported commodities to increase. The Com­pany store’s interest in keeping control of its brand, then, was an attempt to differentiate its products and to separate itself from the field of competitors in terms of both price and brand identity, to keep the prime cost of African goods for export low and the value of Sierra Leone Com­pany merchandise high. And so Macaulay found himself resorting to somewhat unethical name-­ calling to try to undermine his competition. Businesses needed to be creative in alerting their customers to ways of determining “au­then­tic” free-­produce goods, but they also could use accusations of fraud against other traders to reassure their own customers and generate consumer loyalty through reputational advantage. Macaulay, for instance, tried to undermine local consumers’ trust in the slave traders in order to redirect their trade to the colony: “We shewed them how Mr [John] Tilley [a nearby slave trader, operating from Bunce Island in the Sierra Leone river] had artfully lowered the price of Slaves forty bars in the purchase of which he had no competitors. That he might be enabled by his im­mense profits on slaves to pay a higher rate for Camwood, the trade in which we contended with him for.”93 John Tilley, in fact, was purchasing from the Brown & Ives voyages the same goods as the Sierra Leone Com­pany was buying. Martin Benson, the captain of the Brown & Ives voyages, described Tilley as “a friend of mine” in explaining his sales to his employers. Benson accepted payment of £153 by one set of bills of exchange

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on the British slave-­trading firm of John and Alexander Anderson, the operators of Bunce Island.94 With the same goods on offer, literally from the same American supplier, Tilley could very easily undermine the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s market. Macaulay never discovered who was producing the counterfeit guns, but he had a pretty good idea about who was selling them.

expectations for labeling evolved, as savvy consumers around the Atlantic demanded more from the businesses involved in antislavery. It is impossible to say how much of a prob­lem fraud was in the free-­produce trade, but customers in the United States, in Britain, and in Africa worried about it equally. Merchants and manufacturers came up with novel ways of branding their goods—­with labels, with images, with marks, and even by issuing a specific currency. But they also encouraged their customers to think of that brand as part of their identity as po­liti­cal consumers, by attempting to provide a full range of ethical products of similar or superior quality to the morally suspect goods they could purchase elsewhere. All of this was impor­tant ­because of the high prices for legitimate commerce and free-­produce goods. In fact, an overriding concern with the high prices of t­ hese goods would become increasingly impor­tant in abolitionists’ commercial lobbying efforts, as merchants attempted to lower the cost through increased competition, new tariff regulations, and eventually through outsourcing that relied on low ­labor costs in colonial peripheries. The strategies ­adopted and innovated by ­t hese merchants and consumers ­were not necessarily unique to ethical commerce, but the desire to act consistently, and the concern about the supply chain—­rather than just concerns about quality control—­distinguished the arguments. This was not just about protecting the consumer; it was about protecting the consumer from unintentionally harming the producer. It was about taking some of the risk out of the complex and opaque global supply chains of modern commerce, and it was about ensuring that the default position of ethical consumers was not to distrust global commerce entirely, but to

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place their trust in new institutions like the American ­Free Produce Association or the closed-­currency Sierra Leone Com­pany Store. Abolitionism would have l­ittle purchase as a brand if it did not (virtue) signal cultural taste and knowledge. Labeling and branding relied more on reputational protections than on l­egal regulations, and in that way they shared characteristics with credit relationships in early nineteenth-­century Atlantic trade, the subject of Chapter 4.

chapter 4

Rotten Credit

I

n 1830 Henry Macaulay, Zachary’s son, wrote to his ­father from Freetown. He had been sent to assess the ­family business ­after the death of Kenneth, Zachary’s second cousin and the agent for his firm on the ground. Macaulay & Babington, Zachary’s London-­based trading firm, was short of cash and long on loans. Henry was in Freetown to see what could be liquidated, what loans could be called in. But he wrote, “The period of credit at Sierra Leone . . . ​is nominally fixed at three months; but the w ­ hole plan of d ­ oing business t­here is so irregular that notwithstanding this rule, a creditor would be thought a fool who should ask for his money before the end of six months. ­There is no such ­thing as interest known or heard of at Sierra Leone.”1 That same year, in Sokoto, Nana Asma’u wrote that “anyone who presses a poor man to repay a loan” would “be humiliated tomorrow.”2 Investment through loans was impor­tant in generating both wealth and relational power—­the kind loathed by liberals. In West Africa, Macaulay was concerned that most loans ­were long-­term, bore no interest, and operated within personal relationships. This chapter ­will explore how African, Eu­ro­pean, and American merchants managed, or mismanaged, trust, information, and debt in attempting to establish ethical commerce. Reputation and trust could generate reli108

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ability within ethical consumer markets, and they worked alongside labels and brand identifiers to ensure the ethical provenance of goods that needed to be imbued with moral value. Trust and reputation played an additional role in keeping the international wheels of legitimate commerce spinning by facilitating credit. Despite a dislike of debt, and its connotations of de­pen­dency and relationship to practices of enslavement, the long-­distance trade of legitimate commerce could not operate without credit in vari­ous forms. Eu­ro­pean merchants trading with other Eu­ro­pean and American firms, Eu­ro­pean and African exchanges, and African trade with other Africans all relied on va­ri­e­ties of credit. But the practice of cross-­cultural lending raised ethical concerns about shady business practices, debt de­pen­dency and shifting balances of trade, usury, and the role of collateral. The “moral community” that should have regulated debt relationships was replaced by ethical-­commerce proponents’ embrace of the market as a means of aligning the incentives of self-­ interested actors.3 And so, while the initial reaction of abolitionists to the relationship of debt and enslavement was horror, the innovations in trade that resulted from the shift to legitimate commerce actually saw an increase in consumer goods traded into Africa and a dramatic increase in long-­term credit. In part this was a result of the arguments put forward for ethical commerce—­continuity of access to consumer goods, and inexpensive African exports for the global economy that would prove the efficacy of abandoning expensive enslaved ­labor—­which encouraged trading firms ­toward monopsony, facilitated by credit relationships.

Morality of Debt Credit was an impor­tant mechanism for allowing African merchants and consumers a mea­sure of control over trade, b­ ecause commodity currencies ­were difficult (though not impossible) to counterfeit. In the slave trade, credit had operated to ensure the quality of goods. Coastal African merchants took the items on credit to sell to traders who operated in the interior. In Senegal, Gambia, and the Niger Delta, the Atlantic trade was financed by the “advance of goods by mono­poly importers, with or without price fixing, to a set of intermediary brokerages which used this

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capital to purchase produce for export.” 4 If the quality of the goods was found wanting, then the African merchants would dispute the valuation when the Atlantic traders returned, giving fewer slaves or less produce in return, or even seizing Eu­ro­pean sailors.5 Cross-­cultural and international trade made credit essential to exchange in the absence of an internationally recognized currency (such as the pound sterling or the dollar) to act as a store of value.6 At forts and factories in Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and the Bights of Benin and Biafra, cash was less impor­tant than commodity exchange and debt relationships. Eu­ro­pean trading companies recorded debts owed and creditors, and bills of exchange w ­ ere issued by the military governments.7 Gareth Austin notes that in the wider West African context, despite Islamic injunctions against usury, in both Hausa and Asante socie­ties, savings ­were supposed to be invested, as credit e­ ither for the individual or for kin, and investments ­were expected to generate interest.8 Historian Ghyslaine Lydon reports that a variety of proverbs in the Saharan trade indicated the prominent role of credit in trans-­Saharan commerce. ­These proverbs give an indication of the kinds of popu­lar notions of po­l iti­cal economy that w ­ ere operating in nineteenth-­century Islamic African commerce, in which debt was widespread. For instance, “A loan established in precise terms w ­ ill yield wealth”; “The one without debts has no wealth”; “­Those who are not patient with the treason of trade partners ­will never get wealthy”; and “One cannot gain wealth if one does not have trust in p ­ eople.”9 Gareth Austin notes that in Asante, the proverb “Money does not go out to earn its livelihood and come back empty-­handed” illustrates the central understanding of interest in loans.10 Fundamentally, t­ hese proverbs all act as reminders that credit was both a risk and a necessary part of any increase in wealth in West African long-­distance commerce. As Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith have recently argued, “Credit allowed humanity to reshape time and space . . . ​the promise to pay (that is, to assume a debt) thus became the primary medium of exchange in the cap­it­ al­ist system.”11 Wealth was assumed to be accounted in full—as an ongoing mea­sure of credits and debts, as well as a mea­sure of available capital. For trans-­Saharan as well as transatlantic traders, long-­distance, long-­term debt relationships ­were fundamental to the ability to conduct trade, as well as an impor­tant part of the value of any trader to the

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­ holesalers and retailers back home. H w ­ uman relationships of debt relied on trusted partners. The personal nature of loans that had characterized relationships of debt in the early modern period was reconfigured in the eighteenth-­ century Atlantic, as the transient nature of the populations created the demand for new institutions for credit provision. The consumer revolution also provided both an incentive and a mechanism for this credit, and pawning became an impor­tant tool in many port cities.12 Owning slaves gave families in West African ports access to credit, which helped to fuel the emergence of consumer socie­ties in t­ hese towns. They could pawn their slaves for small loans, which could be in goods or in (goods-­based) capital with which to expand their own trade into the interior.13 Merchants in Senegal, for instance, could also accept domestic slaves or even kin as pawns. ­These pawns could not be sold into the trade without causing a palaver or worse, but they could work for the merchant or the com­pany to earn “interest” ­until the load was paid off.14 This was not dissimilar to forms of slave mortgages that would become impor­tant in the American South during the nineteenth ­century, where h­ uman beings ­were used as a form of equity mortgaging to f­ ree up capital.15 Whereas land was of value only to someone willing to use it or rent it out, slaves used to secure loans ­were in some ways preferred as collateral b­ ecause of their portability: in cases of default, a pawned slave could be taken to the Ca­rib­bean and sold for much more than the “purchase value” on the West African coast.16 Investment in slaves therefore created access to credit in ways that t­hose without pawnable dependents did not have. Abolitionists ­were deeply concerned by the purported frequency of debt pawns being sold into the Atlantic World. In real­ity, this did not happen very often ­because it tended to upset relations between trading partners, since pawns ­were technically dependents with certain rights in most African socie­ties.17 Trading socie­ties, like the Efik in Old Calabar, would occasionally intervene to prevent foreclosure on pawns, paying the debt of the member of their society who had defaulted on the loan and disciplining him in order to dissuade other members from defaulting.18 The specific type of mortgage to buy a slave—­more akin to the mortgaged purchase of a h­ ouse, or a credit card purchase paid back over time—­that proliferated in the Ca­r ib­bean in the late eigh­teenth ­century and in the

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American South in the nineteenth ­century was not common in Senegambia. But the existence of rotating credit associations like the esusu in Yoruba-­speaking areas of Nigeria and Sierra Leone, or the tontine clubs of Senegal and Guinea, or f­ amily loans at interest, allowed ­women in par­ tic­u­lar to access credit for larger h­ ouse­hold purchases, and could, for instance be used to purchase a slave, as an example from nineteenth-­ century Ahafo, a district of Asante, suggests.19 Despite Marx’s belief that capitalism should be antithetical to slavery ­because it removes from individuals the right to sell their l­abor power on the market, slaves w ­ ere an impor­tant part of finance capitalism not only for their ­labor power but also for their function as a form of property that could act as a store of value or a form of collateral.20 This horrified abolitionists, who saw the treatment of ­people as assets rather than as ­human beings as the epitome of the eighteenth-­century spread of commoditization effects discussed e­ arlier. In the West Indies, “many of the estates are mortgaged; and estates are frequently sold to pay off the debts upon them. The slaves themselves, too, or a part of them, are often seized for the payment of the master’s debts; and this is done without any reference, in a multitude of cases, to f­amily connexions.”21 In West Africa, on a visit to the Upper Rio Nunez, Joseph Hawkins reported that “persons who have borrowed goods or property of any kind, and have failed to make recitation, are brought before the chief, or elders; if found to have wilfully avoided payment, or neglected it through indolence, they are sold, and if not sufficiently valuable, their ­children or wives, or all together, are sold to make up the sum.”22 The Sierra Leone Com­ pany reported, It gives to the Slave Factories a g­ reat Superiority over the Com­ pany, even in the Traffic of Produce, inasmuch as they are able to conduct a Trade in both Produce and Slaves, at nearly the same Expence at which a Trade in Produce alone can be carried on. It afford also to the Slave F ­ actor an Advantage in re­spect to the Means of recovering Debts for Produce, for he has only to seize and sell his Debtor, or the F ­ amily, or even Townsmen of his Debtor, in order to secure himself against loss; he can therefore generally gain some Preference over the Com­pany, by affording a larger Credit to the Natives.23

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Panyarring, as the system of slave ransoming was called, had expanded in the eigh­teenth ­century in order to facilitate credit relationships, but had also changed the nature of collateral from something occasionally offered by debtors as a form of surety, to a more regular slave-­trading practice, and the distinctions between pawning and debt slavery ­were being eroded.24 ­These developments went hand in hand with the belief among liberal theorists and antislavery traders alike that de­pen­dency in all its forms was a degrading situation. Nathalie Sarthou-­Lajus has argued that “debt is in fact at the origin of a fundamentally asymmetrical social relation, which breaks with the logic of parity in exchange.”25 An example of this, embedded within a community’s local economy, was the lack of cash involved in the commercial relationship between weavers and village patrons in Futa Toro. Weavers produced cloth for patrons and demanded ­favors or goods for their families in return, and over time this practice established a permanent relationship of credit and debt.26 Or for the Kabre, one of the few African groups famous for selling their kin, who gave away, exchanged, or loaned any surplus production “in order to create ties to ­others,” debt was a means of solidifying social relations.27 But it could also become an obligational relationship, one in which ­people would be more inclined to sell kin into slavery in order to command that relationship (through the distribution of the proceeds of the sale) than to pawn them out for a loan and be obliged to another for the debt. This kind of indebtedness has sometimes been cast as completely dif­ fer­ent from the market-­oriented economy of Western liberal capitalism, but ­these debt relationships ­were also pre­sent in early modern Eu­ro­pean exchanges and w ­ ere at the heart of the emergence of liberal po­liti­cal economy, which tried to break away from t­ hose social obligations in ­favor of individualized, ­free, market actors.28 Of course, both Chris­tian­ity and Islam had long-­standing rules against usury. The Christian ban on usury had been based on the argument of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) that a loan contract involving immovable property was able to accrue interest, but moveable property—­which included money itself—­was not. ­Because money was necessary for commerce, however, Aquinas conceded that loans in the form of “investment” (shared risk) ­were acceptable.29 As Eu­ro­pean states moved into the debt business in the sixteenth and

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seventeenth centuries, they took over regulations of creditor-­debtor relationships as well, attempting (often unsuccessfully) to walk the fine line between levels of credit that would stoke economic activity and levels of credit that ­were burdening their populations. 30 ­A fter the accelerated growth of the eigh­teenth ­century, conservative po­liti­cal economist Justus Moser, for instance, attempted to legally restrict peasants’ ability to borrow in order to cut down on repossessions and the impoverishment of debtors.31 Ethical-­commerce advocates ­were trying to move ­toward more impersonal credit relationships, and theoretically believed that cash transactions would be the best way forward. In a way this mirrored the shift ­toward more impersonal forms of philanthropy that (largely unsuccessfully) attempted to take the paternalism out of charity. For Zachary Macaulay, in both merchant banking and his participation in abolitionism, the committee and the com­pany ­were supposed to intermediate the personal nature of loans. But for liberal antislavery activists, especially ­those involved in r­ unning businesses of their own, credit was essential to the function of global trade. And if global trade was g­ oing to solve the prob­lem of slave supply into the Atlantic, by demonstrating that the abolition of the slave trade would not hurt the ability to consume, then mercantile credit could act as a stopgap to keep African trading economies from collapsing in the interim. However, without the “moral knowledge about ­others” that bound communities together through debt relationships, international, impersonal forms of credit could become untethered: what abolitionists who advocated for legitimate commerce d ­ idn’t anticipate was the extensive, un­regu­la­ted growth of credit, or its negative consequences, in the form of debt overhang, for the “industrious” economic development they predicted.32 As it tran­spired, the shift to “legitimate” production would not be stimulated without the credit that would allow African merchants to keep “acquiring t­ hose articles of Luxury” they had become accustomed to. On the basis of credit, they could be contracted to provide goods like palm oil, or ivory, or anything ­else that had value in Eu­ro­pean and American markets. This was similar to an argument for credit-­based purchasing in the free-­produce movement. Requiring cash up front could limit the potential number of merchants and consumers who would participate. In 1845 the ­Free Produce Society of Friends, of which Taylor was secretary,

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had suggested that loans could be extended to “persons who are favorably disposed to our cause, but destitute of capital,” explaining that they “might be encouraged and assisted by loans without interest, to set up stores in suitable locations where ­free goods, and ­those only, should be kept for sale.” The hope was that credit would cut down on bottlenecks in the supply chain and that “by ­these means the fabrics produced from ­free cotton would no doubt be taken off as fast as they could be prepared.” An impor­tant justification for this plan was price. As would be repeatedly argued by both supply and demand sides of the ethical-­ commerce arguments, abolitionists believed that success would come only if non-­a bolitionists could be convinced to shop in free-­produce stores through competitive pricing: “­There can be no reasonable doubt that thousands of p ­ eople who w ­ ill take no part in our l­ abors, would purchase f­ ree goods in preference to slave when brought to their doors without enhancing their price.”33

Mercantile Credit in Sierra Leone In October 1793 the governor and council of Sierra Leone declared an end to existing credit practices, claiming that “no expediency remains for recovering the Com­pany’s money except seizing the persons of the debtors an expedient it was better to avoid.”34 Without the system of panyarring, credit relationships had to adapt in the age of abolition. Before the abolition of the slave trade, Eu­ro­pean traders had used bills of exchange to pay, but largely in trade with each other. A bill of exchange essentially functioned as a credit note with a merchant h­ ouse in Britain or France (or, rarely, the United States). This external form of credit relationship continued into the age of abolition, and legitimate trade was often conducted in bills of exchange or even cash, which allowed the sale of imported consumer goods to be disentangled from a complicated barter of the assortment of bulk commodities. In fact, Angus Dalrymple-­Smith and Pieter Woltjer argue that this was an impor­tant reason for the growth of the commodities trades from West Africa in the late eigh­teenth ­century—­even before abolition—as a form of risk management as indebted West Indian planters issued bills of exchange dated three years out, exposing firms in Britain to liquidity risk for their own ventures.35 The system of trade was

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r­ eally more like a system of swap contracts, with commodified products exchanged at one time, and then sold on at another point to realize their “true” cash price. This distinction is impor­tant b­ ecause it represented the complexity of the risk in the commodity swap for both parties. It is also impor­tant ­because in the switch to legitimate trade, that complexity could be ­either reduced or expanded. The bills of exchange that circulated in West African trade w ­ ere appealing for American traders, who held unrelated debts in British merchant h­ ouses. Bills of exchange that could be redeemed in Britain would help the firms balance their books without having to sell anything directly to British consumers. George Brooks notes, “An American firm trading with West Africa could instruct its shipmasters to send En­glish bills directly to its correspondents in E ­ ngland, obviating the delay and expense of first returning them to the United States.”36 The interactions between Macaulay & Babington and Brown & Ives in Sierra Leone, for instance, demonstrate how legitimate trade created new opportunities for profit, but also generated distrust over irrecoverable debts. When Zachary Macaulay returned from Sierra Leone, it ­wasn’t long before he had found a way to combine his business acumen and his African and Jamaican experiences in commerce. At first he managed the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s London office, working together with the banker Henry Thornton and the abolition celebrities William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. The end of the Sierra Leone Com­pany in 1808 only saw Freetown’s commerce grow. The British government had agreed to take over the ­running of the colony a­ fter lobbying by Macaulay and his associates in the Clapham Sect, and with Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the colony would become the new destination for “recaptured” slaves (the so-­called Liberated Africans) who w ­ ere pro­cessed through the Vice-­Admiralty Courts set up in the colony. The Sierra Leone Com­pany itself was transformed into the philanthropic African Institution, and Macaulay became its secretary. He also operated as a broker for the investment of funds by vari­ous evangelical and abolitionist friends and acquaintances. He looked ­after Hannah More’s investments (including in the East India Com­pany) in the 1810s and 1820s.37 He was the go-to man for the ­family of the Haitian king, Henri Christophe, when they arrived in London ­after his death with funds to invest in the 1820s.38

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Macaulay’s correspondence included notes on finance and investments to Clarkson, Wilberforce, Thornton, and the evangelical Clapham Sect minister John William Cunningham.39 Macaulay’s investments for the firm’s clients often aligned with his own ethical positions: he was able to promote East India Com­pany shares, for instance, believing firmly that investment in improved sugar production t­ here would bring down costs and make it a perfect substitute for West India sugar. He also set up a business with his nephew, Thomas Gisborne Babington. “Messrs. Z. Macaulay and Babington” operated in the City of London, at 16 George Street, Mansion House Place, from where he conducted business successfully in Freetown ­until the mid-1830s.40 As a merchant banker, Macaulay also extended credit to the African side of his firm. Kenneth Macaulay—­Zachary Macaulay’s second cousin and the agent for his firm—­ received £16,477 worth of goods by consignment on six ships in 1818.41 By midcentury, in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Lagos, ­there was a commission ­house system, based on the model evolved from Macaulay & Babington, that “provided capital for Eu­ro­pean and African import merchants as principals and commission agents” who relied on regular shipments and used a bonded ware­house.42 As Gareth Austin has pointed out, this system actually saw the African agents for the Eu­ro­pean trading ­houses lending liquidity to the home firms, as they “bought in” to the system.43 Trade among Eu­ro­pean merchants, and even between legitimate and slave traders, was a necessary part of commerce on the coast b­ ecause of the prob­lems of sporadic supplies. In the period of the British and French wars especially, a proliferation of Africa traders coming from the new United States, the application of war­time rules, and a spike in demand for slaves coinciding with the abolition of the trade by vari­ous nations, created uncertainty as well as opportunity in African markets. With the abolition of the slave trade by Rhode Island and Mas­sa­chu­setts in 1788, and the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which made it illegal to build or outfit ships for the slave trade in the United States, many American traders in Africa found new outlets in smuggling, in the coasting slave trade, and in legitimate trade. When Martin Benson wrote to the Providence partnership of Brown, Benson & Ives proposing his voyage to Africa, he pointed out that “during the pre­sent War, the Coast of Africa has been deserted

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by Eu­ro­pe­ans in consequence of which the Natives have collected considerable quantities of Gold, Ivory, Gum, Wax, Camwood &c which can now be purchased on the most reasonable terms.” 44 Brown & Ives—­the successor of Brown, Benson & Ives—­was one of a number of American firms that de­cided to seize ­those opportunities around the world, and between 1794 and 1821 (when the introduction of French and British trading restrictions ­a fter the end of the Napoleonic Wars closed Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast to American traders) their firm sent thirteen ships to ports in West Africa, including Gorée, the Gambia River, the Isles de Los, Freetown, Cape Mesurado, Elmina, and Cape Coast C ­ astle.45 As James Fichter has argued for American participation in Asian trade in this period, American merchants took advantage, but also ­were an advantage for, British imperial trading networks.46 British merchants and army officers stationed in West Africa found this reliance on other countries for the trade goods needed for legitimate commerce deeply worrisome. Gambia’s British merchants worried that the arrival of French and American traders—­particularly illegal slave traders—­would tempt the African traders of Gambia back to the slave trade, and reported, “Already the Native Chiefs have turned their attention to the collection of Slaves and abandoned that of produce and the consequence to the civilisation and trade of the Coast must prove fatal . . . ​ all the l­abours of Philanthropy the work of ten years undone in as many weeks.” 47 The lure of American tobacco, it seemed, was enough to reverse the gains of legitimate commerce. But bills of exchange helped to facilitate it. If Brown & Ives captains Martin Benson or Gideon Young sold a bulk order of tobacco to a coastal trader, like Gorée’s Thomas Carew—­the former man­ag­er of the Sierra Leone Com­pany store at Freeport, and the ­future mayor and major trader at Freetown—­Carew could pay them with a bill of exchange on Thomas Dickason. Dickason, whose son was based in New E ­ ngland, operated in London as a broker for a number of American firms conducting international trade.48 When Brown & Ives trader Gideon Young ­stopped at Gorée in 1811, he sold Carew $758.31 worth of goods for cash, and $724.52 worth of goods—­including tobacco—­for bills of exchange and hides.49 Brown & Ives could cash that bill with Dickason in six months, they could trade it on, or they could sell it early at a discount.

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Then, when Carew sold that tobacco e­ ither retail direct to African consumers, or w ­ holesale to an African trader who would then sell it on in the interior, Carew would collect legitimate products in exchange. When ­these w ­ ere ultimately sent back to Liverpool to be sold, the credit from their sales would be applied to his account with Thomas Dickason. Ship’s captains arriving in West Africa relied on some trusted business partners. In Gorée, Thomas Carew, William Waterman, and Madam Michelle Deligny regularly bought Brown & Ives cargos.50 The Sierra Leone Com­pany, John Tilley, Kenneth Macaulay (Zachary Macaulay’s firm’s agent on the ground), and Samuel Samo w ­ ere go-to sources in Freetown and its outskirts. Jan Neiser, at Elmina, and William Leigh, at the Isles de Los, traded with Benson over the years. Both Neiser and Leigh wrote to Brown & Ives in 1817 requesting specific cargos for trade and offering their ser­vices in conducting the Windward trade (to Gambia and Sierra Leone) for the firm. Their names appear scattered throughout subsequent ventures as they undertook trade for the firm and provided as much detailed information about the markets in Africa as they could.51 As the first generation of Freetown settlers and Liberated Africans moved into trade, they also became reliable middlemen in other parts of the coast.52 But for any of this to work, credit still relied on reputation and long-­term investment in relationships. On an 1821 Brown & Ives trading voyage, the firm instructed their captain, Daniel Dailey, to collect an outstanding debt from Jan Neiser.53 On a previous voyage Neiser had sent Brown & Ives a bill of exchange on the Newport slave trader James D’Wolf to s­ ettle his account of $1,718.50 outstanding with the firm.54 Even ­after this, he still owed money on his account with Captain Gideon Young, which he promised to “­settle the first opportunity but was prevented till now by being sent for to Holland.”55 However, as Brown & Ives discovered, “The Bill of Exchange [from Nieser] was taken for a debt contracted at a year before and as it appears by Mr D’Wolf ’s repre­sen­ta­tion that he had no right what­ever to draw upon him, we hope that Mr Nieser ­will pay the amount at once with the interest and damages.” They ­were not particularly optimistic about recovering the full amount, however, instructing Dailey simply, “Do the best you possibly can, but by all means make a final settlement and receive for us as large a part of both demands as ma be in your power, when on the spot

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and bring home what you obtain.”56 In trying to operate a legitimate-­ commerce journey with a slave trader, Brown & Ives w ­ ere ­limited in what they could accept as payment, which left them at the mercy of the legitimate-­produce market, but also at the mercy of unscrupulous traders.

Market Information and Trust The point of legitimate commerce was to keep ­these consumer markets alive while searching for something to replace slaves as the main export financing West African consumption. Commodities had long been a part of West Africa’s export mix. And legitimate commerce continued alongside the slave trade for a long time.57 Abolitionists like the American Anthony Benezet, and ­those involved with the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade seized on longer-­standing ideas about Africa, produced in widely available travel accounts, as well as in more ethically dubious texts associated with the slave trader Malachy Postlethwayt, to argue that the continent actually contained enormous natu­ral bounty.58 Reusing Postlethwayt’s argument (almost verbatim), as historian Christopher Brown has demonstrated, Benezet argued that, “a farther considerable advantage might accrue to the British nation in general, if the slave trade was laid aside, by the cultivation of a fair, friendly and humane commerce with the Africans.”59 The British abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, while promoting the abolition of the slave trade, traveled around ­England with a chest that included “a sample of gum ruber astringens, of cotton from the Gambia, of indigo and musk, of long pepper, of black pepper from Whidah, of mahogany from Calabar.”60 He was trying to convince ­people that Africa had plenty of commodities to offer Eu­ro­pean markets. Clarkson, as well as many involved in the Sierra Leone Com­ pany, would make the case for establishing plantations to produce goods to rival the output of the West Indies. They also made a specific argument about the “natu­ral abundance” of Africa, and its untapped riches, by collecting and promoting the ­things that African traders brought to market. But the value of the outward cargos from Amer­i­ca, destined for Africa’s consumers, was only as good as what price the return cargo could get. In the 1790s Benson asked Brown, Benson & Ives to write to their

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business contacts in Philadelphia to learn the price of gum copal and how much could be sold in that market. Palm oil and malaguetta pepper ­were also potential return cargos. Beyond the normal mercantile firms, Benson suggested that Brown, Benson, & Ives reach out to the end users of the potential products: “The Coach makers, dyers, Ivory Turners, Druggists, and Apothecaries.” Fi­nally, he hoped that “you w ­ ill request your friend to forward you a pound or half a pound of the best copal Varnish such as is most used in this part of the World, t­ here being some difference in the Quality of it” so that he would know exactly how to assess the quality he would encounter in Senegambia and Sierra Leone.61 When Benson still ­hadn’t heard back about market information, he took some initiative: “I have not been favored with the result of your enquiries in Philadelphia, but I have examined a quantity of Gum Copal in the hands of Mr Feke, who informs me that it came out from ­England charged at Eight Shillings Sterling the pound, and I am confident it can be purchased at less than one third of that Sum.” He followed this declaration with a further request for a list of current prices. He ­didn’t exactly know where to find one of t­ hese, but was pretty sure they could “procure one at New York, Boston or Philadelphia, by applying to some En­glish ­house, as I believe the merchants in London do not always send them to the American Houses.”62 All of this information was impor­tant ­because traders needed to know how to value legitimate-­commerce products on the coast. On ­either side of the Atlantic, a glut of product would mean that prices would be low. Brown & Ives instructed the captain of the schooner Peacock in 1817 that “camwood, palm oil and Ivory do not answer just now in this country the importations have exceeded the demand but we do not mean to prohibit you from taking ­these articles in case more valuable remittances are not to be obtained.”63 Despite t­ hese instructions, the Peacock returned in 1817 with six tons of camwood. Brown & Ives wrote hopefully to their Boston broker, William Allston: “We have a quantity of camwood, is t­ here any demand for this article in Boston and what is the value? W ­ ill it answer to send in large quantities to France or to Holland and has any been shipped to any port of Eu­rope.”64 Allston replied, “Camwood is dull ­here, it ­will not answer (as far as my information extends) to ship to any part of Europe–­—­a parcel was shipped to France about 2 years

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since and returned not long since and was sold at 8 Dollars 12 mo.” Camwood was also imported in 1816 by Paul Cuffe, a f­ ree African American—­ Wampanoag trader from Rhode Island. He managed to sell his to New York firms Hicks Jenkins and Com­pany, Peleg Howland and Sons, and Swift and Barnes, who ­were able to sell the majority of it.65 But camwood, which had been getting $8.50 in 1817 had dropped a dollar in price in 1818 and again in 1819, as “dull sales” reflected the end of the demand for red dyes—­like camwood—­from British army uniform makers ­after the Napoleonic Wars ended.66 Brown & Ives wrote to their broker in Boston that they hoped for $0.80 per pound, but that it must “not be sold for less than 70.” Allston wrote back that he had stored the camwood, which “is not much of an object” but hoped that he would “do better than $0.70” by holding it ­until t­ here was more demand.67 Following this exchange, they instructed their captains of the brig Richard, sailing out in November 1819, to “by all means avoid Camwood which is a very heavy article in this country.”68 ­These men fi­nally listened, and returned with no camwood. Merchants sometimes advised trading firms that a par­ tic­u­lar product was getting a good price, only to have a huge shipment or two arrive before they could respond. Brown & Ives received too late a letter from Allston informing them not to bother sending palm oil a­ fter all. B ­ ecause the glut of palm oil “was unknown to us at the time we put ours on board of Capt Buxton’s vessel,” they instructed Allston, “Do as you may think for our interest—­which, they thought, might include the option to “dispose of a part on arrival and store the remainder or put the ­whole in stow at a cheap rate for the pre­sent.”69 Prices ­were volatile and traders needed strategies to manage the risk of price fluctuations. Ship’s captains ­were expected to know not only the value of their cargo, but also both the official and the expected value of the goods they w ­ ere accepting for them. Instructions went with the brig Richard that “the g­ reat benefit of the Trade is down the Coast among the Natives, retailing out Cargo and receiving in pay Gold Dust and Ivory; you must be careful not to be cheated in the Dust & remember that Scrivellos are only half price of Prime Ivory. The usual barter price of prime is 62 to 100 cents per lb in pay viz Tobacco and Rum at high retail price.”70 In the case of the Charlotte, Brown & Ives eventually sold Thomas Howard all of the ivory,

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“the Teeth weighing above Twenty pounds at one hundred thirty cents per lb., all u­ nder at sixty cents per lb.”71 This was far above the 30 cents for prime and 15 cents for scrivellos recorded by the Bristol, Rhode Island trader Jacob Babbitt, but also well below the price recorded by Gideon Young in his transactions with the recently acquitted former slave trader Samuel Samo.72 Young accepted 1,154 pounds of ivory from Samo at a value of 90 cents per pound.73 Palm oil, camwood, groundnuts, and other industrial products ­were in increasing demand as the c­ entury progressed. Palm oil and peanut oil could both be used as lubricants for industrial machinery, as well as in the production of soap and candles, and as A. G. Hopkins notes, “Manufacturers, happily uniting material and moral motives, urged the public to ‘buy our candles and help stop the slave trade.’ ”74 African colonies ­were impor­tant sources of supply for American free-­produce consumers, especially ­those interested in connecting their purchases to the improvement of Africa. ­These products principally went into industrial use and ­were bought in large quantities from brokers like Brown & Ives’s Allston. Palm oil, camwood, ivory, and gum w ­ ere primary products, often bought in bulk. At a retail level, having free-­produce dyes like camwood was impor­ tant. Elizabeth Kent set herself up as a free-­produce shop­keeper in 1839, subscribing to $200 of dry goods and $300 of groceries from the American ­Free Produce Association’s ­wholesaling division. She wrote asking the committee to confirm the common belief that “the dye stuffs are principally ­f ree [produce] Indigo excepted.”75 The opening of dedicated free-­produce grocery stores allowed ­these African “legitimate commerce” products to be marketed more directly to abolition consumers, joining together the legitimate-­commerce efforts with the free-­ produce movement. In the 1850s, George W. Taylor, proprietor of the free-­produce store in Philadelphia, wrote to his merchant contact in Liberia, Stephen Benson, asking, “At what price ­here would the Purified Palm Oil pay thee for trou­ble and expenses. Since selling the ­l ittle lot thou sent me, several parties have been enquiring for it and would have given me 1 to 2 cents per lb more than I got for the other.” He continued,

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The Cassada Starch was very well liked by the few who tried it. One ­family would have nearly the ­whole of it and paid me 12 cents per lb for it. Our best wheat starch retails for 10 cents. If it would pay at 10 cents I could readily dispose of a quantity that I could work off in my retail trade. In that case thou might send me a barrel or so to try. If I can get more for it I w ­ ill. It is not as white as the best wheat search, but is likely for clear starching book muslins and similar articles.76

Taylor occasionally encountered customers who would pay more than the asking price for a genuine article of African f­ ree produce, as with the cassava starch, but on other occasions the free-­produce origin worked against wider sales: “I am still slowly selling the arrow root by retail at a low price, to work it into use. It has kept remarkably well. The druggists w ­ ill not buy it b­ ecause I cannot call it Bermuda, tho they buy a g­ reat deal that never was in Bermuda and this is as good except not so white.”77 Taylor encouraged Benson and other African mercantile contacts in their pursuit of ginger and pepper, but discouraged sending anymore preserves: “The ‘paw paw’ preserves do not sell. They are rather flat and I d ­ on’t know that it w ­ ill be worth the trou­ble to send any more of them or of the ‘cherry.’ ” In cases like ­t hese, where the African exporter was sending products speculatively to the American (or British or French) market, it was the African-­based merchant who was the creditor. But in most cases the commissioning system saw credit flow in the other direction, with legitimate produce remitted to the American or Eu­ro­pean market to pay back debt. And in this context, any price uncertainty was a risk. Managing that risk became an impor­tant driver of innovations in credit relationships.

Miscalculating Trust In 1816 Brown & Ives’s captain Gideon Young returned with a huge quantity of African goods on his own trade, including, among other ­things, 26,000 pounds of ivory, $6,700 of gold, 1,800 hides, and 2 tons of squills. This medicinal plant had been in use throughout the eigh­teenth c­ entury in pill form as an expectorant, but was primarily sourced from the Mediterranean.78 Young’s cargo represented a potential new source for the popu­lar drug. The squills made up a portion of the recorded $5,400 of

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Fig 4.1 ​“Scilla maratima,” Curtis’s Botanical Review, 1806. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, T370.b.3.12.

barter for the remains of Young’s cargo. He entered them on his return invoice at $1,960, having been convinced by W. H. Leigh, a trader operating in the Isles de Los, off Freetown, that they would be valuable on the home market. Basically, he accepted two tons of a medicinal sea plant as worth nearly $2,000 in trade goods, and returned home to cash them in. When he arrived, though, a flurry of letters, increasingly desperate, showed that Young’s plan was a failure: squills ­were not in demand, the tariff on them was too high, and Brown & Ives was required to immediately reexport the ones that h­ adn’t rotted on the way.79 Credit in commodities was extremely risky, as the boom-­and-­bust cycle of commodity businesses demonstrated throughout the nineteenth ­century.80 As a ­later British colonial report noted, “The scale and duration of such credit depended greatly on the importer’s ability to survive price fluctuations in Eu­rope (and on his own credit-­worthiness).”81 The squills that Leigh had convinced Young ­were worth nearly $2,000 ­were a

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complete wash in the American market. The salvageable ones w ­ ere en route from E ­ ngland to Gibraltar as the firm attempted to recover some of the cost of their import. In the meantime, they had written to Leigh at the Isles de Los to “acquaint him of the bad luck with his consignments and with our proceedings to prevent an increase of the loss. When the result of the shipment to ­England from Gibraltar becomes known, we ­will make up a statement of the loss and send to him.”82 Leigh replied, “I was led to understand by the En­glish price currents and the dif­fer­ent medical gentlemen on the Coast that they would prove an advantageous speculation. I trust however that our ­future dealings w ­ ill make amends for 83 this small failure.” ­Because the return ship could not carry enough palm oil or camwood in this journey to account for the full debt Leigh owed to Brown & Ives, he promised that “a balance remains of $2294 which is ready whenever called for.” But it turned out it ­wasn’t quite that ­simple, especially ­after Leigh died and Kenneth Macaulay undertook his estate. Macaulay settled with Captain Hallowell of the brig Richard in 1819 for $1,359 worth of camwood, $630 worth of ivory, $344 worth of palm oil, and a variety of other goods totaling $2,598.84 To facilitate the transaction, Kenneth suggested sending the goods directly to London, where they would be sold through Macaulay & Babington and the proceeds remitted to Thomas Dickason, Brown & Ives’s London brokers. In 1821 Brown & Ives sent a letter to Kenneth Macaulay, complaining that the arrangement he had made to s­ ettle Leigh’s debt to them with a shipment of camwood had been a fiasco. They noted that they had been required to pay Macaulay & Babington “for charges, including Premium and insurance on the wood.”85 But “according to recent advices from Messrs Thomas Dickason & Co.” the camwood “would not sell for sufficient to pay the charges. The wood is represented to be old and good for nothing.”86 Worse still, Macaulay & Babington’s charges amounted to a quarter of the already low price that the camwood was ultimately sold for.87 ­Whether or not Macaulay knew that the camwood was bad, this confirmed Brown & Ives’s decision not to advance any more credit. Young’s ­mistake with the squills taught Brown & Ives a lasting lesson about African trade. They instructed their captains that “we strictly enjoin upon you not to sell any portion of the Richard’s Cargo on credit. Take rather

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any of the productions of Africa for articles on board that are of dull sale.”88 With $6,649 outstanding in Africa trade debts, Brown & Ives needed cash. But between the squills, bad camwood, nonpayment of debts, and charges for importing legitimate products, it looked like they would never recover. ­These dif­fer­ent ways of swapping consumer and industrial goods ­were all used si­mul­t a­neously and interchangeably, making the reckoning of profit and loss on a legitimate-­commerce voyage for a firm like Brown & Ives particularly difficult. The need to import goods into American and Eu­ro­pean home markets, rather than simply cashing in on a known demand (for enslaved ­people) in the West Indies, created new opportunities and challenges for legitimate traders. Without good information about prices or tariffs, a promising voyage could become a liability. But the uncertainty worked both ways, and without established practice to rely on, traders could undervalue their cargos, misrecord prices, and profit from uncertainty.

Macaulay & Babington’s Credit Woes While Macaulay & Babington bested Brown & Ives in this instance, they soon enough faced credit prob­lems of their own. A ­ fter initially weathering the British financial panic of 1825 well, Macaulay & Babington hit a rocky patch and took a loan from John Smith to keep the business afloat. Macaulay wrote l­ater, “It is impossible I should ever forget that when in 1825 that by extravagant speculations wholly unknown to me, my House was in some peril John Smith came to me and said . . . ​if I can by £20000 rescue you from the precipice, it s­ hall be done . . . ​He followed it by deeds he gave me not £20000 but £22000 besides his countenance and encouragement in ­those days of storm and convulsion. I had no claims on John Smith I had known him only by the accident of finding ourselves united in some scheme of benevolence, in which I had taken some trou­ble off his hand. This I say was ­great and magnanimous.”89 Macaulay’s connections to the abolition movement and other benevolent schemes brought him both the animosity of ­those who would “crush him to the earth” and the financial support of friends like John Smith. His philanthropic networks provided him with not only the

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experience and contracts for his business in Sierra Leone, but also a wider array of investors, backers, and markets. But ­either b­ ecause Macaulay’s business empire was growing, or b­ ecause he was losing touch with the practicalities of trade on the ground in Sierra Leone, or ­because Kenneth began to overreach, prob­lems with the management of business on the ground in Sierra Leone led to a disastrous overstocking in 1826.90 Macaulay was furious with Kenneth, whom he believed had vastly overreached his authority in expanding the business beyond Macaulay’s original plan: “­Really ­after all that has been said of want of hands as the cause of all the evil that has taken place it is rather an appalling circumstance to send an expenditure as from £6000 to £7000 a year for conducting the business. Macmillan’s commission and all did not make a third of the sum. And this over and above real of stores prob­ably £1000 to £1500 a year. How could you look on such enormous waste and say nothing? Even the expenses of 1827 are beyond all moderate limits, no business can stand it.” Incensed that the business had begun to function in­de­pen­dently of his meticulous planning, Macaulay grumbled, “I cannot for my part see the policy, indeed I never could, of so many establishments. It cannot be other­wise than ruinous and indeed it has proved so. They ­really must be reduced without delay. I have never heard an argument for more retail stores than one that deserves a moments attention, and even of that one I greatly doubt.” Clearly Kenneth’s approach in Sierra Leone was more focused on the colonial retail trade than Macaulay had anticipated, and less invested in sourcing produce for return to Britain. But Macaulay was missing some of the broader point of the policy of extending credit that Kenneth had relied on. In a letter to her husband, Selina Macaulay expressed shock at “the amount of goods ­there,” in Sierra Leone, stating that Macaulay’s partner, Tom Babington, “must have been mad to have so added to your stores t­ here.”91 What neither Selina nor Zachary seemed to understand was that the way the export business functioned in Sierra Leone was wholly through the provision of credit. In the Sierra Leone Gazette, Macaulay & Babington advertised the “Conditions of Sale” for a range of goods (wines, meats, tea, gunpowder, a large variety of India cloths, stationary, rope, and ceramics) as “Three months credit payable in Cash, Camwood, £15. Per ton,—­W hite Rice, at

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Market price, or Red Rice, at £10 per Ton.”92 By fixing the price at the point of the loan, Kenneth was pursuing the policy that Zachary had promoted with the Sierra Leone Com­pany in order to maximize profits by managing the risk of commodity price fluctuation. In London, Macaulay was forced to economize on the London side of the business and to chase the com­pany’s debtors. Five hundred pounds owed by the late Joseph Easton of Sierra Leone—­one of Macaulay & Babington’s consignees—­was pursued in the courts in London and Surrey. 93 The Mansion House Place premises ­were liquidated, and Zachary wrote to Kenneth that “we have h­ ere reduced our expense to the lowest point. I am parting with all my clerks. I have parted with half my counting h­ ouses. We have given up much in our mode of h­ ouse­keeping and are economizing in all directions. The same course must be pursued with you. Not an unnecessary shilling must be spent—­nothing sacrificed to mere appearances.”94 In the end Macaulay’s old friend, Wilberforce, stepped in with a loan that kept the com­pany afloat through t­ hese difficulties. It was clear, though, that ­there w ­ ere some fundamental weaknesses as well as chronic overstretching in the colony, mostly brought about by the system of credit in operation.

From African Credit to African Debt While governor at Freetown, Macaulay had fixed prices for legitimate products in order to discourage competition with slave traders. Any competition amongst Eu­ro­pean buyers would drive up the price for African commodities and shrink the profit margins of the businesses attempting to trade ethically with Africa. Fixing the prices in the colony was an attempt to manage the risks involved in the long-­term, long-­distance credit relationships involved in legitimate commerce. It was not necessarily against the practices in local trade to fix prices, ­either, and could be the preferred way of conducting trade.95 When prices ­were lower than typical, and the colony refused to negotiate, the practice frustrated local leaders, though, who complained that Macaulay “had spoiled the price of ­every ­thing in the Country.” Temne leader King Tom “attended by a ­great concourse of Natives came to bring a Palaver” against Macaulay, and “begged to know what I had done. He said before I came Camwood had

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been six bars a Cwt. Now it was only Three Dollars and a shilling. Rice had been Eight Bars a Cwt. now it was only two Dollars. Our Cloth . . . ​ was very dear as we sold it in the store.” Legitimate commerce was hurting the trade of the surrounding merchants, King Tom argued, ­because Macaulay and the Sierra Leone Com­pany had disrupted old trading practices. King Tom told Macaulay that he “must alter all that and give the old price. This I refused to do giving certainly sufficient reasons for the refusal.”96 By accepting goods on credit, legitimate-­commerce merchants risked price fluctuations. Eu­ro­pean firms like the Sierra Leone Com­pany, Macaulay & Babington, Forster & Smith, and the French Maurel et Prom tried to mitigate this risk by turning themselves into monopsonies for African goods, by fixing the price at which legitimate commerce would be accepted as payment ­toward debts accrued in the purchase of cloth, tobacco, alcohol, guns, and other trade goods. It had not always been the Eu­ro­pean firms lending the credit. In Senegambia, lists of the colonial government’s creditors in Saint-­Louis reveal the ways in which debt relationships between African and Eu­ro­pean merchant companies operated reciprocally in the eigh­teenth and very early nineteenth ­century. The métis habitants—­t he Euro-­A frican elite—of Saint-­Louis could provide food and ­water to the merchants of the colony in exchange for credit with the com­pany.97 Rosalie Aussenac, who was listed five times in the book of Senegal’s debts, had lent the Saint-­Louis government more than 14,000 livres worth of supplies in the early 1800s.98 The Pellegrins, another habitant ­family, w ­ ere owed more than 5,000 livres in 1820, and the Valentins had nearly 30,000 livres in outstanding loans. Interior Senegambian kingdoms also provided access to credit for the trading companies in times of need, especially during the wars of the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, when supplies from the Atlantic w ­ ere difficult to source.99 In Senegambia, certainly, the riskiness of debt was part of popu­lar understandings of the moral economy. A book of Wolof fables published in the 1820s by the former French governor of Senegal, Baron Roger, reveals the extent to which debt was a constant object of moral concern. Roger, trying to discern the meaning of one of the recounted fables, asked his source one day what the moral of one of the stories was, and “he replied

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to me ­after thinking about it for some time, that ‘when one is skilful one can dispense with paying his debts.’ ”100 In the second fable of the collection, a jackal promises beef to both a hippopotamus and an elephant, and when they follow his instructions and end up “nez à nez” in the forest, essentially they eat each other and leave him alone, a clear reference to the ways that cunning debtors could play larger and more power­ful creditors off against each other. But in the fourth fable, a wolf lends a r­ ifle to a sheep, and when the time comes to collect on the debt, he is unable to b­ ecause the sheep could threaten him with the weapon. The moral of this Wolof story was that it was better not to have such power­f ul debtors. This was resonant with the position of the habitant trading families in the 1820s. Although they ­were providing large quantities of credit to Eu­ro­pean resident merchants, the commercial and po­l iti­cal power of their Eu­ro­ pean debtors was starting to overtake the habitant elites as the Eu­ro­pean firms moved away from using local middlemen to operate the gum trade and began buying gum and, increasingly, groundnuts directly from the producers.101 By the 1840s, as a result of the shift t­oward buying directly from the producers, the debt relationship between African and Eu­ro­pean had shifted significantly. African intermediaries ­were given credit advances—­ sometimes up to £60,000 at a time—­which ­were diffused around the ports as commodities ­were collected.102 In the 1840s, down the coast in Old Calabar, where the palm oil trade was taking off, the British consul estimated that something like £200,000 worth of goods had been extended in credit for trade.103 With prime costs of British and French manufactures declining across the c­ entury, this level of debt represented an enormous influx of consumer goods.104 This was reflected in the archaeological distribution of goods, as well as in the increasingly frantic abolitionist discourse about the cheap, poor-­quality goods that w ­ ere undermining the development of local industrial growth in African markets.105 In the Gambia the Sierra Leone Gazette reported in 1822 that “it is almost impossible to ascertain the a­ ctual amount of the capital embarked by the En­glish merchants in the trade of that river, but it is calculated at £100,000; and the amount of the expenses which they have been

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at in erecting store and habitations, is estimated at £22,200. This does not include the value of the vessels and small crafts belonging to the port of St Mary’s [Banjul].”106 This was even before the groundnut trade from Gambia became able to sustain ­these levels of debt. In Senegal, among gum traders, seasonal debt was also r­ unning at something like £100,000 annually by 1841. Bruno Devès, a Bordeaux merchant, worried in 1841 that “the natives succumb to the weight of their debts: 9 / 10 of the buildings, boats and captives would be put up for sale if t­ here could be a buyer.”107 In order to keep this debt within a recoverable win­dow, the government established a fund in 1842 by claiming 5 ­percent of profits from merchants in good trading years.108 The expansion of the group of traders to include both the agents of Bordeaux trading ­houses and in­de­pen­dent groundnut traders caused a further growth in the amounts of credit by the 1850s. In fact, with a ­limited capital market for internal credit, African traders in some instances ­were using the credit advanced to them by Eu­ro­pean h­ ouses in the form of goods to buy property, which they then used to secure further loans.109 In Senegambia, “with the development of the groundnut trade, t­ here was an increasing tendency for traders to take their credit and set up on their own account as buyers of the new export crop.”110 Despite t­ hese innovations, “it remained difficult or impossible for African traders and brokers to enter the import or export trade and obtain direct from Eu­ro­pean ­houses the capital they ­were forced to accept at less favorable prices from Eu­ro­pean agents on the coast.”111 Bordeaux merchants, in par­tic­u­lar, wrested control of the trade away from their Marseille rivals by getting the government to limit trade on the Senegal River to Senegalese traders who w ­ ere, not coincidentally, 112 their debtors. The expansion of credit was a trap. By turning themselves into creditors, merchants on the coast could determine the prices at which they would accept produce, thereby reducing their risk in Eu­ro­pean and American commodity markets. Credit could also have an inflationary effect on prices. Historian Colin Newbury comments that in Senegal, “excessive imports (encouraged by falling base prices for guinées) resulted in considerable inflation of the cloth currency and dramatic losses for the African traders in bad seasons, when they w ­ ere unable to sell off untraded 113 stocks of cloth.” In Freetown, Governor MacDonald wrote in 1850 that

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2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2

18 25 18 26 18 27 18 28 18 29 18 30 18 31 18 32 18 33 18 34 18 35 18 36 18 37 18 38 18 39 18 40 18 41 18 42 18 43 18 44 18 45

0

Fig 4.2 ​Import-­export ratio, Sierra Leone. Includes all imports and exports, including regional, foreign, and British. Data source: Blue Books, 1825–1845.

the colony’s merchants forced African producers “to take goods, even useless goods, for their produce.”114 A look at the available statistics on the Sierra Leone region’s exports to Britain and imports from Britain shows that they ­were buying a lot more than they ­were selling, giving some indication of the levels of credit being offered (in goods). Governor Neil Campbell, based at the British port of Bathurst (now Banjul, Gambia), a town established ­after the exchange of colonies at the end of the Napoleonic Wars to challenge French trade at the mouth of the Gambia River, complained in the 1820s that t­ here was no trade with the upper Gambia “altho ­t here is no insecurity.” He explained that he believed it was b­ ecause the African merchants in the colony w ­ ere all “in debt to the ­house of Forster & Smith” and did not have access to the kinds of funds needed to order goods directly from Britain, and therefore they ­were “entirely at their command for the prices affixed to the British goods supplied to them at Bathurst, and for the sales of produce given them as remittances.”115 Historian A. G. Hopkins argues that b­ ecause they w ­ ere no longer the mono­poly producers of a good (enslaved ­labor), “West African producers had to accept the world price as given b­ ecause they w ­ ere

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unable to control the volume of palm produce and groundnuts placed on the market, and ­because the industrial countries could buy alternative, competing products,” and so the terms of trade tipped dramatically in Eu­ ro­pean traders’ ­favor.116 By becoming a virtual monopsony buyer of Gambian commercial produce, through the creation of ­these debt relationships, Forster & Smith could keep prices low for the legitimate-­ commerce goods they bought in Africa and their own profits high when they ultimately sold t­ hose goods in Britain.

The Search for Collateral Being a creditor could help coastal export firms keep prices low and profits high, but the firms’ interventions w ­ ere not the only f­actor in determining world prices. Credit could become a prob­lem in liquidity crises, or when firms miscalculated demand, or when debtors w ­ ere in default. Macaulay & Babington’s financial trou­ble became acute in the 1830s a­ fter Kenneth’s death. Unfortunately, with Wilberforce’s death in 1833, the loan that had kept the firm afloat through the difficulties of the early 1830s was called in.117 Henry Macaulay’s work to keep the com­pany alive through its contractors working in and around Freetown was given up and the com­pany was wound down. Despite Kenneth’s best efforts throughout the 1810s and 1820s to keep the firm in a strong position as a creditor to numerous small traders in and around the colony, t­ hose firms had grown in market share and Macaulay & Babington had failed to secure its place as a true monopsony. In 1830 Henry Macaulay, who was appointed commissioner of arbitration in Freetown by the new Whig government, provided detailed accounts for the com­pany, as well as descriptions of the com­ pany’s operating practices on the ground in Freetown.118 He estimated the com­pany’s “bad” debts at over £15,024, along with an additional £12,378 of “doubtful” debts. “Good” debts ­were estimated at around £13,595, with an addition £6,189 that might still come in.119 The firm had given out more than £74,540 in credit in total. In the three years prior, the average value of Sierra Leone’s exports to Britain was only £54,043.120 Although this position as creditor should have given the firm an advantage in pricing legitimate goods, by 1818 a large number of ­wholesalers

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and retailers w ­ ere operating in Sierra Leone, and ­these increasingly ­were run by men and ­women of African descent (eight of the twenty-­four merchants listed in the Sierra Leone Gazette’s admonishment against merchants who w ­ ere cheating traders ­were w ­ omen).121 A proliferation of merchants meant more chances for trade, especially as the new generation of merchants had connections to trading ­houses in Britain. For instance, eleven dif­fer­ent merchants in Freetown received shipments in the year December  1816–­December  1817, the peak of Macaulay & Babington’s import-­export business, and their shipments came from London, Aberdeen, Liverpool, other parts of Sierra Leone, Senegal, Dover, Boston, and Bristol. This proliferation of buyers of legitimate-­commerce goods also meant more opportunities for African producers to sell produce to the highest bidder, rather than being tied into a debt relationship specifically with one firm. Henry explained the system of primarily African or freed-­slave settler agents established around the colony. For instance, A. B. Shaw was their man in the Melacourie. In response to Macaulay’s desire to trim the expenses of the com­pany in Sierra Leone, Henry noted, “All our out-­factories have been abolished, except the Timber Factory in the Malacurry, which I have presumed to keep up in opposition to your ­orders till I could talk to you on the subject . . . ​The Timber is very fine, plentiful, and considerably cheaper than it is in the River Sierra Leone . . . ​the general opinion entertained of the River is clearly shewn by the fact that McCornmack, Cole and Hamilton, Gabbidon and Campbell have all established factories ­there within the last few months.” 122 Increasingly, Macaulay & Babington’s competitors w ­ ere not the slave traders of Bunce Island or the Sherbro, but Freetown colonists themselves: Gabbidon—­named by Henry as a competitor in the timber trade—­was a settler. Ships’ licenses issued in Freetown confirm that t­ here was a shift taking place from Eu­ro­pean traders to black settlers and Liberated Africans.123 Without a system of interest and with collateral hard to secure, firms like Macaulay & Babington faced risk if they could not maintain commercial liquidity. Individual merchants, rather than nation-­states or empires, w ­ ere the trusted parties in ­these credit relationships, and while institutions existed to enforce the reputational damage of default, they w ­ ere often diasporic

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or nationally based. In Britain by the beginning of the nineteenth ­century, as a result of the changing ideas of usury and credit over the course of the eigh­teenth c­ entury, debtors prisons, restrictions on rates of interest, bankruptcy laws, and other mea­sures had been constructed as the internal scaffolding for a growth-­oriented economy built around credit. Similar mechanisms existed within the socie­ties of West Africa, including commercial socie­t ies like the Efik in Old Calabar, who managed their members’ debts, pawning of kinfolk, seizure of assets, and sale into slavery as a last resort. In cross-­cultural trade, however, the mechanisms—­ increasingly complex and occasionally supported by treaty—­were much more difficult to regulate. The petition of a group of twenty-­seven merchants based in the Gambia articulated some of the concerns of ­those involved with legitimate commerce about the role of the government in facilitating the advance of credit. Investment in the production of commodities other than slaves, they argued, required a longer-­term commitment of capital and a need for some amount of certainty of a market at home once legitimate goods ­were purchased. The petitioners wrote that “if protected and encouraged by Government, individuals would not be wanting to set an example that any person at all acquainted with their character, could not doubt their embarking in an enterprise that promised to be such a source of wealth to their Country, by means of which a legitimate commerce might be extended.” The benefits of this commerce, they wrote, would see “industry and civilization promulgated, as the Chiefs would thereby find employment for their slaves”; in addition, “petty wars and the consequent traffic in ­human blood lessened, as from the extent and easy navigation of the Gambia such fa­cil­i­ty of communication with the interior is afforded industry and civilization might therefrom be ultimately extended to the remotest regions in this vast Continent.”124 This idea of security and constancy was, in an odd way, cyclical in its application to West African states. A lot of the thinking that had inspired phi­los­o­phers in Eu­rope to speculate on the “state of nature” had been generated by imagining the forms of society and governance in Africa, North Amer­i­ca, and other newly encountered lands. The opposite of this chaos was a secure, constant government, directed by a balance of interests,

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rather than the “passions” of one individual ruler. The state of war could be reduced by increasing the role of international commerce, Montesquieu believed, and by moving commerce beyond the realm of the government— to bills of exchange and the expansion of collateral and assets to include moveable property. As Adam Smith argued, “commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours, and of servile de­pen­dency upon their superiors.”125 But the security of this commerce was only pos­si­ble with forms of guarantee that ­either could supersede the state (bills of exchange, for instance) or w ­ ere 126 backed by the state. The merchants in the Gambia wanted to extend credit to the producers of the Gambia region—­particularly in the Upper Gambia—­but they worried about recourse to collateral. Cross-­cultural trade had always been difficult from this perspective, but one of the surest forms of “trust” in the era of the slave trade had been intermarriage, which functioned similarly to the social capital of diasporas in other long-­distance trading networks.127 The landlord–­stranger relationship with individual merchants or their families also helped to provide African government protection for loans, particularly when the “rents” for participation in trade gave the government both the po­liti­cal and the commercial authority to play that role. As trade rents declined in some areas in the wake of Atlantic slave-­ trade abolition, weakened po­liti­cal authority among gatekeeping broker states also weakened locally provided credit protections, increasing Eu­ ro­pean traders’ calls for interventions by colonial governments to secure collateral.128 This is impor­tant as a reminder of the ways in which credit moved away from the interpersonal, reputational, and trust-­based relationships of the bills-­of-­exchange period to a more impersonal, government-­backed guarantee that Eu­ro­pean merchants would request as the ­century progressed. A l­ ater Gambian governor wrote, “On what do the En­glish cap­i­tal­ists rely for their security? Of course on the prestige of En­glish power.”129 The example of the collapse of Macaulay & Babington demonstrated the dangers of extending uncollateralized credit. In places like Lagos in 1861, the

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failure of treaties between Sierra Leonean merchants (British subjects) and local authorities in an attempt to secure payment of debts ultimately led the British consul to successfully request formal annexation by the British government, arguing that “­there is no effective protection to property, no mode of enforcing the payment of debts,” and that this was stifling the growth of trade and the pro­gress of “civilization.”130 The debtor sheep of the Wolof fable now had a gun.

abolitionists argued that credit was absolutely vital to the protection of existing African international markets, and to the growth of “industrious” productivity and stability. Liberal antislavery advocates objected to debt b­ ecause they believed debt-­pawning had operated in expanding enslavement in West Africa. But to make legitimate commerce work in an international, cash-­poor setting, legitimate-­commerce firms ­were also reliant on both issuing and receiving credit. They relied on credit to source their supplies and to deal with w ­ holesale trade in much the same way that the slave traders had. Although the commodity trade had initially been a form of risk hedging for Eu­ro­pean and American traders to Africa, by the 1820s the commodity trades had developed their own credit risks and the need for new forms of guarantee. Fluctuating market prices for African commodities in Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca created prob­lems for legitimate traders. Control of market information, government support, and the emergence of commodity monopsonies controlled by credit providers who fixed market prices for legitimate goods could provide security against that risk for Eu­ro­pean firms. This increasingly penalized African debtors in preference for Eu­ro­pean and American consumers. Macaulay & Babington and Brown & Ives both took advantage of the information asymmetries of early nineteenth-­century trade in Africa, as well as the high levels of demand for global products in African markets. The American captains who operated Brown & Ives’s trading voyages ­were making the most of the ongoing warfare in the Atlantic World, which had cut the French and British colonies off from their normal means of supply and access to ­wholesale goods for trade within Africa. But as more

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trading firms became involved with legitimate commodities ­after 1808, the returns on their sales in West Africa became more volatile. Increasingly, firms extended credit at fixed commodity prices in order to manage their risk in the commodity trades. But increased indebtedness among African traders, and an ongoing search for acceptable forms of collateral, shifted the trading relationship between Euro-­A merican and African traders from the eigh­teenth ­century’s mutual trust to an increasingly dependent one in which firms like Macaulay & Babington found themselves overextended, and outside traders called for government intervention to claw back capital and ensure their profitability.

chapter 5

Picking Winners

I

n 1814, in a very public attack in the London press, Freetown’s former chief justice, Robert Thorpe, accused Macaulay & Babington of being a “virtual mono­poly” in Sierra Leone. “Mono­poly” was a particularly loaded term. By the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, the old colonial system, with its guaranteed monopolies on metropolitan consumer markets had been thoroughly denounced by economic thinkers around the Atlantic. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith’s critique of monopolies suggests that they undermined industrial development, distorted capital investment, and kept consumer prices high, among other ­things.1 While monopolies w ­ ere acknowledged to be good for producers, merchants, and manufacturers, it was their cost to consumers that made them a useful ­enemy for writers of free-­trade pamphlets. In fact, slave traders had been among the first to make the public case against mono­poly by using consumer prices as supporting evidence, and had successfully taken down the Royal Africa Com­pany.2 As merchants rushed to capitalize on newly opened markets, newly emerging technologies, and a proliferation of government contracts during the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, the thought that someone was cornering a market unfairly, through undue government influence, rankled. Macaulay responded to Thorpe’s attacks: “I positively 140

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affirm, that no step was ever taken by any one individual member of the Board of Directors, e­ ither of the Sierra Leone Com­pany or of the African Institution, or by e­ ither of ­these Boards in their collective capacity, or by both jointly, ­either directly or indirectly, to secure to me the trade of the Colony, or even to increase my share of that trade in any way.”3 He pointed out, “seventy-­eight vessels which entered the harbour of Sierra Leone between the month of May 1812, and the month of June 1814 . . . ​only six of which had any goods of mine been shipped” while “forty-­one vessels which exported produce from the Colony during that time . . . ​only three of which I had any concern.” But while he may have had to compete with other traders, Macaulay’s defense was weak: he pointed out that a committee was responsible for approving all trading plans for the Colony—­but then noted (apparently obliviously) that he had appointed the committee. He also claimed that his involvement in the African Institution “hindered” his Sierra Leone trade b­ ecause his responsibilities as secretary distracted from his business.4 The Chinese wall between his two responsibilities was pretty flimsy, however: one letter from Clarkson to Macaulay begins, “The first part of my Letter w ­ ill be to you as a member of the African Institution.” The second part concerned the investment of the Haitian king Henri Christophe’s ­family money, and the sale of Irving & Com­pany’s sugar.5 Macaulay’s overlapping interests opened his firm up to critique. More problematically for abolitionists, Macaulay and his sometime business partner James Cropper ­were easy targets for pro-­slavery arguments suggesting that abolitionists ­were insincere in their beliefs and ­were just promoting their own business interests. Attention was repeatedly drawn to the relationship between “interested parties” and imperial economic policies, at least in part b­ ecause of the animosity between the West India lobby and the antislavery activists, as well as in response to the aftermath of the East India Com­pany scandals of the late eigh­teenth and early nineteenth centuries, and as a reflection of the growing concern over the escalating public debt associated with the French wars. Macaulay’s business raised concerns about the role of government regulation in picking winners in the new economy. Not only did abolitionist business interests want governments to ban the slave trade and, eventually, enslaved l­ abor, but they also hoped to use their moral arguments to

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convince governments at home and abroad to implement market policies that would help nudge consumers and producers ­toward ethical be­hav­ iors. In t­ hese ways, ­there ­were inherent tensions in antislavery liberalism, which promoted f­ ree trade in arguments against the monopolies and protections through tariffs that governments had long afforded slave-­labor industries like sugar and cotton production, but which also sought out government support for new commercial schemes, credit protection, monopsony and mono­poly in legitimate commerce, and government contracts. And as they negotiated ­these positions, ­people like Zachary Macaulay transformed and honed their arguments about who would benefit from ethical commerce. Increasingly, it became clear that choices would need to be made about which Africans would benefit from abolition and emancipation policies. As Macaulay began to translate his experiences in West Africa to wider imperial po­liti­cal economy, his arguments reflected this emerging understanding of the consumer as both the “prime mover” of the moral economy and also its prime beneficiary.

Legitimate Commercial Agriculture In 1812 Macaulay & Babington was awarded a silver plate worth 50 guineas by the African Institution for importing the largest quantity of white rice from West Africa to ­England: one hundred tons.6 The prize in 1812 was worth about 3 ­percent of the value of the rice itself. But the prize was worth ten ­percent of the ­whole value of the 720 hundredweights (36 tons) of rice imported into Britain from Africa in 1814, and 35 ­percent of the value of African rice imported in 1815.7 The awarding of the silver plate by the institution of which Macaulay was secretary was intended to demonstrate the profitability of African alternatives to West Indian slave production. Instead it caused a controversy in Britain, as Macaulay was accused of using his connections to award himself the silver. To encourage cultivation in African colonies, prizes like that awarded to Macaulay & Babington ­were fairly common practice. An impor­t ant component of the legitimate-­commerce argument was an argument for the production of plantation goods—­sugar, coffee, cotton, indigo—in West Africa. By demonstrating that ­these could be produced in Africa without the need for the slave trade, it was hoped that Ca­rib­bean plantations could

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be undermined completely. Both British and French merchants saw potential in West Africa. While ­t here had been a preexisting imperial argument for planting tropical crops in Africa in order to cut out the expense, risk, and competition of the slave trade, this was developed further by Macaulay and his abolitionist allies in Britain and Amer­i­ca.8 Thomas Clarkson was particularly interested in the development of African sugar, which he believed would have “a competitive advantage over the East Indies and cultivation by f­ ree men would bring substantial ­labour savings compared with West Indies sugar.”9 The French, meanwhile, returned to West Africa ­after the Napoleonic Wars determined to make plantation agriculture work to produce cotton or sugar for their home market.10 In Senegal, Governor Roger used prizes and premiums between 1823 and 1826 to encourage planters to grow rice, as well as indigo, sugar, and cotton, and to raise ­cattle.11 And the American Colonization Society similarly proposed commercial agriculture in Liberia as a means of undermining the slave trade and promoting civilization. Sierra Leone was chosen as the location for Granville Sharp’s settlement of ­free black Britons in 1787 in part b­ ecause it was believed to have particularly fertile soil for the production of tropical staples, and repeated efforts ­there to grow coffee, cotton, and sugar ­were intended to demonstrate that ­f ree African ­labor could produce ­t hese goods more cheaply than enslaved Ca­rib­bean laborers could. Between 1808 and 1815, when Zachary’s cousin Kenneth was both the agent for Macaulay & Babington and the man­ag­er of the Liberated African Department in Freetown, he also owned a plantation in the colony where he could experiment with dif­fer­ent types of crops, as Zachary had before him. Kenneth was also a member of the agricultural committee, on which Sierra Leone’s Governor McCarthy, Chief Justice Fitzgerald, and several ministers and aldermen served. The committee offered “premiums of one pound sterling agreed for the best fields of cassava, arrow root, onions, large Fowls, Cotton (of not less than 50lbs)” to try to stimulate local production for consumption by the colony as well as for export.12 Despite Clarkson’s emphasis on sugar, it was rice that best represented the hopes of some abolitionist businessmen that they could export preexisting tropical plantation commodities from West Africa, in part ­because it was the least disruptive export to pursue.13 Rice production already

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existed, at scale, and was part of an existing commerce between Eu­ro­pe­ans and Africans b­ ecause of its role in provisioning slave ships. It did not require Eu­ro­pe­ans to undertake new forms of land owner­ship in West Africa ­because it was grown and pro­cessed locally. The African partners who had provided rice and captives for sale to Eu­ro­pe­ans could seamlessly incorporate ­those captives as laborers on rice plantations. And t­ here was already a market for rice around the Atlantic. In 1792, African rice imports to Britain equaled only 17 ­percent of Asian rice imports by volume, and 0.05 ­percent of American rice imports into Britain.14 But b­ ecause it was already grown in the region, and b­ ecause the Sierra Leone Com­pany was on the lookout for legitimate-­commerce products, it was seen as an impor­tant place to invest the Com­pany’s resources. Settlers ­were also encouraged to grow rice, and Macaulay reported that already in the autumn of 1793 “­there are three or four of our settlers now settled in the Rokelle and who have large plantations of Rice ­there, so large as to astonish the natives. They have had their land given them gratis.”15 The Sierra Leone Com­pany, ­under Macaulay’s direction, secured contracts for rice from producers around the Freetown peninsula, in an attempt to both support the colony of freed slaves and trade in legitimate goods with their neighbors, thereby reducing African traders’ de­pen­dency on the slave trade for income and Eu­ro­pean merchandise.16 As has been noted by historians, the pragmatism of Sierra Leone Com­ pany governors in negotiating with the existing commercial and moral milieu was not always to the benefit of the enslaved, and could come across as hy­poc­risy—­noted even at the time by critics such as the first governor of the Crown Colony, Thomas Perronet Thompson.17 Governors relied on Eu­ro­pean, Euro-­African, and African slave traders’ existing trade networks, as well as on enslaved ­labor employed by African rulers, to source the legitimate-­commerce products necessary to the Com­pany’s balance sheet, but also the foodstuffs to sustain the colony. So from his experience on the ground, Macaulay seems to have de­cided that securing a rice supply was one of the most impor­tant ways to undermine the slave traders. If slave traders could instead turn to producing rice for consumption by the colony at Freetown, they w ­ ouldn’t have to sell slaves to get goods. And if they sold existing rice supplies to the colony, instead of to slave traders, they would make life for slave traders very difficult, both as residents of the coast and for the provisioning of their slave ships.

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The rice trade also provided a way for the black settler population of Freetown to make a living through trade. In 1796 Macaulay wrote, “The Settlers continue by means of their Boats to supply the Colony with ­Cattle, small stock, and Rice, and also to bring in a l­ ittle Camwood and Ivory.” In the region surrounding Freetown, a ton of rice, in 1794, cost 100 bars. Macaulay recorded that the best assortment for buying rice was 12 manchester bafts, 8 niccanees, 8 romals, 8 cushtoes, 4 photaes, 40 cloths, 100 pounds of tobacco, 5 iron bars, 1 hundredweight of iron pots, 54 trade knives, and earthen and glassware, beads, caps, hats.18 In 1803 the price of rice per quart was 10 cents, and “all the Rice which has been sold of late by the Quart has been brought from the neighbouring Rivers by Settlers in small trading Boats.”19 The settlers could then sell the rice to the Sierra Leone Com­pany, and l­ater to the private merchant h­ ouses operating in the colony, in exchange for credit (or debt) ­towards the many imported goods advertised as being on hand, stimulating industrious consumption. Commerce, that g­ reat civilizing force, could provide rice without the expense of ­running, subsidizing, and defending West Indian plantation colonies. F ­ ree trade with African rice producers would undercut their reliance on the slave trade, redirect African ­labor to “productive” agricultural pursuits, ensure that African consumers continued to have the means to buy Eu­ro­pean manufactures, all while undermining the West Indian and Carolina plantation ­owners and what abolitionists argued was their bloated, inefficient slave-based production system. Macaulay reported to the government a­ fter his return from Sierra Leone, “Rice may be had from the Natives at from 7 to 8 shillings Per Ton. The Quantities grown in the Mandingo Country, where they are more industrious, is greater in proportion than what is found in any of the neighbouring States . . . ​The Expense of clearing the Land is, upon an Average, about three shillings Per Acre; the usual Crop of Rice per Acre is about Half a Ton.”20 With the Sierra Leone Com­pany selling rice at 72 Sierra Leone dollars per ton, this was a profit of (very) approximately £15 per ton. Macaulay could easily imagine the potential in other markets. In responding to the high rice prices brought about by the War of 1812, he instructed his agent in Freetown, “If you could contract with persons at Sierra Leone to furnish you with certain quantities of rice in casks, at

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certain prices, the rice being ascertained to be clean and dry . . . ​This plan would give a spur to the industry both of the colonists and the natives: and of course, if the plan should answer, it would not be confined to one cargo, but might be extended to any quantity which the wants of this country, or of the West Indies, might demand. We are persuaded that such a plan, steadily and judiciously pursued, would answer well for us, and would answer still better for Africa.”21 Macaulay wrote to his agents with the prices of Carolina rice, and pointed out that the war­time conditions would make any rice import extremely valuable, not only for his profits, but for proving the case for legitimate commerce, even if he, somewhat ironically, had to sell his rice to planters in the West Indies to prove his point. Macaulay’s agent on the ground, Kenneth Macaulay, responded quickly, sending rice he had collected as payment for goods on sale in the com­pany’s ­Water Street premises. Kenneth had plenty of experience gathering rice. He regularly answered tenders placed in the Sierra Leone Gazette and Royal Advertiser, the colony’s newspaper, most often searching for red rice to supply the Liberated Africans who began arriving in 1808 as part of the British Navy’s campaign against the slave trade. Captured slave ships would arrive in Freetown to be adjudicated, from which point ­until six months ­after their release, the variously named “Liberated Africans,” “captured Negros,” or “recaptives” ­were given a daily allowance of rice and palm oil. This was sourced through contracts for fixed amounts of rice, ranging from 6 to 100 tons, with vari­ous merchants and “small traders” of the colony, and payable by cash or trea­sury bills on delivery. In order to equitably distribute the colony’s resources, “the Superintendent (in order to accommodate the small Traders of the colony as well as the Merchants) ­will receive Tenders each for the supply of not less then [sic] 6 or more then 100 Tons.”22 Kenneth secured government contracts for the provision of rice in Freetown, amounting to around 10 ­percent of the contracts for rice between 1817 and 1825, and about 35 ­percent of the total by volume contracted. T ­ hese contracts w ­ ere valued at over £9,000.23 That rice then made its way, through local government contracts, to the Liberated African Department, or through international commercial channels to the West Indies or ­England. Red rice was the locally grown variety, eaten in the region as well as sold to provision slave ships. Red

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rice sold by the settlers in the colony was most often used to fulfill t­ hese Liberated African Department contracts. Kenneth Macaulay issued contracts for red rice amounting to £390 while acting governor in 1811.24 But it was white rice that the Eu­ro­pean market wanted. In 1821, 42.5 tons of white rice w ­ ere exported from Sierra Leone.25 In 1822 the Sir Charles MacCarthy sailed from Freetown to the West Indies “fully laden with White Rice.” The editors of the Sierra Leone Gazette believed this was “the most considerable speculation in that article,” which they hoped would encourage further production, especially as “we have seen letters from several of the islands stating, that it had become in g­ reat request, as well for the planters as the slaves, and that, owing to its sweetness and highly nutritious properties, it had already obtained a de­cided preference over the rice of any other country.”26 In 1823 rice contracts in the colony suddenly shifted to white rice, sourced from African producers, which colonial officials and the African Institution hoped would also expand production for Atlantic markets.27 But African producers complained, in a letter to the Sierra Leone Gazette, “Red rice is of no use except at Sierra Leone; the merchants cannot send it away b­ ecause ­people ­will not buy it in E ­ ngland or other countries. Baft, guns, powder, cloth, rum and other t­ hings we want, do not grow in Sierra Leone, and if we do not give the merchants something they can send to pay for ­those ­things, they cannot bring them out to sell. We must, therefore, give them white rice, and if we find it troublesome to beat out this year, we must plant white the next.”28

Undue Influence As their experience in rice contracts for the Liberated African Department shows, the bulk of Macaulay & Babington’s money was made, despite Macaulay’s protestations other­wise, through government contracts as well as by acting as prize agents for condemned slave ships, as Padraic Scanlan has argued.29 In the colony, Macaulay & Babington also accrued property, which they leased to traders and the government of Sierra Leone. In his summary of the com­pany’s accounts in 1830, Zachary’s son, Henry Macaulay, included “the deed by which we receive annually from Government the Rent of the Bananas [Islands], amounting to $250, or

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£54 / 3 / 4.”30 The fiasco that ultimately caused the collapse of Macaulay & Babington was Kenneth’s securing of the contract to build new premises for the Naval Victualling Department. The premises would be built on some of Kenneth’s land and leased at £600 per year. But the building costs went wildly over bud­get and government policy changed in the intervening period, leaving the firm out of pocket and unable to collect on outstanding commercial debts.31 Macaulay was not alone in using the influence of his abolitionist friends to try to secure government contracts. Anna Maria Falconbridge believed that the goods sent out to the colony by the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s court of directors in London w ­ ere selected by “the benevolent gentleman, who purchased them with a double purpose in view”: to aid the colony and “to serve his ­sister from whom he bought them.”32 As Macaulay & Babington lost their influence over the government of Sierra Leone ­after the death of Kenneth in 1830, and correspondingly began to lose government contracts, Sierra Leoneans and Euro-­A frican traders took over, turning local profits into capital for pursuing larger proj­ects, and turning regional knowledge and networks into lucrative government contracts. Betsey Carew, a Hausa recaptive based in the colony, and her husband, a licensed butcher, took over Macaulay & Babington’s contract supplying meat to the army. 33 In the 1831 census, Thomas and Betsey ­were both listed as “colonial residents and ­free born blacks”; her occupation is listed as “butcheress,” and his, as “trader.”34 In fact, despite ­these ­humble descriptions, they ­were so successful that they turned the capital earned through the government contracts into a wider importing and retailing operation.35 Legitimate commerce merchants in the Gambia also pulled the strings of government contracts and philanthropic connections. William Forster, the prolific Gambia trader whose firm (discussed in Chapter 4) owned most of the trading debt in that river, also served on the board of the African Institution.36 And in 1823 a trader called James Hook proposed establishing legitimate trade in mahogany from the Gambia River to Britain. He wrote to William Allen, a member of the African Institution who had his own ties with Atlantic African trade, including with African American trader and early colonizationist Paul Cuffe. Hook’s proposal was to seek out a tender from the Navy to provide 1,000 to 2,000 tons of ma-

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hogany, but he believed that in order to secure the tender, “it is of the utmost importance that I obtain a recommendation from the African Institution and which I now beg through your assistance.” Having imported 300 tons into a weak London market already, Hook complained that Spanish mahogany from Honduras was being promoted by merchants at the expense of trade from “our African settlements.” Explaining that “our wood has been examined by first rate judges, who have all pronounced it at least equal to any Honduras Mahogany,” Hook sent samples and pointed Allen to a chest of drawers that “has also been made of the same wood, and lies for inspection at Mr. Ellis’s, Cabinet Maker, Fenchurch Street.” Explaining that he was basing his ideas on the success of both the Sierra Leone timber trade and the French gum trade, he noted that this was a commodity the British did not want to lose to the French, who also operated in the Gambia River. To buttress his proposal, Hook relied on the arguments made by the African Institution in support of legitimate commerce, pointing out that in order to fulfill a Navy requisition for the 1,000 to 2,000 tons he proposed, “many hundreds of Natives and Black Settlers would be advantageously employed who are now in g­ reat distress. This new source of commerce gives our Government an opportunity of convincing the natives that though G ­ reat Britain is determined to accomplish the final abolishing of the Slave trade, yet she is also ­doing all she can to give them honourable commerce in its stead.”37 Hook knew that a recommendation was necessary to win the contract, but he also framed his argument in terms of the benefits to the nation in supporting British traders, based in British settlements in Africa. The French also saw companies established in order to take advantage of the government presence on the African coast. With the memory of Haiti haunting the French colonial proj­ect, plantations in Senegal offered an alternative colonial f­uture.38 The Société coloniale philanthropique, established in 1816, wanted to send out white settlers to Cap Vert (modern Dakar) in Senegal to set up plantations for export. ­T hese plantations would rely on African laborers who had been freed from slavery and indentured to the settlers. The proprietors of this society, though, thought that their own financial interest in the agricultural colony should indicate to potential investors their trustworthiness, not their unreliability, as was suggested of Macaulay & Babington. Jenna Nigro writes, “Sévigny

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insisted that the Société’s interest in the success of the colony was proven by their own investment—­they had given their own money, and two of the commission’s leaders, Scellier and Brichambeau, had even sent three of their sons to the colony and thus had a stake in it.”39 A good relationship with the government acted as a guarantee for investors. The most promising ways of ensuring a profit in speculative legitimate-­commerce ventures was in securing government contracts, using government connections to promote schemes, and using the presence of colonial and military establishments to guarantee markets and infrastructure and, if needed, to supply ­legal and military support.40 But this was controversial, as Thorpe’s public challenge of Macaulay and the African Institution attests. Thorpe’s wider critique of the African Institution was published in A Letter to William Wilberforce, to which the African Institution issued a detailed reply. Thorpe wrote, accurately, that the African Institution was formed so they could keep their hand in r­ unning the colony. The Institution replied that “in truth, the only Directors of that Com­pany whose names are to be found in the list of the Directors of the African Institution, besides ­those of the ever-­to-­be-­lamented Mr Henry Thornton and Mr Granville Sharp, are, Lord Teignmouth, Mr Charles Grant, Mr Wilberforce, Mr Babington, Mr T. F. Forster, and Mr Clarkson . . . ​but ­these persons formed only a small proportion of the managing body, which consists of a President, twenty-­two Vice-­Presidents, a Trea­surer, and thirty­six Directors.” Of course, they neglected to mention other obvious connections, like Macaulay’s role in both organ­izations, or the African Institution’s influence in advising the government on whom to appoint as colony governor, or in granting recommendations for government contractors. But Thorpe did not neglect t­ hese issues, so the African Institution was required to deal with the allegations that they w ­ ere “securing the trade of the Colony to their managing Secretary.” The Institution argued that they did not provide Macaulay with “any facilities beyond what his own knowledge of the trade of Africa and of the Colony gave him.” 41 But Thorpe was making the point that Macaulay’s knowledge was used to exclude ­others. For instance, “Macaulay had not only induced the Board of Trade to control the quantity of gunpowder shipped to Africa but also to

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give him the contract to supply it.” Apparently responding to growing abolitionist concerns about the relationship between the slave trade and access to guns, the Board of Trade had ­limited imports to one barrel of gunpowder per ton of shipping to Africa. Macaulay himself was shipping it.42 ­W hether they ­were deliberately missing the point of Thorpe’s accusations or not, the African Institution failed to address the more fundamental prob­lem posed by Macaulay’s business interests and their philanthropic mission. The controversies emerged ­because Macaulay was a businessman, but also ­because many of the arguments put forward by promoters of ethical-­commerce alternatives to the slave trade ­were commercial and economic. The African Institution ­didn’t simply want ­people to do good t­ hings for enslaved p ­ eople; they wanted ­people to see that the plantation system was eco­nom­ically irrational as well as cruel ­because efficient markets ­were also the just markets that made life better for every­one. Macaulay dealt with Thorpe’s accusation of using undue influence to benefit his own firm, writing, “My communications with his Majesty’s Government have been almost exclusively on public questions . . . ​when I say almost exclusively, I make this exception merely ­because I did on one occasion apply to Lord Bathurst on the subject of the colonial duties [tariffs], a m ­ atter in which I had some interest. His Lordship de­cided the point contrary to my wishes.”43 Kenneth Macaulay had been pressing Governor Maxwell on the same point, which fi­nally provided a way for the African Institution to deal with the accusations. William Allen, the African Institution member contact by James Hook, sided with Thorpe when it came to the Macaulays. He believed that Kenneth had overstepped his bounds in influencing the government, and failed to do the job he was contracted for; Kenneth was subsequently removed from his post as Liberated African Department man­ag­er.44

Tariffs in West Africa Macaulay’s pressure on Maxwell suggests the other way in which influence over government officials was used to make legitimate commerce profitable. Merchants regularly used their connections to government and

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their influence in the public sphere to argue against the tariffs that often priced their imports out of home markets. In 1819 the tariffs on articles of African produce ­were amended in a consolidation bill. While tariffs on hides, ivory, and all va­ri­e­ties of gum went up, tariffs on palm oil and rice both significantly decreased, reflecting the changing markets for African produce in Britain.45 Kenneth Macaulay—in his role on the Sierra Leone Council—­succeeded in getting an ordinance passed in Sierra Leone that put extra tariffs on imports consigned to persons not resident in the colony for two years or more, which gave the firm a distinct advantage in the import (if not export) trade in the colony.46 But the export trade advantage was partially contained within that import trade rule, b­ ecause Macaulay was hoping to extend credit through the sale of imports that would be paid for in commodities his firm would set the prices for (as was the case for the ill-­fated Brown & Ives run-in with the firm). In waving away the accusations of being a mono­poly exporter in Sierra Leone, Macaulay sidestepped the question of his firm’s concerted effort to monopolize the trade into the colony, to West African consumers themselves, through his ­family’s influence over much of the governance of the colony. In West Africa, it was the West African governments’ control of trade which gave rise to Eu­ro­pean and American traders’ accusations of corruption, mono­poly, and the unfairness of tariffs. In the continental kingdoms to the interior of Senegambia and Sierra Leone, control of riverine trade in the slave-­trade era operated through tributary states that acted as middlemen between the coasts and the po­liti­cal and economic centers in places like Galam (Gajaaga) and Futa Jallon, which in turn controlled access to slaves traded to them from the east and north. T ­ hese states built their power over the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries by consolidating control over ­these trades through military-­fiscal expansion and the creation of a new elite, in part through their control of tariffs. African states had been applying tariffs since the beginning of the slave trade. Referred to as “customary payments” or customs, traders had to ­factor ­these into ­every trade. The French slave trader Jean Barbot reported that in the Kingdom of Ardra (modern Benin) in the early eigh­teenth ­century, “tis usual for Eu­ro­pe­ans to give the king the value of fifty slaves in goods, for his permission to trade, and customs, for each ship; and to the king’s son the value of two slaves, for the privilege of watering; and of

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four slaves for wooding . . . ​The f­ actor or super-­cargo, having finished his sale, is to pre­sent the king again with two muskets, twenty-­five lbs of powder, and the value of nine slaves in other goods.” 47 But increasingly, the development of free-­trade language and the abolitionist arguments against the slave trade started to shape perceptions of ­these payments as corrupt bribes rather than standardized tariffs. As Governor McCarthy reported from the Gambia, “Since the Gum Trade has been established for a ­century or more, a system of fraud and deception has been carried on, by the Sellers, and Buyers, and thus destroyed that confidence so necessary to carry on Trade.” 48 This assessment of tariff payments aligned with anti-­t ariff arguments among liberals, but it also demonstrates the ways in which free-­trade policy could have contradictory ethical impacts within West Africa. Macaulay objected to “pre­sents” of guns and alcohol to Freetown’s neighboring kings, insisting that they trade at the colony on the same terms as every­one e­ lse. This was in vain at first, but with the increasing British antislavery naval presence on the coast, cutting down on the number of slave traders in the vicinity, ­these leaders ­were deprived of options. Almaami Amara Touré, from Moria, complained in 1814 that although legitimate commerce had been beneficial to begin with, “to day White ­people come to take the country away from us & to make Slaves of us in return. Nor w ­ ill they suffer any person to come near us except as they like.” 49 Exclusive trade was deemed monopolistic if it caused Britons to subsidize unprofitable enterprises. But binding Moria’s trade to the Sierra Leone Com­pany would drive down the prime cost of the trading voyages by reducing the amount of tariffs (customary payments) for ­doing business—­leaders would be dependent on only one source of ­those payments, rather than having Eu­ro­pean and American traders competing with each other to offer African leaders the highest customary payments to access the trade. The pressure of legitimate commerce on the slave trade was slow, but it hit hardest in the African states’ ability to collect “pre­sents” and monopolize trade out of West Africa. This was achieved through the establishment of regular markets and new trading zones to entice legitimate-­commerce producers to exchange directly with Eu­ro­pean traders. Macaulay wrote in 1793 that “we wish to encourage as much as pos­si­ble the natives themselves to bring their stock e­ tc to market. It ­will save us much trou­ble, and

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increase the intercourse of the natives with the ­people of this place which is desireable on many accounts.”50 From 1818 through 1821, Governor McCarthy advertised in the Sierra Leone Gazette a monthly fair “for the buying, selling, bartering, and trafficking in [­every] article of the manufacture, growth, or production of the Western Coast of Africa.”51 Tying legitimate commerce to debt in t­ hese markets was extremely effective in generating an explosion in the production of rice, groundnuts, and other commodities for export, as discussed in Chapter 4. Putting pressure on African leaders’ mono­poly of trade did effectively, in Western Guinea at least, lead to the end of the slave trade into the Atlantic and the establishment of an alternative source of supply, through a combination of ­free “peasant” ­labor and enslaved ­labor. Peanut cultivation, a shift in Atlantic commerce, and the influence of spreading Muslim revivals posed a threat to the ability of the rulers of ­these states to enforce their power in relation to the French or British traders, who w ­ ere often pushing their own governments t­ oward formal territorial expansion through the extension of protectorates in exchange for exclusive trading rights—­a nd reduced tariff payments. The Bordeaux firm Maurel et Prom, for instance, pushed for the acquisition of territory on the Senegal River in the 1850s in order to maintain their advantage over their Marseille rivals, whose arguments for ­free trade on the river ­were gaining traction in government. But the establishment of French markets at their new concession territories on the Senegal River disrupted the Trarza and Brakna Moors’ control of the gum trade and its accompanying customary payments.52 In 1852, Sierra Leone’s governor, Arthur Kennedy, proposed a new system of payments to replace the “inferior quality of goods” being given as annual pre­sents to kings who had signed commercial treaties with the colony. ­Because the pre­sents had been given based on an estimated value of bars, the colonial government had been able to pay significantly less by offering substandard goods. Kennedy complained that “when the Government intend to give a number of Bars of goods equal to £10, the recipient generally receives an amount and quality of goods, which, if re-­sold (as they frequently are) would not realize £5.” This was a prob­lem ­because “the Governor and the Colonial Secretary know that a fraud is committed; and the native Chief goes away with the belief that the Government is dishonest, and as devoid of princi­ple as himself.” Ken-

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nedy proposed a system of cash payments, which would have the added bonus of tying the chiefs’ ­future commerce to the colony, which would give “an increased an ­wholesome stimulus . . . ​to trade generally.”53 The policy was approved. The shift to legitimate commerce in groundnuts, palm oil, and other commodities did not immediately destabilize trade relationships, in part ­because the goal of legitimate commerce was precisely to maintain that continuity.54 But a state like Futa Jallon, to the north of Freetown, ­rose to power in part through control of the interior slave supply and the tributary relationships Futa Jallon had with the middlemen operating in the slave trade in the Rio Nunez and Rio Pongo at the coast. The shift to legitimate commerce was slow in this region b­ ecause of the ease of trading slaves illicitly on the rivers, but by the ­middle of the ­century, French demand for groundnuts and the pull of legitimate trade at both Bathurst and Freetown had shifted the commercial power of the region closer to the coast, where the groundnuts and rice ­were grown, and away from Futa Jallon itself. Conflicts between the Nalu and the Landumans for control of trade in the Rio Nunez led the French and British regional governors to take sides, in exchange for exclusive trading rights and an elimination of ad valorem customary payments which ­were the responsibility of the merchants, in f­avor of annualized stipends paid by the colonial government. Futa Jallon was effectively cut off from expanding its control t­ oward its Western coast.55 Masina and Gajaaga ­were other former slave-­trading polities that began to hemorrhage power as p ­ eople moved t­ owards the groundnut producing regions. Fulas from Masina and Gajaaga moved into the Wolof territory of Kaabu. 56 An oral history of Kaabu rec­ords that, for the leader, “His ­people ­were his strength ­because he collected tax from them from Kaatong to Kunjuur.”57 But the Fulas who arrived encountered the declining Kaabu state, “impoverished by the loss of income from the slave trade, and by the new commitment of peasant and Muslim communities to export agriculture” in the form of groundnuts.58 Niumi, along the Gambia River, a smaller polity po­l iti­cally related to the Kaabu, was also facing challenges from the loss of their tariff base with the rise of groundnut production. The British at Bathurst had forcibly ended the slave trade on the Gambia River over the 1820s, and by the 1830s the elite, secularized,

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military Soninke rulers of Niumi, like ­those in Kaabu, ­were increasingly extracting higher taxes from their own subjects to make up the difference.59 Oral tradition rec­ords that Alfa Molo, the Fula son of a slave, built up a following of f­ree and enslaved Fulas to challenge Kaabu and ultimately became leader of some former provinces of Kaabu.60 More dramatic was Al Hajj Umar Tal’s jihad against lapsed-­Muslim military elites, which began in 1852 and established a formidable empire along the ­middle Niger. He was inspired by his origins in Futa Toro, his time in Futa Jallon, and his personal connections (through marriage to Uthman dan Fodio’s grand­daughter) to the Sokoto Caliphate, and like his pre­de­ces­sors, he banned alcohol, as well as tobacco, dancing, enslavement of “true” Muslims, and illegitimate taxation practices.61 The new Umarian state, like Sokoto and Futa Toro, did not give up the practice of slavery, continuing to enslave “apostates” for sale into the Saharan networks. Umar positioned his state as a new middleman between the demands for gum by coastal merchants and for guinée cloths in the Sahara, and the demand for millet and other grain from both.62 As legitimate commerce put pressure on the old regimes’ ability to collect taxes and hold onto authority, challengers like Umar Tal and Alfa Molo arose to take advantage of the new trading paradigm. The disruption and destabilization of the eigh­teenth ­century trading structures gave an advantage to more than just potential po­liti­cal challengers, though: in negotiating with newly formed states, Eu­ro­pean and Euro-­African legitimate traders could press their advantage by offering po­liti­cal (and sometimes military) support of the new regime in exchange for an elimination of tariffs, or an exclusive trading agreement, both of which offered advantages to home consumers through lower costs (and a bigger profit margin for the legitimate traders). By 1861, a British treaty with the King of Baddibu on the River Gambia specified at the end of a series of debilitating wars that “the King ­shall receive an annual payment of 600 dollars from the local Government in lieu of all customs and charges on French and British traders.”63 This new system of payments was then further disrupted by another series of religious revolts led by marabouts as the new King of Baddibu was unable to effectively assert his authority in his new alliance with the British. Intercultural trade made it clear that helping enslaved Africans was not the same ­thing as benefiting African traders, nor was it the same ­thing as

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aiding the states that had prospered from the slave trade. The practicalities of trade in West Africa, of promoting legitimate agricultural development, and of favoring some types of production over ­others raised questions about who was meant to benefit from ethical commerce. If the purpose of such commerce was continuity and convincing slave traders and slave-­ trading governments that they could be as well off ­after abolition, that led legitimate traders to extend credit while searching for new African export products; if the purpose was to improve the lives of the enslaved themselves, that led to l­egal changes and support for revolutionary governments and fugitive slaves; and if Atlantic consumers needed to be convinced that acting in their self-­i nterest could promote ethical commerce, then the approaches taken by commercially oriented abolitionists had to focus on lowering prices and reducing the tariffs that had helped to maintain trading continuity. The ability of Eu­ro­pean and American traders in West Africa to seize on t­ hese existing po­liti­cal tensions as well as foster ­others, intentionally or accidentally—by preferring dif­fer­ent forms of legitimate commerce—­eroded the price of commodities purchased from West African producers and helped make the argument that f­ ree ­labor could be cheaper than enslaved ­labor if only export tariffs ­were managed to the advantage of the legitimate-­commerce cause.

American Views of the Tariff Debate American legitimate-­commerce firms also resorted to government lobbying to reduce tariff rates. As Martin Benson alerted his employers, Brown & Ives, the rates of duty paid on vari­ous African products was also crucial to making a profit. When Gideon Young returned from trading in Sierra Leone in 1816, trou­ble began for the firm almost immediately ­after he arrived at the customs h­ ouse. Young’s custom tariffs ­were paid on the value he expected them to achieve in the US market: $37,258.63. This ­didn’t ­matter much for camwood and hides, which ­were imported tariff ­free (and often sent directly on to Britain). But other goods ­were subject to high import tariffs. Specifically, ivory and palm oil imported on Brown & Ives’s account w ­ ere subject to 25 ­percent and 30 ­percent ad valorem tariffs, which made an expected sale valuation, rather than a “prime” valuation, extremely costly for the firm. They owed $5,500 for

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ivory, and $1,650 for palm oil. In three installments, between September 1816 and March 1817, they w ­ ere expected to pay $8,970.95 in tariffs. A ­ fter the fact, Brown & Ives gathered intelligence in support of their case against the customs officials, which stated that the common practice was to enter the value of the goods at the prime cost “at the place of exportation.”64 Import tariffs w ­ ere a constant concern for ­those engaging in the Africa trade. As late as 1853, American ­Free Produce merchant George W. Taylor wrote to his contact in the American Colonization Society that African imported goods ­were being incorrectly taxed: “I see the Cassada was . . . ​ duty [tariff] paid u­ nder the name of ‘arrow root’ that caused the duty to be higher than it should be, as arrow root is worth much more. The cassava is not worth more ­here than 8 or 10 cents at the outside. Please have that rectified at 6 per cent.”65 Recording the wrong valuation, or a wrong product name, could erase all profit from legitimate trade. Martin Benson regularly recorded prices at far below market value on his return invoices. Although he knew how much ivory was worth in Eu­rope, for instance, he recorded it at a fifth of the price in his voyage invoices.66 Gideon Young had been completely unaware of the import rates on his squills speculation, (discussed in Chapter 4), which made them entirely too expensive to actually enter into the country for sale. Young had accepted them in payment at their expected value on the US market, and had recorded their value at that level in his logbook. Unfortunately, they ­were actually worth nothing. Worse than that, they w ­ ere charged at 30 ­percent ad valorem, which meant that the firm owed nearly $600 to import them. Using all of their po­liti­cal leverage, Brown & Ives pursued their claim against the customs h­ ouse all the way to Congress. The evidence they submitted from other Africa traders included a note that Paul Cuffe had imported 12 elephant’s teeth valued at $12, and subject to a 25 ­percent duty.67 Jacob Babbitt, a Bristol, Rhode Island trader, wrote to them that one of his recent ships “had no Invoice of the Cargo, as the nature of the trade would hardly admit of fixing a proper valuation to it. The ­whole was appraised ­here by two merchants appointed by the Collector and myself, one of which was formerly a ship master and well acquainted with the trade of Africa. They appraised the Prime Ivory a 30 cents per pound, small Ivory at 15 cents per lb, and Palm Oil at 20 cents per gallon, as being

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the ­actual value thereof at the place of exportation, and the duties ­were calculated by the collector according to the appraisment.”68 In 1819 the US Senate’s Committee of Commerce and Manufactures issued a report agreeing with the trading firm that ad valorem tariffs on African imports did have the potential to lead to fraud. It noted, “The honest merchant, who makes true entries upon true invoices, may well feel distress and indignation, when he sees the fruits of his industry wrested from him, by an unprincipled competition who makes false entries upon false invoices. Yet, it is not supposed, that the proper remedy for such frauds, is to repay from the Trea­sury, to the honest merchant the excess of duties paid by him, over t­hose paid by the rogue.” The committee statement concluded, however, that “­whether therefore, the lower duties paid by other importers of ivory and palm oil, have resulted from their frauds upon their revenues or from the better fortune of their importers, who may have purchased ­t hese articles at lower rate, and may have entered them fairly; it is not perceived, that ­either the one or the other of ­these facts, imposes an obligation upon the government, to refund to the memorialists, any part of the duties which they have paid.”69 Tariffs may have been unpop­u­lar among legitimate-­commerce trading firms, like Brown & Ives. But the free-­trade arguments also found an awkward home in American abolitionist lit­er­a­ture. As Marc-­William Palen has argued, “leading American economic nationalists viewed the free-­ trading plantation South and F ­ ree Trade E ­ ngland as respective enslavers 70 of blacks and American manufacturers.” British free-­traders in the Anti-­ Corn Law League also corresponded with some proslavery American southerners on the issue of tariffs, which gave pause to some Garrisonian immediatist abolitionists who supported the Anti-­Corn Law League.71 The Philadelphia Quaker committee on requited l­abor in the United States backhandedly complimented the British free-­labor East India proj­ect, acknowledging that even if their motives ­were suspect, it would have a beneficial effect on American slave l­ abor: “However much we may be disposed to suspect the genuineness of British philanthropy, however much we may be willing to [assign] to her a character for inconsistency and hy­poc­risy, which she justly deserves as a nation: still, let us rejoice that her policy teaches her to lean ­toward the side of ruined and robbed humanity; and that if ­there be not disinterestedness of purpose and a

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virtuous honesty in her zeal; let us try to overlook this error in considering the good that may be done to her suffering colonists, to our slaves, and to our Country.”72 American abolitionists ­were wary about the motives under­lying British economic policy, which made a unified transatlantic approach to ­these issues unlikely.73 ­Free trade was supported by the southern plantocracy of the US, represented by p ­ eople such as John Calhoun, b­ ecause they ­were buying and selling from a global market.74 Protectionist tariffs ­were impor­tant for supporting northern manufacturers, but, ironically, they also made it pos­ si­ble for slaveholders to avoid discussion of direct taxation of enslaved laborers.75 For American abolitionists involved with legitimate commerce, however, sometimes f­ree ­labor and ­free trade could be ideologically aligned, as Brown & Ives or George W. Taylor would attest. The ability to freely source British East India or, ­a fter 1838, West India free-­labor sugar, in preference to Louisiana sugar, was certainly a case for ­free trade. ­Free trade in global tropical commodities would bring free-­labor goods into competition with goods produced by slaves in the southern United States. And reducing the tariffs owed to West African polities lowered the cost of legitimate produce for merchants and their markets at home. Abolitionists may have doubted the benefits of ­free trade, but for the legitimate-­commerce movement, ­those benefits ­were clear.76

The Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany In 1823 Macaulay, alongside po­liti­cal economist David Ricardo and seven other proprietors of East India stock, met to request that the General Quarterly Court of the East India Com­pany specifically discuss the East India sugar trade. At the heart of this campaigning by Macaulay and the other abolitionist businessmen was the role of the tariff in creating a protective mono­poly for the West Indian planters that did not allow the “invisible hand” of moral commerce to operate. The public would not buy East India goods in preference to West Indian b­ ecause East India goods had too large a tariff on them, making them too expensive. At its highest point by the early 1820s, East India sugar accounted for only 9.3 ­percent of the total volume of West India sugar imports (at the height of the 1790s boycott), but was only 3 ­percent for home consumption at its peak between

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the abolition of the slave trade and the flurry of pamphleteering in the 1820s. On average between 1813 and 1820, East India sugar importation was around 1 ­percent of West India sugar’s volume, having risen from less than 1 ­percent before the abolition of the slave trade.77 But this, Macaulay and his allies believed, belied the true potential of East India’s free-­labor sugar, which they argued would be cheaper, and therefore in greater demand, without the West India mono­poly. East India rice and indigo pointed the way forward: Already by 1829, Britain was importing sixteen times as much rice from the East Indies as from Amer­i­ca, reversing the figures from the 1790s. Peter Coclanis has identified that “as early as the 1820s, ­there are scattered references to the fact that ‘East Indian’ rice was selling almost everywhere in the West at considerably lower prices than US rice, generally 20–25 ­percent lower or even more.”78 Rice was already demonstrating the kind of switch to f­ ree ­labor that would benefit consumers. This was partially ­because it was produced around the world already, and, as p ­ eople like Macaulay identified, it could easily be brought into competition with slave-­produced rice by simply connecting producers with new consumers. It could be that this fact ­shaped Macaulay’s thinking in terms of how East Indian sugar production would also be brought into competition with West Indian, slave-­ produced sugar. He wrote in a pamphlet on East Indian sugar production, “The business of cultivation ­will thus still remain in the hands of the natives, and the pro­cess of manufacturing the cane into Sugar ­w ill alone be undertaken by Eu­ro­pe­ans.”79 If it worked for rice, then perhaps it could work for sugar. As the campaign against slavery heated up again in the early 1820s, Macaulay was not alone in pursuing plans to seek new sources of ethical revenue in the wider empire, and new sources of cheap l­abor. In January 1825, during a visit to the Quaker philanthropist James Cropper in Liverpool, Macaulay and other abolitionists devised a free-­produce com­ pany to trade in sugar and cotton from India and Africa. As reported by Macaulay’s son, Henry, who was training in Cropper’s counting ­house, “­After dinner James read some calculations which he had been making of the probable gains of a Com­pany (should such be established) for the cultivation of sugar by ­free l­abour. The plan was approved, and in ten minutes shares ­were disposed of to the amount of £175,000. The capital

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is to be 2,500,000. The next morning (Tuesday) Papa prepared a prospectus which has since been lithographed.”80 The “Free-­Sugar Com­pany,” as it was dubbed, took off quickly, being considered before Parliament ­under the old model of incorporation in March, April, and May (the B ­ ubble Act, which had regulated the formation of businesses in the eigh­teenth ­century, would be abolished in June of that year, which would have made it pos­si­ble to incorporate the com­ pany without a Royal Charter). As Clarkson described to his correspondent in Philadelphia, the joint stock com­pany had been proposed with “a capital of 4 millions sterling, by which we hope to undersell slavery—­the Bill has been read twice in the House of Commons.”81 Prospectuses extolled the commercial value of the com­pany and pointed interested readers to other publications promoting the antislavery nature of the scheme. Nontransferable shares w ­ ere issued, and capital was raised—­all privately, and largely through the evangelical and philanthropic business networks of the vice presidents and committee. The vice presidents included the famous abolitionists Wilberforce, Thomas Babington, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Stephen Lushington, and James Stephen. Macaulay sat on the provisional committee, alongside his nephew and business partner, and James Cropper, Henry Drummond, and other notable antislavery activists. The com­pany’s banker was the firm of founding member of the Sierra Leone committee, Henry Thornton. The com­pany’s secretary was based at Thornton’s firm as well.82 In addition to the particulars of the com­pany’s management and share issuance, the prospectus for the com­pany also outlined the rationale for its formation. The com­pany was not intended to establish plantations or manufacturing, but to “encourage the cultivation and manufacture of that article by individuals on their own account, to whom it ­will make such advances” to aid in the production of sugar. The idea was that the in­de­ pen­dent, free-­labor sugar producers would then consign their sugar to the com­pany for sale at the end of the year, which would repay the advances and generate the profits needed to pay dividends on the shares.83 Although the com­pany alerted potential shareholders that they w ­ ere interested in schemes in Africa, Amer­i­ca, and the West Indies, the obvious and first place of interest was the East Indies, largely as a result of Cropper and Macaulay’s personal connections to that market. Cropper was the pro-

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prietor of the largest East India ware­house in Liverpool—­Cropper, Benson, & Co. (no relation to the Rhode Island Bensons or the Liberia Bensons). And Macaulay had already been a long-­standing shareholder in the East India Com­pany, both for himself and for his clients. He also had personal connections in Calcutta: his b­ rother, Colin, was ­there, and two of his c­ hildren ­were soon to follow. In June 1824 he was already known to be involved in importing “­free ­labor” Mauritius sugar (though questions w ­ ere raised about the use of enslaved l­abor on the island), which was also granted favorable import tariffs, as reported in the newspaper John Bull.84 In a pamphlet he published in 1824, Macaulay had outlined what he believed ­were the technological barriers to more efficient free-­labor sugar cultivation. His detailed outline of the system of sugar cultivation in India focused on fixed capital costs: in the West Indies, “a planter must expend a large capital in the purchase of land, slaves and ­cattle, and in the erection of works,” whereas “the expense of the first three items is wholly saved to the East Indian Sugar manufacturer,” which he believed could net an investor in Calcutta sugar manufacturing a profit of nearly £3,000 for 250 tons of sugar.85 He calculated that the fixed capital needed for East Indies sugar cultivation “would not exceed £800,” while the same enterprise would require £45,000 of fixed capital in the West Indies. Unlike the West Indies, where the w ­ hole enterprise had to be capitalized by Eu­ro­pe­ans, Macaulay thought the opportunity presented by the East Indies was as a more efficient manufacturer of cane, using improved technology, and leaving the a­ ctual growing costs to the Indian peasantry.86 Macaulay’s pamphlet describes exactly how he believed the business would run. He argued that the existing system of advancing loans to growers of sugar cane allowed for sufficient return on investment (and secure systems of collateral). Drawing on his experience in African legitimate commerce, he promoted a plan of lending to agents on the ground, rather than investing too much in the establishment of agricultural plantations, which had failed before.87 Credit advanced for a crop in June or July could expect to yield 10 to 12 ­percent. Lenders ­were allowed “the same power of summary recovery which the law vests in the landlord,” and debts could be carried into subsequent years. Macaulay calculated that the amount of credit that a hopeful sugar manufacturer would need

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to invest amounted to 12 shillings 3½ pence per hundredweight.88 The plan for this Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany was basically the same as what he was promoting in Sierra Leone at this point: monopsony through debt, which would give the com­pany the power to set local prices and thereby fulfill the obligation of ethical commerce to promote consumer value, demonstrating to British consumers that f­ ree ­labor could be cheaper than enslaved ­labor. In promoting their East India sugar plan, ­there ­were several dif­fer­ent arguments put forward by Macaulay, Cropper, and o­ thers against the West India protective tariff. First of all, they claimed, “The West Indians seem to rest their claim to protection from the competition of the East Indians, on the grounds, first, that the cost of producing sugar is less in the East than in the West Indies.” This reasoning supported the abolitionists’ arguments that f­ree l­abor was cheaper than enslaved l­abor, and therefore more efficient. Cheaper ­labor would mean more profit for producers and merchants, and lower prices for consumers, they argued. This was based on speculative calculations that “its necessary price in the London market would be about 30s per cwt. [hundredweight]; which is about 10s per cwt below the price at which the West Indians say they can afford to sell sugar of a very inferior quality.” This was supposed to support the argument that by removing the protective tariff on West Indian sugar, or by equalizing the East and West Indian tariffs, it would become clear that f­ ree l­ abor produced cheaper sugar. Slavery would be undercut by price-­conscious consumers switching to free-­labor sugar, and therefore ­free ­labor would drive slave ­labor out of existence. “­There is, in fact, but one way to put down West India slavery,” they reasoned, “and that is, by allowing the produce raised by comparatively cheap f­ ree ­labour to come into competition with that raised by slaves.”89 In 1827 a full list of the costs per ton was printed in the Genius of Universal Emancipation in the United States in support of British abolitionists’ arguments. By their reckoning, a ton of East India sugar cost £10 more; a ton of East India coffee and cocoa both cost £28 more; a gallon of East India rum cost 11 shillings and six pence more; and East India cotton wool was charged a £6 ­percent ad valorem tariff, “while West India is admitted f­ree of duty.”90 An 1829 pamphlet arguing in f­avor of reducing East India tariffs pointed out that India produced almost every­thing the

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United States did, and therefore British consumers could avoid both supporting slavery and supporting the United States more generally by switching to East Indian rice, among other goods listed. 91 Thomas Clarkson believed, in a popularly quoted statistic, that the En­glish ­people would not allow themselves to be “taxed annually to the amount of a million sterling to support West Indian slavery!!”92 Elizabeth Heyrick, the author of the extremely popu­lar tract that kicked off the second sugar boycott, noted, “That abstinence from West Indian sugar alone would sign the death-­warrant of West Indian slavery, is morally certain. The gratuity of two millions annually, is acknowledged by the planters to be insufficient to bolster up their tottering system,—­and they scruple not to declare to Parliament, that they must be ruined if the protecting duties against East India competition be not augmented.”93 For t­ hese commercial abolitionists, government lobbying was simply an attempt to bring consumers the better-­value free-­labor produce, which would be competitively priced. Any plan that promoted consumer value was an argument against mono­poly, but it was not necessarily an argument against monopsony, and so Macaulay & Babington and other legitimate-­commerce businesses argued against tariffs for their products, and against protection of the sugar planters, while also trying to use government influence to corner the market in vari­ous free-­labor alternatives to drive down the price for home consumers (while still remaining profitable) and thus chase out of business the producers who relied on enslaved ­labor. This was the claim made by Thorpe’s accusations, and the growing pushback from proslavery lobbyists like Joseph Marryat and John Gladstone: Macaulay, Cropper, and their abolition cronies w ­ ere simply trying to use the publicity and opportunity of antislavery arguments to dupe a naive and trusting humanitarian market segment into buying their stuff. In a series of well-­publicized letters published in the Liverpool papers, the Courier and Mercury, in 1823, Cropper’s motives ­were “exposed” by John Gladstone, who at this point was the MP for Woodstock, as well as a West Indian absentee planter, owner of more than 1,600 enslaved p ­ eople, and ­father of the f­ uture prime minister William Gladstone. Styling himself “Mercator,” John Gladstone commented that he was “amused by the sly, yet earnest manner in which, with the aid of his map, the interests of

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Fig 5.1 ​“JOHN BULL taking a Clear View of the Negro Slavery Question!!,” R. Cruikshank, 1826. Courtesy of the John Car­ter Brown Library.

the East India Sugar-­growers are put forward, and by his endeavours to persuade our manufactures, that it is their interest and duty to prefer it to the produce of the West; whilst he leniently lets off, and not without comparatively indirect praise, his slave-­owning connexions in the United States, who consign their cotton, the produce of the ­labor of  Slaves, to his ­house in Liverpool for sale.”94 Cropper could be as earnest as he wanted to be in promoting ethical sugar; his business as a w ­ hole was unethical, Gladstone argued, ­because he was happy to sell slave-­produced cotton. His inconsistency made him hypocritical. The parliamentary bill to sanction the Free-­Sugar Com­pany was defeated and a charter was ultimately refused, so in 1826, at the same time that the print of the cartoon “John Bull taking a clear view of the slavery question” appeared, the committee abandoned its plans and sought to return some money to investors. They w ­ ere unable to return all of it immediately, in part ­because, following Macaulay’s plan, £638.6.11 had been used to purchase machinery for a sugar manufactory in India. However,

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the committee was hopeful that the machinery would be sold at full price and the proceeds remitted eventually.95 But Macaulay and Cropper both continued to be involved in Indian sugar throughout the late 1820s. The failure of the Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany ­didn’t end attempts to source free-­labor sugar. In 1827 Macaulay received a letter from James Stephen, another abolitionist. In it, Stephen commented, “Along with [the enclosed letter] came a parcel of seeds addressed to you . . . ​I congratulate you on this new plan for putting an end to slavery. Between Botany & Po­liti­cal oeconomy we s­ hall do . . . ​Chemistry too it seems is turning out for us. My paper says the French Chemists have found a way to make beetroot yield as fine and cheap sugar as the cane.”96

Subsidies for F ­ ree L ­ abor ­ fter the abolition of enslaved ­labor in the British Empire in 1834, free-­ A labor sugar could be found more readily in the global market. But this did not necessarily signal the end of the debates over the value of f­ ree ­labor. For ­those involved in promoting ethical commerce, making ­these economic arguments was one ­thing, but convincing the transatlantic public of their truth was another. And one of the prob­lems they faced, which became increasingly obvious as emancipations took effect, was that they ­were trying to make two simultaneous economic arguments: on the one hand, that t­ hose who had been using enslaved l­ abor would find that ­free ­labor was more profitable in the production of tropical commodities like rice, sugar, indigo, and cotton. This argument was supposed to convince p ­ eople to invest in nonslave schemes like Macaulay and Cropper’s Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany. It was also supposed to point out that using slaves was eco­nom­ically backward and thereby convince the pro-­ slavery lobby that they could make more money by abandoning the slave trade and enslaved l­ abor. Their other economic argument was that consumers would find that having access to free-­labor products would bring down the costs of consumption ­because the increased supply and the reduction of tariffs would bring down prices. Enslaved ­people, who r­ eally ­ought to have been at the heart of the argument, w ­ ere entirely absent from the debate among t­ hese commercial abolitionists ­because their “interest” in emancipation was

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taken for granted. Profit, cost, and price ­were the precise terms the abolitionists used in amorphous and contrary ways, making slippery and possibly even deliberately confusing arguments about who exactly would benefit from a shift to East Indian or African production of tropical staples. T ­ here was no clear definition of “better,” and so an argument that free-­labor production would be “better”—­for slaves, for Indians, for home and overseas consumers, and for merchants and producers in Britain and the British Empire—­was an attempt to ignore the real­ity that change would produce some winners and some losers. It was an attempt to imagine a market system without negative externalities. The tensions of ­these competing arguments ­were revealed ­after British emancipation fully took effect in 1838, ending the West Indian apprenticeship system for former slaves. The ultimate settlement of British slaveholders’ claims to compensation cost the British taxpayer £20 million; this sizable subsidy, which was intended to offset the impact of the abolition of enslaved ­labor, filtered through the domestic and imperial economy but did not extend to African slaveholders.97 In contrast, French abolition in 1848 did provide some mea­sure of compensation for the value of enslaved ­labor lost to habitants and impor­tant African allies in the colonies of Senegal.98 This subsidy was an attempt to mitigate the impact of the loss of the financial and l­ abor power provided by enslaved workers in the production of commodities and ser­vices, and to address the impor­ tant role enslaved l­ abor had played in the development of cap­i­tal­ist institutions and national wealth throughout the British and French empires. Theoretically, it should have offset the “damage” of emancipation to businesses that had used enslaved l­abor, as their compensation could have been reinvested in wages for ­free laborers, demonstrating the strength of the abolitionists’ claims about f­ ree l­ abor’s value. But abolitionists split in the 1840s over the issue of tariff reduction.99 Emancipation meant that West Indian as well as East Indian sugar supplies ­were “­free ­labor.” And now the West Indian preferential tariff rates ­were protecting ­free laborers from competition with cheaper, slave-­ produced sugars from Brazil and Cuba. Fi­nally, the logic of price and cost began to catch up with them. Although abolitionists mobilized against the introduction of f­ree trade in 1841, by 1846 the Sugar Duties Act had eliminated preferential treatment for British free-­labor sugar. A

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summary of the evidence published in 1848 outlined, “Sugars may be sold at equal prices in the same market; but one may be at a loss and the other at a profit. It does not therefore follow that ­because Cuba and Java sell at similar prices in similar markets, they sell at equal profits.”100 A t­ able listed the amounts of sugar produced in vari­ous countries, alongside the cost to produce it in t­ hose countries, broken down for comparison into the cost per hundredweight. Sugars produced with f­ree ­labor cost an average of 21 shillings 7 pence, whereas slave-­produced sugar cost 9 shillings and 9 pence.101 For t­ hose buying the “brand” of abolitionism, the extra cost of free-­labor sugar had been conspicuously consumed for de­cades. And emancipation was a boon to the free-­produce movements in both Britain and the United States, where the price of free-­labor sugar actually became much more palatable ­because of the (marginally) lower costs associated with sourcing British West Indian sugar. But the pamphlets produced by Macaulay, Cropper, and other East India sugar proponents had been making more than a moral case for using ­f ree produce: they ­were also claiming it was cheaper. When that proved not to be the case, they found it much harder to convince the public to pay more to protect sugar produced with expensive ­f ree l­ abor from competition with cheaper, slave-­ produced sugar from Brazil and Cuba. Like the arguments for supporting African slave traders in the transition to legitimate commerce, abolitionists supportive of the West India sugar tariff argued that a transition period was necessary so that plantation o­ wners could make adjustments. Samuel Wilberforce published a pamphlet of his speech in support of the West India protective tariffs, which included an appendix of supporting information. He cited the governors of Barbados and Antigua, reporting that “the cost of making sugar, by ­free ­labour, is greatly beyond the cost of making it by slave ­labor,” and “for obvious reasons, free-­grown sugar can never yield so lucrative a return as that produced by the l­ abour of foreign slaves.” The governor of Barbados at least held out some hope that it was just a ­matter of time: “My opinion is that sugar cultivated by f­ ree ­labour, cannot yet compete on equal terms with slave ­labour, and that freedom should be nursed by protection for a considerable time to come.”102 Should Britain protect the produce of the newly emancipated colonial slaves, or adhere to free-­trade princi­ples that lined up ideologically with free-­labor princi­ples?103

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The shift in abolitionists’ position during the 1840s debates was not lost on their opponents. Richard Cobden and John Bright, both of whom supported ­free trade for the benefit of British consumers, lambasted the Quaker abolitionist, peace advocate, free-­produce proponent, and son-­ in-­law of James Cropper, Joseph Sturge, for supporting mono­poly and the welfare of West India producers over the interests of British consumers at home.104 But the new tariff debates brought into focus again the awkward relationship between the abolition movement and businessmen like Cropper and Macaulay, who ­were seen to be peddling lies about slave ­labor and f­ ree ­labor and the role of tariffs just to promote their own business interests. Although Macaulay died in 1838, and Cropper in 1840, the criticisms of abolitionist economic interventions in the 1840s picked up on the accusations of shady dealings in their efforts to combine abolitionism and business opportunities. Their intentions ­were good, but their means of achieving them w ­ ere ethically dubious. They used government connections, imperial lobbying, and shareholder power in attempts to sell an economic argument that abolition would benefit every­one (even slaveholders, once they came around to a free-­labor position). But it was too easy for opponents to point out how they specifically would benefit, particularly when the arguments made by their friends and allies in the movement dramatically changed in the 1840s. This posed a prob­lem for p ­ eople like Macaulay and his successors. They ­were trying to argue that it was profitable to conduct business in a way that promoted the abolitionist cause. And when it came to switching from Carolina rice to African and Indian rice, that argument proved true, largely b­ ecause ­free trade in this staple did allow merchants to find the cheapest existing supplies and to pass on the savings to their customers while still making a profit. They ­were not attempting to set up new rice plantations or invest capital in agricultural development; they ­were relying on existing producers. As soon as they got involved with sugar, that changed, despite Macaulay’s best attempts to keep the Tropical Free-­ Sugar Com­pany’s involvement ­limited to agency and credit. But as Macaulay also knew, tariffs and prizes and government contracts and monopolies w ­ ere all part of making a profit in global commerce, in ways that made it impossible for abolitionist businesses to pre­sent a ­simple and consistent argument for ­free trade. B ­ ecause they ­were presented as philan-

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thropic enterprises, ­there was concern that ­these abolitionist businesses ­were profiting from promoting abolition. In an era before “nonprofit” status was a recognized and regulated standard, the businesses that promoted abolitionist schemes—­legitimate commerce or ­free produce or ­free ­labor—­had to manage queries about transparency. Their ethical ends ­were not always able to justify questionable business practices.

the desire to create demand for legitimate commerce drove businessmen like Zachary Macaulay and James Cropper into contradictory positions. Using their government connections and their public profiles—­ gained through participation in the abolition movement—­they both supported government intervention and subsidy, and supported tariff-­f ree trade. Government monopolies—­whether British or West African—­were unpop­u­lar, but as a frustrated Macaulay grumbled, it ­didn’t seem fair that legitimate production of goods like rice in West Africa had to go without the support that slave traders from the region had been granted for over a ­century. In order to level the playing field, promoters of legitimate commerce hoped both to benefit from government largesse and to lobby ­those same governments to cut back on the preferential tariffs that supported production of colonial goods in some colonies but not in ­others. Moral commerce could be profitable in the same ways ordinary trade could be: by taking advantage of information asymmetries and network advantages. Tariffs ­were controversial ­because they undermined the ability of consumers to determine what the most efficient form of l­ abor was, making it seem like the self-­interested consumer should support slavery. But ­free ­labor, Adam Smith and the abolitionists misguidedly argued, was more efficient than enslaved ­labor. This meant that they believed plantations run with slave ­labor would naturally cease production once ­f ree l­abor demonstrated its commercial superiority. But with tariffs, the ­whole market was distorted. Tariffs created a government-­sanctioned mono­poly for the West Indies and empowered slave-­trading states in West Africa. If the market was skewed by colonial preference and government support of the institution of slavery, though, then surely abolitionist businessmen

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should take as much advantage as they could of ­t hose same policies to ­favor their own businesses. If ­there w ­ asn’t equal footing in the ­free market, then the only way to find it was to create as much of a lobby for their legitimate produce as ­t here was for the West Indian planters’. In par­t ic­u ­lar, Macaulay built on his firm’s experience of attempting to create a (debt-­based) monopsony for rice in Sierra Leone to create a plan for cheap, free-­labor sugar production in India. But the businesses that pushed back against the West Indian sugar lobby also experienced public skepticism regarding their true motives. ­Were they just using the antislavery movement to whitewash their own business practices, as Cruikshank’s cartoon suggested? Or w ­ ere they showing that God favored moral commerce by bestowing long-­term profitability? Macaulay and Cropper argued that the West India sugar mono­ poly unfairly taxed consumers to support an unethical form of ­labor. But in formulating their argument, and coming up with alternative business proposals, they drew attention to some of the inconsistencies in the arguments of ethical businesses. As long as making a profit was an acceptable part of the ethical capitalism model, ­there would be concerns about the nature of that profit and at whose expense it was made, especially once it became clear ­there would be new winners and losers as abolition took effect, and that choices would need to be made about whom ethical commerce was meant to benefit.

chapter 6

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

“I

think it must have been about 1855 that the material was bought in Newcastle,” a m ­ other wrote to her ­daughter in the early twentieth ­century. “Some Friends ­there w ­ ere anxious to encourage some Friends in the U.S.A. (of whom a prominent one was Levi Coffin) who ­were ­doing what they could for the escaped slaves.” The Quakers “had arranged with a shop­keeper,” George Richardson and his ­daughter Ellen, “to be willing to sell ‘­Free L ­ abour’ goods, obtained from the U.S.A.” The writer, G. M. Gillett, who must have only been a child at the time, remembered her ­family’s participation with the free-­labor movement fondly. “I believe we bought all our cotton ­t hings t­ here . . . ​of course Joseph Sturge and his ­family ­were warm supporters.”1 Included with the letter was a piece of paisley printed cotton, accompanied by the label “Made by escaped Slaves, work which Friends in the United States organised.”2 This sample of cloth made “by escaped slaves” in the United States and sold in Newcastle was a piece of ­family history, but also, by the twentieth ­century, a point of ­family pride, an heirloom handed down from ­mother to ­daughter and, in 1927, from d ­ aughter to the Quaker archives. By shopping at George and Ellen Richardson’s store, the Sturges and Gilletts w ­ ere supporting f­ ree black laborers in the United States, something they hoped their ­children and grandchildren would be proud to have been a part of 173

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Fig 6.1 ​Free-­cotton sample. Photo­g raph © Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain.

long ­after emancipation took place. It should be no surprise that cotton goods would be incredibly impor­tant commodities for this group of abolitionists. Ethical cotton, which could be grown in West Africa by f­ ree or enslaved l­ abor, in other parts of the world like Egypt and India, or by ­free ­labor in white settler colonies, inspired debate, innovation, and creative thinking as businesses sought dif­fer­ent suppliers, traders, and manufacturers. Undoubtedly this commodity grew in importance as the British abolition of slavery went into effect in 1834 and sourcing ­free sugar was no longer a concern. We have seen how the argument for consumer activism was posited as the most consistent way of tackling the slavery question. What ­were the ramifications of this approach, as the supply chain became the focus of both British and American concerns regarding questions of ethical l­ abor supply? How could businesses ensure that the products they sourced from

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Africa or India ­were actually produced without enslaved ­labor? Creating an ethical brand was one ­thing; creating, and ensuring, an ethical supply chain was another ­thing altogether. Prob­lems could arise in defining what was ethical, in identifying it in the marketplace, in paying for it, and in using government connections to get it to consumers. Abolitionists who supported ethical commerce placed rhetorical emphasis on the “consistency” of their commercial protest, but this made any inconsistency in the supply chain an easy target for criticism. When laborers came to be thought about as consumers in their own right, consumption as the driver of the economy would ultimately be the solution to questions of the benefits the economy would receive from emancipation. If consumers incentivized producers, then laborers would be attracted to work by their ability to consume the products of their ­labor (through wages). Alternatively, if the slave trade and enslaved ­labor created conditions of suboptimal consumption, e­ ither by creating a “state of war” in Africa to generate enslaved captives to the Atlantic markets, or by creating a class of enslaved workers who ­were unable to participate on their own terms in market commerce, then abolition alone would improve their living standards, it was argued, regardless of the conditions of their freedom. As ethical-­commerce arguments ­were challenged by proslavery agitators, by radical abolitionists, or by obvious facts, defenders of ethical capitalism honed their views of the world system. Consumption, production, l­ abor, land, and global in­equality all had to be incorporated into the conception of how the global economy would work in every­one’s best interest if it was operated justly. Ethical capitalism was not, to paraphrase Christopher Brown and Kevin Grant, a campaign against capitalism, but was a campaign to reform capitalism. 3 Ultimately, its proponents ­were trying to preserve a system that was working for most of the p ­ eople they ­were trying to persuade to abandon specific, morally loathsome practices. For middlemen and ­women in the antislavery business, the experience of sourcing internationally, the growing commitment to the idea of consumer value, and the defensive position they found themselves in between the radical antislavery movement and the proslavery movement ultimately led to the emergence of a moral relativism about global l­abor conditions within the abolitionist movement. This chapter w ­ ill investigate the ways

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in which debates about slavery in African and Indian production contributed to the promotion of the argument for a global division of ­labor in which dif­fer­ent standards of “freedom” would apply.

New Sources of Cotton In 1853 the American F ­ ree Produce Association reported, “The Cotton Spinners of Manchester are turning their attention to e­ very quarter of the globe for supplies, in order not to be dependent on the Slaves of Amer­ i­ca.” ­There ­were plenty of attempts to prove the free-­labor argument with commercial agricultural schemes during this period of gradual colonial expansion into Africa, Australia, the American and Canadian West, and the Rus­sian East. The AFPA’s interest in British proj­ects highlights both the interconnected nature of their antislavery movements, but also their mutual economic dependence—­and corresponding antagonism—­with regard to cotton. “Over an extent of five hundred and thirty miles of the Australian coast,” the F ­ ree Produce advocates wrote, “cotton of the best description perennially thrives. T ­ here is a river available for steam navigation e­ very forty miles along this w ­ hole extent, and on the banks of t­ hese are millions of acres of the richest land in one of the finest climates in the world.” 4 For free-­produce advocates, international trade—­and tariff-­free trade especially—­was a crucial component of antislavery po­liti­cal economy ­because of the potential it offered to prove that f­ree ­labor was eco­nom­ ically superior to enslaved ­labor by turning to producers in Haiti ­after in­de­pen­dence in 1804, Latin American states that had abolished slavery ­after in­de­pen­dence in the 1820s, or the British West Indies ­after the abolition of slave l­ abor in 1833. For American merchants in the expansionist era of the Monroe Doctrine, news of ­free cotton grown in Latin Amer­i­ca was particularly hopeful: “A small quantity has recently been transmitted from La Plata, with advices that it was a sample of cotton growing wild on the banks of the Parana, where any quantity may be had for the gathering.”5 Antislavery advocates ­were often especially keen to frequent businesses that ­were supporting formerly enslaved ­people, and “back-­to-­Africa” colonies provided a good place for experimentation with plantation-­ produced goods like coffee, sugar, and cotton. In 1798, while still governor

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of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, Zachary Macaulay had gone to the Com­ pany’s factory in Freeport to sell the local slave traders on abolition. Although he was unsure of their enthusiasm for the abolition of the slave trade, he commented, “Their mouths ­were full of proposals to trade with us and plant Cotton and Coffee.”6 Macaulay, always seeking an opportunity for profit in Sierra Leone, wrote at the moment of handover from the Sierra Leone Com­pany to the British government, “With the cultivation of Cotton the Natives are already acquainted. What would chiefly be required with re­spect to this article would be to introduce among them the seeds of a better species of Cotton than now grows generally in Africa, and to instruct them in expeditious methods of cleaning it.”7 Although his rice and sugar plans had relied on local production, he was not the first to suggest that the African climate was ideal for growing free-­labor versions of tropical commodities, and he was far from the last. British merchants based along the Gambia River petitioned the government to encourage Eu­ro­pe­ans to embark on the cotton trade t­ here ­because “cotton is grown in considerable Quantities in the neighbourhood of the River and an article of commerce amongst the natives.”8 But abolitionists w ­ ere not alone in seeking t­hese new sources of supply. Colonial competition also drove interest in finding new regions in which to grow tropical staples, and abolitionist arguments tapped into existing concerns about the precarious and dependent nature of global supply.9 At the time of the British government’s takeover of the colony in 1808, the Sierra Leone Com­pany’s successor, the African Institution, declared that Sierra Leone would be the new British center for growing cotton in case “circumstances arise to interrupt our commercial relations with Amer­i­ca.”10 Macaulay commented that near the Danish fort at Accra, on the Gold Coast, “about 50 to 60 miles up the Rio Volta are large Plantations settled by Danes to whom a permission is given to hold slaves for a ­limited time. They raise only Provisions as yet and ­Cattle, but their object is Coffee, Cotton, and Sugar. The Danes possess im­mense tracts of land on the Rio Volta.”11 Macaulay was impressed by their efforts at plantation agriculture, and seemed particularly intrigued by the Danish use of white settlers and African enslaved ­labor. This model of agricultural legitimate commerce cast the benefits of abolition as an end to the horrors of the ­actual movement of enslaved ­peoples

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through the ­Middle Passage, rather than an end to enslaved ­labor itself.12 This argument was popu­lar among gradual abolitionists in the 1790s, and although it went out of ­favor by the 1820s, an ele­ment of ac­cep­tance of unfree l­ abor persisted in Africa. Britain and France ­were particularly enthusiastic to follow up commercial agricultural schemes for Africa in the post-­Napoleonic period, with the return to a regional balance of power in the re­distribution of colonial possessions along the African coast, and the closing of their ports to American ships. The point of this new colonial system of the 1820s was to provide the home markets in France and Britain with tropical items their own merchants ­were responsible for having produced, which bolstered the national economy and secured its in­de­pen­dence from foreign production. The end of war­time conditions allowed France and Britain to reassert their own economic agency by experimenting with colonial plantations, and shutting out American merchants like Brown & Ives from British and French ports in West Africa. The African plantation schemes of vari­ous abolitionist cap­i­tal­ists now came into their own. French plans for Senegal and Algeria and British plans for Sierra Leone and Nigeria all emphasized the agricultural potential of the colonies.13 Thomas Clegg, a Manchester manufacturer who produced cloth for George W. Taylor, began to weave cotton grown on an Anglican missionary plantation in Nigeria for Quaker consumers in the United States and Britain. The British Anti-­Slavery Reporter was pleased to note that efforts by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to initiate cotton production had so far been successful, resulting in five bales sent to Britain. The partnership between Clegg and the CMS took off in the second half of the 1850s—in 1857 importing 1,250 one-­hundred-­pound bales—­a nd Clegg began to regularly source cotton from Abeokuta and Ibadan.14 The Abeokuta mission proj­ect attested to the already impor­tant role of cotton production in a number of West African socie­ties.15 But it was also incentivized by the kinds of prizes that got Zachary Macaulay in trou­ble. British Quaker banker and philanthropist Edward Gurney donated £1,000 to the Church Missionary Society in 1859 specifically to encourage cotton production by freed American slaves in Nigeria, tying British and American proj­ects together and suggesting that the abolitionist financier saw continued value in promoting a connection between the employment of eman-

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cipated African Americans and the search for new environments from which to source f­ ree cotton.16 In fact, as far back as the 1790s Macaulay had established his own cotton plantation on the outskirts of Freetown, where he grew “a good deal of Pernambuco Cotton.” He explained to the Sierra Leone Com­pany that the farm, which also grew sugar cane, yams, coffee, and rice, had cost $300, plus $10 per acre cleared, and “the l­abor of the Year ­will cost me about 12 or 15 Dollars an acre more.”17 He thought that “this short statement w ­ ill give you some notion of the Capital a man would require to begin a plantation on a tolerably large scale ­here.” But if he was primarily interested in the fate of former slaves, he did not see much cause for cele­ bration. He felt that they ­were not committed to attempting to grow cotton or other cash crops ­because “they prefer eating casada in a miserable way to climbing the Hill where they may enrich themselves.”18 He held that the main reason for the failure of European-­led plantation schemes was “the want of any constraining power over the natives, which joined to their very ­great indolence rendered their ­labour of very ­little value.” Macaulay and o­ thers in the African Institution would l­ ater promote the practice of apprenticeship for formerly enslaved workers in order to “train” them to be productive. But as John Stuart Mill would point out in the case of West Indian emancipation, it was not a prob­lem of training that was preventing ­free laborers from engaging in planting, but too comfortable a life. If workers did not need to work tirelessly in agriculture to accumulate consumer goods, then they would not, and the fairly high standard of living in Freetown made this point obvious.19 In Freetown, trade, not agriculture, was unsurprisingly lucrative, and large amounts of credit in the commodity trade made goods cheap for consumers. Strangely, while acknowl­edgment of self-­interest in the case of American and Eu­ro­pean consumers and producers was at the heart of ethical-­commerce arguments, Macaulay and ­others ­were flummoxed by the self-­interested be­hav­ior of formerly enslaved workers. Macaulay was also deeply involved with the French abolition movement in the 1820s, and his hand can be seen in the agricultural plans for Senegal that dominated in that de­cade.20 The agricultural designs of the abolitionist-­leaning Governor Roger included plans for the region’s black population that reflected ­those Macaulay promoted in Sierra Leone that

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used former slaves for agricultural production. Roger encouraged Saint-­ Louis habitants to invest in plantation schemes to grow oranges, lemons, coffee, bananas, olives, cotton, and sugar.21 This was at least partially successful: a list of agricultural establishments in operation in 1825 includes the Pellegrin f­ amily, of the Saint-­Louis habitant elite.22 Laborers for the plantations would be drawn from the local population through a variety of contracts, demonstrating that older abolitionist princi­ple that tropical commodities could be produced in Africa, making obsolete the cruel and unpop­u­lar Atlantic slave trade.23 But much of this l­abor was unfree, relying on indentures, the purchase and freeing of enslaved ­labor on indenture contracts, and the hiring of enslaved ­labor from Gorée and Saint-­ Louis. ­There w ­ ere reports that the f­ ree workers ­were only willing to work ­until they had the goods they wanted, including a gun, which usually meant they went home a­ fter eight or nine months. They w ­ ere also too expensive, according to French officials on the ground, who thought that 10 francs a month, plus food and the cook to feed the workers, made the plantations uncompetitive.24 Experiments in plantation agriculture in Senegal had largely been abandoned by the 1830s, in ­favor of the African­led legitimate commerce in groundnuts and gum t­here, and the establishment of Algerian plantations—­run by white French settlers and worked by local Algerian l­ abor.25 Historians’ explanation for the expense of local African ­labor differs quite markedly from the assumptions of the time. Indications are that the wages would have to be staggeringly high to draw ­free laborers, and the need for compulsion—in the form of taxation or corvée ­labor—in order to control and manage l­abor for the colonies, did not reflect “laziness” among the African workers or a lack of interest in participation in the consumption of global goods. ­These wage realities ­were the result of a high ratio of land to ­labor—­which had also been the basis for the “need” for enslaved ­labor in both Africa and the Amer­i­cas—­which made the command of ­labor a po­liti­cal priority for all African states. Land abundance made subsistence cheap relative to the situation in France or ­England at the same time. It also meant that both Eu­ro­pean colonial governments and African states sought more control over the movement of ­peoples in order to lower ­labor costs, while merchants turned to monopsony in order to tie their debtors into a l­ abor–­consumption relationship.26

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Liberian “­Free” Produce As France and Britain began to expand their formal influence in West Africa to promote the production of tropical commodities within their imperial systems, American free-­produce merchants turned to their connections with Liberia. The colony had emerged just in time to replace the existing legitimate-­commerce connections, with Monrovia effectively established (­after some false starts) in 1821, at the same time that French and British African ports w ­ ere closed to American ships. But Liberia was always a complicated proj­ect, loathed by many abolitionists and proslavery advocates alike, and as the colony developed its commercial agriculture and legitimate commerce, controversies about its use of indigenous ­labor began to swirl.27 The letters of American F ­ ree Produce Association president George W. Taylor to his Liberian contacts suggest that his search for free-­labor goods shared much in common with the colonial rationale used by British and French free-­labor advocates. While it was all well and good that he could access East India rice, cotton, and sugar, and Jamaican coffee and sugar, he ­really wanted to encourage the development of ­t hese crops in Liberia so that he would not be reliant on ­either British colonial production or slave production in the American south. In letter ­a fter letter to his Liberian commercial contacts, he emphasized the need for free-­labor products, especially rice, sugar, cotton, and coffee, that could be sourced more cheaply and reliably than e­ ither British or American alternatives Taylor’s emphatic, repeated restatement of the necessity of obtaining Liberian commodities as the product of free labor was a response to reports of slave l­abor in places purporting to be f­ree. By emphasizing the “consistency” of the movement, free-­produce proponents set themselves up for criticism by proslavery advocates as well as by radical abolitionists. Liberia had faced criticism for years for its employment of the indigenous workforce. The Kru, Gola, and Vai hired themselves out for 25 cents per day; this practice frustrated new settlers, who found it hard to hire themselves out as farm laborers at 75 cents a day, but it made large-­ scale commercial plantations efficient.28 Additionally, a system of land owner­ship and inheritance allowed commercial farming to flourish in

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Liberia.29 The African Repository—­the newspaper of the American Colonization Society—­was keen to point out that in 1852 ­there ­were 224 plantations producing for export. 30 This local approach to the implementation of “legitimate commerce” ideology was impor­tant b­ ecause it meant that the settlers’ American antislavery allies could cite the flourishing of Liberian-­g rown cotton, coffee, and other goods as proof of the success of their colonization vision. But it also revealed that production on this scale would necessarily rely on the exploitation of cheap local l­ abor. For recently freed slaves arriving in Liberia, establishing a new plantation may have been a rather remote possibility. Manumitted emigrants to Liberia often arrived with a skill or a trade with which they could get started. “Recaptives” or “Liberated Africans” had a harder time of it, especially in Liberia. T ­ hese former slaves w ­ ere seized from illegal slaving vessels ­a fter 1808 and pro­cessed at courts in Freetown, Havana, and Bahia. Boats that had been captured by American patrol vessels disembarked the former slaves directly in Liberia, where they ­were known as “Congos.” The fortunes of ­these former slaves, as well as African slaves who freed themselves by r­ unning away to Freetown or the Liberian towns, ­were much more varied. Some ­were apprenticed. Some lived beyond the reach of the system. Some moved back to Amer­i­ca and published accusations in William Lloyd Garrison’s immediate-­abolition newspaper, the Liberator, and other anticolonization publications, that Liberian settlers ­were using enslaved ­labor.31 In 1853 Taylor contacted Benson requesting reassurances about the free-­labor provenance of Liberian goods: “I am told lately that the Liberians are employing slave l­abour and buying slaves from the interior. I told my in­for­mant it was impossible. Do tell me what I s­ hall say by authority on that subject.”32 Although Benson’s response d ­ oesn’t survive, Taylor must have been satisfied, as their trading partnership continued. But although claims that Liberian settlers w ­ ere using enslaved ­labor ­were intended for abolitionist audiences, in order to discourage participation in the colonization movement, proslavery writers latched on to the claims as part of their effort to demonstrate that abolitionists ­were hypocritical and that slavery was the only way to produce tropical commodities.33

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Slavery in the Supply Chain The emphasis of free-­produce consumers on their consistency in purchasing goods that supported their moral stance against the slave trade and slave l­ abor was an easy target for slavery apologists. As mentioned in Chapter 5, in the 1820s Joseph Marryat and John Gladstone accused Macaulay and Cropper of substituting East Indian slavery for West Indian.34 Marryat argued that “the existence of slavery in Bengal is admitted by the East India Directors,” and that increased demand for the production of sugar by ­these laborers would only increase the number of persons enslaved, “and thus a new slave trade be established in the East Indies of infinitely greater magnitude than that which we have abolished in our West Indian colonies.”35 Macaulay responded, true to form, with a flurry of pamphlets arguing that East Indian ­labor was paid, but at low rates that made it cheaper than enslaved l­ abor.36 Cropper, meanwhile, published a circular, donated to the American ­Free Produce Association, that claimed that “in India cotton is grown almost entirely without the aid of British skill and capital, and the natives know so few wants, that an increase in price does not always, where left to themselves, operate as in Eu­rope or in Amer­i­ca, to the increase of quantity.”37 ­Here, the commercial men who spent eve­nings attending meetings of missionary and abolition socie­ties proclaiming the equality of all men, argued that the laws of po­liti­cal economy ­were dif­fer­ent in places like India. Cropper and ­others argued that f­ ree ­labor was more efficient partly ­because the amount of investment required by imperial commerce was so low. But they also worried that a lack of investment in other sources of cotton would cripple Britain if ­there was an American crisis. Antislavery commercial pragmatism turned out to be one of the more effective arguments put forward by the abolition movement. Cropper and Macaulay’s defensiveness about Indian ­labor practices helped lay the foundation for skepticism regarding their motives, which historians have wrestled with ever since in trying to understand the motivations for abolitionism. But ­these defenses ­were also impor­tant for their contributions to the development of ethical capitalism’s ability to justify global wage disparities. Responding to critiques of Cropper and Macaulay’s free-­sugar com­ pany, the Edinburgh Review addressed claims about East India slavery,

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replying that it had no imported slaves, and painting a picture of serfdom rather than slavery, where “the relation of master and slave appears to impose the duty of protection and cherishment on the master, as much as that of fidelity and obedience on the slave.”38 Macaulay, along with David Ricardo and other East India shareholders who had pushed for the equalization of tariffs, argued publicly that “­there was no slavery in the Bengal provinces, where sugar was produced, and that, where it was found, it was slavery only in name.”39 Abolitionists began to portray a stark caricature of plantation slavery in the U.S. South and West Indies in order to more easily contrast it with the practices of servile ­labor found elsewhere. Marryat pointed this out. Replying to Macaulay’s pamphlet East and West India Sugar, Marryat wrote, “the g­ reat object of this writer appears to be, to excite such an odium against the West Indian planters, as w ­ ill dispose their fellow-­subjects to ruin them without pity or remorse.” 40 The increasingly narrow definition of the oppression faced by the enslaved of the West Indies and the United States helped isolate the rest of capitalism from criticism centered on ­labor relations. Nothing was as bad as white-­ owned plantation slavery, and therefore every­thing e­ lse could be described as ethical capitalism. That was actually partly the point. Attempting to prove that f­ ree l­ abor was cheaper meant that some commerce-­m inded abolitionists favored “outsourcing” that ­free ­labor. The global division of ­labor would work to eliminate the need for slavery, they argued. For instance, David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa and antislavery advocate, visited the cotton plantations in Abeokuta in 1857. He told the Morning Post that they “could become a very competitive enterprise, due to the very low local rates of pay.” 41 Egyptian cotton was also promoted by some abolitionists as a free-­labor source of supply.42 In a letter to the proslavery New Times, “Mercator,” the pen name for John Gladstone, worried about the l­ abor practices on t­ hese distant plantations: “We must keep it in mind, however, that the supply of Cotton from Egypt, depends on the life and ­will of one man, the pre­sent Pacha. Its cultivation proceeds on a system of force, and is carried on for the Pacha’s individual advantage. Our trade with Egypt, therefore, has not the solid foundation of an interchange of commodities, for the supply of the wants of the ­people on both sides. The Pacha obtains l­abour by compulsion, and is paid for his Cotton chiefly

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in dollars.” 43 The irony of replacing one kind of enslaved l­ abor with a dif­ fer­ent kind was often cited ­those who w ­ ere skeptical of abolitionist businessmen’s motives.

Indentured ­Labor The American Genius of Universal Emancipation addressed the prob­lem of slavery in the free-­produce supply chain and tried to alert its readers to the questions raised about l­abor practices in Mauritius: “ ‘East India Sugar’ is the term generally used to designate the produce of Bengal, but it is objectionable, as Mauritius Sugar is also East India Sugar; and it nearly resembles that of Bengal, but it should be more carefully avoided than even West India Sugar, the sacrifice of Slave life being so very ­great in that Island.” 44 While advocating for East India sugar equalization, Macaulay and Cropper had already begun sending ships to Mauritius to source free-­labor supplies. Indian and Chinese indentured ­labor was already common ­there. Macaulay, who had advocated for apprenticeship to “civilize” the Liberated Africans resettled in Sierra Leone, saw indenture and apprenticeship as ways of training the workforce. He was not alone. Even some immediatist abolitionists in Britain thought that some period of apprenticeship or indenture was necessary as a transition from enslaved to ­free ­labor, in order to prepare the formerly enslaved for life as ­free laborers.45 At a time when many abolitionists w ­ ere ambivalent about the abolition of enslaved l­ abor, and much more concerned with the treatment of ­people as global commodities in the slave trade, the redirection of African l­ abor into the production of goods was proof that the moral rationale of abolition would be supported by economic logic.46 Thomas Clarkson argued, “The barbarous and inhuman treatment that generally fell to the lot of slaves” originated from “the commerce: for if men could be considered as possessional if, like ­cattle, they could be bought and sold it ­will not be difficult to suppose, that they could be held in the same consideration, or treated in the same manner.” 47 First the trade needed to be replaced. Then Africans would be treated better as laborers. He and other gradualists believed that the economic logic of supply and demand would ensure that the irreplaceable ­labor performed by the enslaved on Atlantic plantations

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would encourage the “amelioration” of the grossest excesses of the system that w ­ ere wasting enslaved l­abor. Inefficiency plagued the system, they believed, b­ ecause a steady supply of cheap slaves from West Africa “allowed” plantation overseers to work their slaves to death rather than treating them as investments. For t­hose searching for cheap free-­labor commodities, the argument that industrious production and participation in agriculture would allow ­people to move out of a state of barbarism and into a state of productive, and consuming, civilization was power­f ul. Free-­produce businessmen and w ­ omen did what they could to use the sugar tariff debates to demonstrate the efficiency of ­f ree ­labor, but they ­were also committed to the cause, and ­were happy to distort incon­ve­nient facts to explain away their more expensive ­free produce.48 But this did not resolve the prob­lem of f­ ree ­labor’s efficiency. Over the course of the 1840s it became increasingly obvious that f­ ree l­ abor’s “efficiency” alone would not prove that the “invisible hand” abhorred slavery. The best way to demonstrate that logic would have been a­ fter emancipation went into effect in the Ca­r ib­bean sugar-­ producing islands. But the efficiency of ­free ­labor was called into question ­there as British and Haitian ­free sugar competed with Cuban slave-­ produced sugar. The image of the lazy, formerly enslaved West Indian worker eating pumpkin and working half an hour a day, conjured up by Thomas Carlyle and circulated in proslavery circles, had to be addressed by abolitionist-­leaning economic tracts.49 Drawing on the language used in the apprenticeship debates in West Africa, British and American writers cited the need for education, training, and discipline for formerly enslaved workers.50 John Stuart Mill came out with a strong rebuke to Carlyle’s assumptions about the l­ abor discipline of West Indian workers, arguing that their ability to live off of half a day’s wages reflected the realities of l­ abor supply and demand, and that if West Indian planters wanted to pay lower wages, they would need a larger supply of workers. In other words, f­ ree ­labor was only more costly in this situation ­because of restricted supply.51 French and British producers tried to combat this by importing “­free” l­abor through indenture. They moved workers from India, Africa, and China to try to match productive land with the cheapest pos­si­ble f­ree ­labor.52 Many indentured laborers ­were taken to former slave colonies, like Mau-

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ritius, Reunion, and the Ca­rib­bean islands. O ­ thers w ­ ere brought to mines and plantations in new regions, like Algeria and South Africa.53 The Aborigines Protection Society and the British Anti-­Slavery Society both protested that indenture was merely a form of slavery in disguise, especially when Cropper’s nemesis, John Gladstone, turned around and used his emancipation compensation from the British government to purchase indentured laborers from India. Knowing that this would undermine the position of formerly enslaved workers who hoped to negotiate for better wages and better treatment, they campaigned against the “Gladstone slave trade” as they branded it.54 As a result Britain effectively suspended the importation of indentured l­abor, temporarily, in the late 1830s.55 French use of engagé ­labor to populate their plantations frustrated British humanitarians but also confirmed their existing suspicions about French commitment to liberty. Ironically, though, the abolitionist insistence that indenture was a disguised form of slavery helped to support slaveholders’ views that plantation production of staples like cotton and sugar was eco­nom­ically impossible without slavery. The inability to explain why indentured (but f­ ree) ­labor could also be bad without resorting to the language of slavery was partially a prob­lem of ethical capitalism, which was attempting to dodge the deeper prob­lems rooted in the global supply chain. Distinctions between ­free and unfree l­abor ­were impor­tant to maintain, but the hard line between them was flexible enough for rhetorical purposes. The Ca­ rib­bean plantations’ new reliance on indentured ­labor and other forms of mi­grant ­labor for sugar production allowed slaveholders in the United States, for instance, to argue that the experiment of emancipation was over.56 But once again the promotion of a market solution to the prob­lem of slavery transformed into a position of supporting consumer interests over ­t hose of formerly enslaved workers and indentured laborers. Jonathan Connolly has highlighted how abolitionist arguments came to infuse broader liberal trade discussions in this period.57 The Economist, for instance, had fully accepted Elizabeth Heyrick’s reasoning that “the extent and activity of the slave trade have been mainly governed by the demand for the products of slave ­labor in Eu­rope.”58 As antislavery morality became po­liti­cal consensus in Britain in the 1850s, Connolly points out,

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Colonial Secretary Edward Bulwer-­Lytton noted, “­Every hundred weight of sugar produced by the immigrant at Jamaica is a hundred weight of sugar withdrawn from the market of Cuban slaves. ­Will slave states follow our example, ­unless capital flourish ­under it? Can capital flourish ­unless it has the right to hire l­ abor wherever l­ abor is willing to be hired?”59 The arrival of indentured laborers was cast as a means of undercutting Cuban slavery, as well as educating, training, and “emancipating” the laborers of India and Africa by allowing them to engage in the market for their ­labor.60

“Training” Former Slaves “Made by escaped slaves” was a label abolitionists could be proud of, as G. M. Gillett’s ­family clearly was. Abolitionists supported proj­ects to help rehabilitate “escaped slaves” and raised money to support destitute f­ ree black populations. They promoted educational proj­ects and sought to “train” former slaves in disciplined ­labor. In 1827 the Genius of Universal Emancipation advertised, “British Ladies have devised, to draw the public attention to the impor­tant subject of West Indian Slavery and distress, that of making ‘Work Bags,’ and vending them with tracts, and periodical publications,” the proceeds of which “are thrown into a fund, part of which is made up of other contributions, donations, &c to be appropriated” to the “relief of the distresses of the West Indian Slaves.” A card was included inside each work bag that read: “The money raised by the sale of the Society’s Work Bags and A ­ lbums, is employed in circulating information, in relieving neglected and deserted negroes, and in promoting the education of british slaves.”61 Education was a fine goal, but was primarily directed by British male and female philanthropists at “practical” training in agriculture and the domestic arts. The well-­meaning but doomed 1841 Niger Expedition—­the culmination of British abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton’s activism—­ sought to establish a model farm on the Niger River for freed slaves, run by missionaries, in order to train Africans in Chris­tian­ity, domesticity, and Eu­ro­pean agricultural techniques.62 Its failure put off some activists, but redirected o­ thers to the field of West Indian emancipated slave “rehabilitation.” Missionary efforts in the West Indies included training in

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agricultural techniques that formerly enslaved workers w ­ ere very familiar with, as well as mechanical training, training in domestic ser­vice, general biblically focused education, and an encouragement ­toward the formation of nuclear families in which ­women and men operated in dif­fer­ent economic spheres.63 In all of ­these cases, philanthropically minded individuals saw l­ abor as the salvation of the formerly enslaved—on the model of work­house or prisoner ­labor—­not the provision of land or capital, which would have dramatically changed their fortunes. The assumption was that the reason f­ ree l­ abor was not proving to be cheaper than enslaved ­labor in plantation production was simply a ­matter of education, apprenticeship, and training.64 Mill, for instance, believed that slavery “deadened the intellect, hindered the search for improvements, and lowered worker productivity” which would mean that the switch to wage ­labor would always require a period of transition.65 Approaches to Liberated African management in the Atlantic as well as Indian Ocean worlds by British and French governments demonstrated that t­ here was, certainly by midcentury, consensus that compulsion was a necessary part of educating formerly enslaved laborers. Training in the form of ser­v ice to the state—in the military, through apprenticeships, or through corvée ­labor—­could both be beneficial to the trainee, they believed, and help build the kinds of institutions needed to promote “civilization.” Their own arguments about the guilt of the consumer remained untouched by this approach, since this kind of l­abor was not consumed. It was used to build infrastructure or defend the empire; even when it was meant to contribute to growing crops for export, it could be argued that they w ­ ere providing skills training in agriculture. Liberated Africans in dif­fer­ent parts of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds ­were subject to a variety of models that allowed them theoretical “freedom” without the flexibility to work for themselves. In Brazil, forms of guardianship for Liberated Africans lasted up to three generations ­after emancipation.66 In East Africa, Liberated Africans ­were educated at mission stations in domestic ser­v ice and agricultural l­ abor.67 And in Sierra Leone, the Liberated African Department combined mission education with apprenticeships, where ­those who had been recently sold at the coast and loaded onto slave ships bound for the Amer­i­cas ­were trained in a skill or agricultural ­labor or, more often,

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used as a general servant for the families who had “purchased” their apprenticeship from the colonial government. While “made by escaped slaves” might have signified a rehabilitation of laborers who had been brought up in a system in which coercion had directed their efforts, the application of t­ hese approaches to the recaptured slaves settled in Sierra Leone demonstrated the racial under­pinnings of the assumptions about ­labor discipline made by abolitionists like Macaulay. If the slave trade had created a state of war in Africa, which had undermined Africans’ ability to ­labor industriously and consume reasonably, ­these Liberated Africans would need to be educated in l­ abor discipline.68

African Domestic Slavery This educational mission went beyond former slaves, however. In part this complicity with slavery elsewhere in the world had emerged among ethical cap­i­tal­ists b­ ecause, as Malthus, Smith, Ricardo, and ­others had expressed, ­there w ­ ere concerns that African socie­ties would be able to transition away from the slave trade without the institution of slavery. African slavery had been the subject of both antislavery polemics and classical po­liti­cal economy theorizing. Malthus drew on the travel writing of Mungo Park to explain that only newly purchased or captured slaves could be sold; “domestic” slaves and slaves born into captivity ­were supposedly treated as part of the integral ­house­hold.69 This was a popu­lar view in the nineteenth ­century, repeated by numerous travel writers and colonial officials.70 Proslavery advocates used this kind of information to argue that Africans w ­ ere more suited to slavery or that New World slavery, rather than being a “peculiar institution,” was part of the “natu­ral” lifestyle of Africans. But antislavery activists had begun to mobilize this information in a dif­fer­ent way: as evidence of the backward nature of slavery. Like ancient Rome, or medieval feudal states, the argument went, economies that continued to rely on slavery ­were old-­fashioned, inefficient, and paternalistic.71 For an advanced, modern economy, slavery must be abolished. But, the “stadial theory” argument continued—­some places ­were not advanced, modern socie­ties, and in t­ hose places, domestic slavery was an impor­tant social institution that would take time to eradi-

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cate.72 This argument was extremely impor­tant in colonial justifications of continued domestic slavery.73 Slavery in Africa was a social, economic, and po­liti­cal institution, as it was in Amer­i­ca, but increasingly the argument became that slavery was an intrinsic, protean ele­ment of African society, not an institution that had evolved in response to increased economic globalization.74 Rudolph Ware notes, “The nearly complete erasure of the memory of the Almaami’s abolition” in Futa Toro “offers a reminder that the rulers who squashed African re­sis­tance to slavery (with Eu­ro­pean help) normalized the institution of slavery and erased ­earlier legacies of strug­gles. Like the Almaami’s son, rulers re-­enslaved ­people and re-­established slave trades and pretended that they had inalienable customary or Islamic l­egal rights to do so.”75 Large-­scale slave production had existed in African economies prior to the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade, but by the late eigh­teenth ­century, when abolitionist arguments about the nature of African society and the effects of the slave trade became increasingly widespread in popu­lar culture, slave-­based plantation production had become fundamental to some African economies.76 Owner­ship of slaves for production had also spread beyond the military elite; for instance, one “commoner” near Timbo owned 140 slaves who produced “cotton, rice and provisions.”77 Macaulay reported that just outside of Freetown, King Tom had about eighty prisoners in his village, “whom at pre­sent he ­causes to work in his Rice grounds, but whom he w ­ ill prob­ably begin to dispose of as soon 78 as his crop is put in.” Not only had enslaved ­labor been impor­tant for growing and transporting the rice used by slave ships, slaves w ­ ere being used to grow crops deemed part of the legitimate-­commerce experiment.79 As slave prices went down in the immediate aftermath of the abolition acts, in some places declining to half of their pre-­a bolition peak, more African slave o­ wners could afford to keep slaves working on plantations, or sell them regionally rather than turning to the Atlantic trade.80 Cheap plantation production paradoxically required underpopulated land (so that economies of scale could work) but also a cheap and, more importantly, stationary l­abor force. This was as true for Africa as for the Amer­i­cas, where wealth was also invested, mortgaged, and capitalized through slavery. Groundnut exports, fueled by both ­f ree and enslaved

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l­abor, increased in the Rio Nunez to over 4,000 tons exported per year by the end of the 1860s, and in the Rio Pongo that figure was 2,000 tons.81 Freetown’s exports of groundnuts grown in their hinterland grew from 2,644 bushels in 1831 to 145,113 bushels in 1866. 82 This expansion was made pos­si­ble by migrations from the Futa Jallon highlands by ­free laborers seeking autonomy from the state. But it was also a result of the expansion of commercial agriculture facilitated by enslaved l­ abor. The concept of “wealth in ­people” has been at the heart of anthropological understandings of African systems of value, and how they intersected with the rise of “wealth in t­ hings” that developed over the long nineteenth ­century.83 As would become clear over the course of the nineteenth c­ entury, wealth in ­people was easily shifted from the transatlantic slave trade to the production of the very commodities sought by anti-­slave-­ trade activists to undermine the slave trade.84 In West Africa, especially in the era of increasingly valuable Atlantic slave trading, property was not accumulated in land, but in p ­ eople, as numerous observers began to articulate by the late nineteenth ­century. In the Igbo language, for instance, the difference between two types of wealth suggests the manner by which property grows, with one word (uba) implying increase through natu­ral multiplication, and another (akhu) deriving from the word “catch,” which suggests etymologically how some ­people viewed the ability to expand their ­human property. 85 Emily Lynn Osborn recounts that in the Milo River Valley of Guinea, “slavery owner­ship also became a key resource to young men seeking to attain the trappings of adulthood, for the families of marriageable young w ­ omen demanded bridewealth payments in slaves, and . . . ​house­hold heads depended increasingly on slave l­ abor to carry out agricultural production.”86 And as groundnut exports increased over the mid-­nineteenth ­century, the ability to mobilize a ­labor force to produce ­those commodities became a crucial determinant of an individual’s ability to shift smoothly from the slave trade to legitimate commerce. Zachary Macaulay relayed a story while he was in charge of Freetown about a slave of Bunce Island named “Smart”: This Smart [a “native”] I have formerly told you had been a slave on Bance [Bunce] Island. He is a Native of the Loko Country which lies

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three days journey or more beyond Rokelle. He had been intended for a ship bound to the West Indies, but on the day the Slaves ­were put on board, he had concealed himself & so escaped for that time. In the meantime he was employed in boats & shewing much acuteness and fidelity, he was retained on the Island. He grew in favour and was at length promoted to be a ­factor and sent to Rokelle with goods to buy Slaves. As this was the key to his native country, he had an opportunity of buying numbers of his own Countrymen, none of whom he sent to the Island, but e­ ither kept them as Domestics, or exchanged them with their friends, for slaves of other Nations. By this Policy he has made himself power­f ul and in­de­pen­dent so that even Bance Island whose slave he is stands in awe of him and scarce ventures to press for the Payment of 150 slaves which he owes them. His adherents amount to several Hundreds, exclusive of his own f­ amily, which consists of no less than thirty wives and eighty ­Children alive.87

This story clearly complicated the notion of slavery. If slaves could own slaves, and if slaves could command the power of 150 p ­ eople, plus their own extensive kin network, ­were they even ­really slaves in the sense of that word’s hardening definition in the Eu­ro­pean and American context? Examples of African domestic slaves eating from the same dishes as their masters, or of living in nondifferentiated spaces in places like Gorée, or of living in entirely autonomous plantation villages, disrupted abolitionists’ arguments about what “slavery” and “freedom” meant. What remained a crucial distinction for abolitionists between African and American slavery was participation in ­family life. As the example of “Smart” shows, being a slave of Bunce Island had not prevented him from having thirty wives and eighty living ­children. American slavery, on the other hand, was regularly characterized as horrifically disruptive of ­family life. Fugitive slaves narrated their trauma at being separated from parents or ­children.88 The rationale that allowed a shift among free-­produce consumers t­ oward accepting unfree l­abor conditions globally was the argument that African slavery, or East Indian slavery, was dif­fer­ent from New World slavery. This myth persisted long a­ fter the end of the age of abolition, and has inspired lively debate among historians and anthropologists up to the pre­sent day.89 New World slavery was described as “economic, social, and po­liti­cal deprivation, ­legal impotence and oppression, all this as part of a system of social stratification.”90

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But importantly, this definition emerged as abolitionists tried to articulate both what was so heinous about the New World enslaved ­labor they w ­ ere campaigning against, and as they honed their definitions of freedom in response to proslavery challenges. If a wage laborer in industrial Britain was oppressed by dependence on an employer, was his “freedom” ­really all that dif­fer­ent from slavery? Well, yes, the abolitionists explained, b­ ecause the wage laborer was ­free to leave and find a new employer; the wage laborer was f­ ree to engage socially with whomever he pleased; the wage laborer had ­legal rights. But what about the laborers on the African and Indian plantations, who ­were producing “­free ­labor” goods for ethical commerce? Well, the abolitionists argued, their relationships with their ­owners ­were more like ­family relationships. Never mind that paternalistic slaveholders in the American South made similar arguments about their own relationships with enslaved workers.91 The new po­ liti­cal and economic structures of ethical capitalism ultimately supported the rights of property ­owners and middlemen (the largest class of consumers), rather than the rights of laborers. In contrast to this image of an “unchanging” and benign form of kinship, the realities of an evolving African system of slavery, tied to the global development of capitalism, could be witnessed in the acts of the enslaved themselves, and in the vari­ous West African ­legal codes inherited by colonial powers over the course of the nineteenth c­ entury. ­Women and men fled slavery, coming to colonial cities they believed would uphold their claim to freedom, but often finding surprisingly bureaucratic courts willing to listen to former ­owners’ claims that the formerly enslaved ­were in fact working off debts, or were wives, or wards. Not wanting to disrupt the trading relations essential to demonstrating the value of ethical commerce to the global economy, governors in Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cape Coast, and Senegal ­were wary of fugitive slaves who fled to territories where slavery was outlawed, b­ ecause they disrupted the delicate balance of power in which the often thinly stretched colonial officials and merchant ­houses relied on local African commercial elites.92 Even in Freetown, governors from Macaulay onward through the late nineteenth ­century responded tepidly to the freedom claims of runaway slaves who reached the city.93 As Trevor Getz recounts, in Senegal, the Brak of Waalo,

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the chief suppliers of c­ attle to Saint-­Louis, along with the Damel of Kajoor, and the Trarza, who ­were the major suppliers of gum to the French, all boycotted trade with Saint-­Louis to put pressure on the French colonial government to return runaway slaves and not enforce the French 1848 abolition act.94 T ­ hese states ­were exercising their commercial power in the commodity and provisioning trades to maintain control of an asset that was impor­tant to their economies—­enslaved laborers. Legitimate traders responded to that African commercial power, pressuring the colonial governments to ignore “benign” domestic slavery and making arguments for the beneficial nature of “civilizing” work. The question of who would benefit from ethical commerce in Africa, and how, was a pro­cess of negotiation between African slaveholders, middlemen, and the enslaved themselves.

Laborers as Consumers In justifying questionable ­labor practices in other countries, the argument in support of British and French manufacturers was increasingly impor­t ant as cotton became the dominant industry of the mid-­n ineteenth ­century. The evidence of ­free l­abor’s economic superiority over enslaved ­labor was patchy, but at least ­free laborers could be consumers in their own right, which further stimulated manufacturing and industry back in the home market. As the Edinburgh Review explained the logic, the consumers of India—­“100 millions of industrious and ingenious inhabitants”—­would be an “infinitely more extensive market for British manufactured goods than the islands of Jamaica, Barbados, &c.”95 The free-­labor argument was a catch-­all for economic anx­i­eties, an attempt to get the most supporters on board and to cast slave l­abor and the slave trade as an economic burden affecting far more ­people than just the enslaved themselves. And so the American Genius of Universal Emancipation republished a British argument: “At a moment too, when the manufacturing districts in this country are suffering most heavi­ly for want of a market for their goods, and when the manufactures of other countries are treading closely upon our heels; it is of g­ reat importance, that the p ­ eople of ­Great Britain should be fully acquainted with the restrictions, which cramp our trade

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with our own Empire in the East Indies.”96 ­Because the East Indies “belonged” to Britain, it would suit every­one better if the country could source free-­labor cotton produced ­t here for manufacture in Britain. Arguing in support of equalizing sugar tariffs in 1823, alongside fellow East India Com­pany shareholder David Ricardo, Zachary Macaulay “alluded to the Hon Gentleman’s denial, his distinct denial, that the cheapness of ­labour in India gave any advantage to the merchant in the market of ­England; nothing but a love of paradox could have led to such a proposition as that.”97 Consumer interest was impor­tant for framing the seeming contradiction between arguments for ­free ­labor in Britain and Amer­i­ca. The point was to empower consumers, not laborers. A focus on West Africa shows that ideas of ethical capitalism w ­ ere about improving the consumer power of West Africans, but also that of the American and British (and French) laborers, who would then be able to buy cheaper goods, undercutting demand for higher wages at home. Over the first half of the eigh­teenth ­century, although historians are divided about this, ­there does seem to have been an increase in the value of ­labor as related to the ability to consume around the world.98 This allowed for unpre­ce­dented access to consumer goods, which caused a moral and po­liti­cal crisis by the end of the ­century. As ethical-­commerce advocates involved with African trade and speculative colonization and governance schemes emphasized increasingly over the nineteenth ­century, ­free ­labor would reduce the costs of production, allowing living standards for consumers to continue to rise even as ­labor value was eroded. Macaulay, his friend David Ricardo, and o­ thers had become obsessed with discovering the value of a basic unit of l­abor—­what is one hour of ­labor worth—­which Ricardo argued o­ ught to be the same across sectors within the economy. Smith’s l­abor theory of value was problematic ­because consumer prices always had to ­factor into the production the consumer was ­doing to get the money to buy the product in the first place. Ricardo wanted the ­labor theory of value to “determine the value of the commodity in­de­pen­dently of variations in wages.”99 Ricardo’s transformative intervention—­comparative advantage—­worked ­because “the ­labor theory of value holds within each country, but not between countries.”100 This explains why the moral-­commerce proponents fixated on reducing

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consumer prices: that was the only way to achieve a higher standard of living once the ­labor unit of value reached equilibrium. David Ricardo’s arguments about the global division of l­abor and the relationship between wages, profits, and cost of living (developed further by Mill), ­were influential in shaping abolitionist polemics, but their practical work in abolitionist commerce helped create and reify ideas about who, globally, should be responsible for dif­fer­ent kinds of l­ abor.101 By the 1850s tropical commodity production had become unmistakably enmeshed with an understanding of an inherent global division of ­labor, justified for ethical consumers by a rhe­toric that ascribed it to “benign” African domestic slavery or “intractable” Indian caste prejudice or “lazy” West Indian former slaves. Free-­produce shop­keep­ers, importers, manufacturers, and financiers made pragmatic business decisions in the search for raw and manufactured free-­labor cotton. ­T hose decisions and their rationalizations helped change ideas about who global producers, manufacturers, and consumers ­were, and could be. The emergence of ­these ideas had origins in a vision for Africa that saw legitimate commerce t­ here a­ fter the slave trade helping both to support Africans in the transition away from the slave trade, and to support free-­ labor proj­ects worldwide in opposition to slave ­labor in the New World. The diversion of ­labor away from local manufacturing ­toward plantation-­ style agriculture and (enslaved or coerced or underpaid) ­labor, and the focus on exporting for global commodities markets, kept Atlantic West Africa within the same production and consumption chains of the e­ arlier Atlantic system, but with new, “ethical” products as the driver. In Egypt and India, the shift contributed to a growing reliance on British finance and manufactured goods.102 The image of Africa, India, and other areas was firmly of unskilled laborers whom global ethical capitalism’s division of ­labor had given an impor­tant, if inferior, role in the global supply chain. ­Free l­ abor was cheaper than slave ­labor, as long as it was taking place in inexpensive ­labor markets. The irony is that the ­free laborers French and British West African governors deemed “too expensive” or “too lazy” ­were experiencing a boom in their ability to consume cheaply, and certainly did not need educational reforms aimed at making them industrious consumers.103

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Obviously, it was not the free-­produce movement or the businesses involved in sourcing, producing, manufacturing, and selling f­ree cotton who w ­ ere responsible for the global division of l­ abor: that was already at the heart of the nineteenth-­century economy. What the free-­produce businesses—­and their spokespeople—­did was articulate specific interventions consumers could make in the global supply chain, while lending moral justification to the continuation of racial disparities in l­ abor exploitation. Securing plantation products from Africa and India would support legitimate commerce and would undermine demand for slave produce from the southern United States and West Indies. But questions about ­labor practices gave rise to new forms of moral reasoning by free-­ labor advocates. Relying on evidence from travel writers, merchants, and their own suppliers, they argued both that African and Asian domestic slavery was a dif­fer­ent, more benign institution than Western slavery, and that the practice of indenture by Western economies was a means of training workers in the discipline of wage ­labor. Low wages, meanwhile, ­were justified by relative cost of living.104 The cheaper the raw materials ­were, the cheaper the manufactures could be, which meant that wages could stay low and an improving standard of living would continue to “civilize” the backwaters of the global economy. Even more importantly, without low wages—­which, it now appeared, could be ensured only by creating a high volume of mobile l­ abor—­the logic of f­ ree l­ abor’s efficiency would evaporate. All of this rested on a logic that was constantly reformulating a definition of slavery based on what­ever abolitionist po­liti­cal economists ­were reacting to in proslavery arguments. Low wages may have been bad, indenture may have been bad, but nothing was as bad as slavery.

Manufacturing Core and Agricultural Periphery With the efficient global division of ­labor and the new science of comparative advantage, places that had previously produced their own cotton for local use and regional export turned into monocultural export economies. This was explained as an impor­tant benefit for the places producing ­those export commodities, for the reasons outlined above. Moving the manu-

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facturing jobs to Britain might also help to solve another social ill domestic campaigners feared—­expanding East Indian cotton production, the New Times argued, could be a boon to Ireland: “If the ­people of Ireland are to be employed in manufactures, not only w ­ ill a supply of the raw material be wanted, but a new market must be found for the manufactured article. Now both t­ hese wants may be adequately supplied by British India. And what prevents it? Chiefly the narrow policy which obstructs the migration to India of an adequate number of intelligent agents, and the high duties imposed on East-­Indian produce.”105 This would, the newspaper argued, prevent the Irish from flocking to E ­ ngland and, apparently inevitably, filling the jails. The f­ree ­labor of Indians, the f­ree flow of capital, and the ­free trade in commodities, then, could help prevent what the writer saw as the prob­lem of the ­free movement of ­labor. Of course, northern manufacturers in the United States argued for their own protectionist mea­sures specifically to overcome British arguments for comparative advantage.106 In part this was pragmatic: both the British and American arguments ­were largely formulated to attract new free-­ produce customers from both within and outside the antislavery movement. This meant that writers drew on both antislavery arguments about the sin of the consumer and the popu­lar economic language in circulation. But in associating their moral cause with the debates over the effects of trade, they gave a par­tic­u­lar view of the world economy their ethical approval. In encouraging British and American consumers to purchase global free-­labor goods, free-­produce importers and manufacturers w ­ ere creating new global supply chains that disrupted local industries and regional manufacturing networks. To counteract ­those effects, some middlemen attempted to bring aspects of manufacturing to Africa. In 1856 Benson reported he had a Liberian-­developed mill huller for his coffee that could prepare “one thousand pounds of coffee in marketable order in a week.”107 In the 1850s, cotton grown in Abeokuta kept “between two and three hundred gins” at work and “about five to six ware­houses” filled for export.108 In 1857, Lagos exported 868 bales of cotton at a price of £3,490, and 50,000 “Native cotton cloths” valued at £25,000.109 The promotion of the export of native cotton cloths never r­ eally took off, however. It is hard to even call

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it a failure; it was not even considered by the British and American-­based traders and merchants promoting African legitimate commerce, and it certainly ­wasn’t an idea supported by manufacturing interests in Liverpool and Manchester, which had only just begun to overtake Indian cloth in supplying international demand.110 One of the ­g reat ironies of the post-­slave-­trade commercial relationships between Britain and West Africa was that American slave-­grown cotton was being manufactured into textiles in Manchester and Liverpool then sent to West Africa, where it was exchanged for legitimate produce, including raw cotton. Brown & Ives exemplified this strange triangle. In 1818 they sent to Senegal and Sierra Leone on their ship Charlotte $1,786 worth of orange, red, and blue cotton yarn. The Charlotte, which became embroiled in US congressional hearings over ad valorem import tariffs, also imported 16 bales of cotton and 574 pieces of serge from the African coast, valued at $2,870.111 The exported cotton textiles destined for West Africa ­were purchased from Blackstone Manufacturing, in which Brown & Ives ­were investors (and which was founded by Moses Brown, the Quaker abolitionist and ­uncle of Nicholas Brown).112 Blackstone sourced its raw cotton from New Orleans, where it was purchased by their agent, Thomas Ives’s nephew, Thomas Bancroft. The slave-­produced cotton was purchased on account with Baring B ­ rothers, the London financiers who ­were si­mul­t a­neously bankrolling legitimate-­commerce expeditions for palm oil in West Africa.113 And while providing market information on cotton in New Orleans, Bancroft also wrote to Brown & Ives with information about sources of free-­produce sugar (from Batavia in the East Indies) and rice.114 In other words, the global chain of producers, manufacturers, financiers, merchants, shop­keep­ers, and consumers was far more complicated than even dedicated free-­produce businessmen could acknowledge. Pursuing free-­produce goods from one source could mean accepting slave-­produced goods from another. In India, the combination of greater demand for British cloths in the West African trade and the pressure from British businesses and the colonial government actually pushed Indians out of manufacturing into cotton agriculture (or low-­paid agricultural ­labor).115 The emerging logic of comparative advantage was deployed to argue that industrialized manufacturing in Britain was more efficient than Indian or African methods,

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but that ­free trade with ­those places was an impor­tant part of making that advantage.116 Without the ability to trade something for t­ hose manufactures, though, Indian and African consumers would have to withdraw from the market, a variation of the legitimate-­commerce argument. David Ricardo himself, a member of the committee of East India shareholders, commented, “­Those who exported must have got a return in something ­else they had not before had. If we send cotton goods to India, they must be paid for. Our cotton goods ­were purchased with other manufactures; new branches of trade ­were thus struck out, and both countries ­were ultimately benefited.”117 As the focus shifted from the role of enslaved ­labor in the production of sugar to its role in cotton production by the late 1840s, British observers commented that it was obvious that “India can compete with any ­free ­labour countries or Java, but the Indian trade cannot be conducted without some general mode of remittance by produce. If cotton, for instance, could at once take the place of sugar.”118 Every­one needed to produce something they could make more cheaply than other ­people, so they could sell it for export and continue to buy manufactures from Britain. This vision of global f­ ree ­labor also reinforced the argument made by abolitionist po­liti­cal economists that any wage—no ­matter how low—­was better than slavery; wage l­abor was in itself a civilizing force. No ­matter how low the wage, it made the recipient a better citizen and consumer, and increased industriousness and civilization the world over. The point was to use global f­ ree trade to find the cheapest f­ ree ­labor. The wages paid to t­ hose laborers would “civilize” them, allowing them to participate in global commerce and gradually raising their standard of living. The American slave system kept prices artificially high b­ ecause it required protection and ­because enslaved laborers ­were inefficient, as demonstrated, abolitionists argued, by the fact that overseers resorted to the lash and other punishments to compel ­labor. This was contrasted with hardworking f­ree laborers, who could see their lives improving through industrious be­hav­ior, and who ­were incentivized to work harder by the consumer manufactures they could buy with their wages.119 But together with the arguments justifying African and Asian domestic slavery, this image of the civilizing nature of ­labor and consumption required a reimagining of Africa and Asia as places that w ­ ere not yet ­really consumers.

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Unlike the ­earlier legitimate traders such as Brown & Ives, they ­were painting Africa as a place of production rather than as a ready and impor­ tant consumer market.

when g. m. gillett’s ­family bought their cotton textiles “made by escaped slaves,” they ­were buying one of the many va­ri­e­ties of free-­labor cotton on the market. They could have equally searched out cotton grown by ­free white laborers in Amer­i­ca or Australia. They could have purchased one of Thomas Clegg’s Nigerian cotton cloths, or the East Indian cotton cloths manufactured by Cropper, Benson & Co. The fact that Gillett told her ­daughter it was specifically cotton made by American escaped slaves says something about the state of global commerce by the time she was writing, several de­cades ­after the American Civil War. The moral associations linked to East India or Egyptian or West African cotton production had mostly evaporated in what was largely by the end of the nineteenth ­century the “colonial world.” By that point, it was a m ­ atter of common knowledge that ­these colonies produced raw materials for manufacture in the industrial centers of Britain, France, and Germany. But abolitionists had actually been at the forefront of arguing that t­ hese overseas territories ­were Britain’s best hope for achieving in­de­pen­dence from Amer­i­ca’s slave-­produced cotton supply. ­Free produce allowed consumers to imagine a morally responsible global division of l­abor, where they could continue to use the “luxury” tropical goods associated with slavery, while imagining a dif­fer­ent ­f uture of “self-­reliance”—­largely by subdividing the world into manufacturers and producers, and ­either ignoring overseas ­labor practices or condoning them based on an understanding of “domestic slavery” that rested on assumptions about the role of slavery in socie­ties deemed to be backward in part b­ ecause of their participation in the institution of slavery. Highly aware of this circular logic with regard to the American economy, ethical consumers con­ve­niently overlooked it in Africa and Asia. African traders and, increasingly, commercial agriculturalists, who had been at the heart of arguments for legitimate commerce’s ability to be in the interest of Africa, seemed poised to benefit from this as long as they could control the

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distribution of land and l­abor and not become overly indebted to Eu­ro­ pe­ans. Merchants and consumers worked together to produce economic and po­liti­cal, as well as moral, justifications for the exploitation of foreign workers. Ideas of “benign” domestic slavery and uneducated workforces allowed British and American antislavery activists to ignore the inherent ­labor prob­lems of tropical commodity production in search of a more just supply source. By the 1850s and 1860s the focus of African legitimate-­commerce arguments had shifted to the beneficial nature of work (as part of the civilizing mission) and the ability of that commerce to provide a new supply of mass-­produced raw commodities. The inability of the American ­Free Produce Association or the vari­ous in­de­pen­dent merchants on ­either side of the Atlantic to tackle the ­whole supply chain left businesses and the movement as a ­whole with decisions about where to focus their capital. The resulting proliferation of business schemes led to a gradual but perceptible shift ­toward an ac­cep­tance of global divisions of ­labor that included endorsing slavery in “backward” socie­ties provided that t­hese abolitionists could convince themselves they ­were helping the overall moral improvement of global capitalism: a rising tide lifting all boats.

chapter 7

Consumer Nationalism in Black and White

G

eorge W. Taylor’s Philadelphia “­Free L ­ abor Ware­house” advertised that its proprietor “manufactures his Cotton Goods from Material procured directly from ­those growers who neither own nor hire Slaves.” By the 1860s almost all of Taylor’s cotton textiles ­were sourced from white, southern, yeoman farmers, and manufactured on his own premises. The store also sold Liberian coffee, Javanese coffee, and East India molasses. Taylor’s business, which operated from the 1840s through 1866, ranged from ­wholesaling to retailing, importing to manufacturing. His business correspondence with American and Liberian free-­labor producers offers a win­dow onto how ethical commerce influenced and was influenced by ideas of ethnic economic nationalism by midcentury. Relying on nationally sourced products was one way to shorten the supply chain. Buying locally, regionally, or nationally ensured that consumers ­were supporting their fellow citizens. In thinking not just about how to hurt slaveholders by refusing to consume their produce, but also about who would benefit from dollars spent, black and white abolitionists had to figure out what role economic nationalism would play in their decisions. Ethical-­commerce advocates had made a convincing case about consumer responsibility, and diverting their spending away from slaveholders 204

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was a convincing enough argument, even if many found it difficult to follow through. But where should their money be diverted to? If refusing to buy was a vote against a commercial practice, then did that transform active purchasing into a vote for a commercial practice? Using the power of the consumer as a “vote,” endorsement, or incentive gave rise to dif­ fer­ent debates about who should benefit from ethical capitalism. Should it benefit any ­free ­labor at all? Should it support other, secondary ­causes, like relief for the poor, uplift for the oppressed, or support for coreligionists? Although American ethical businesses w ­ ere actively engaged with their British counter­parts, ­there was a certain hesitancy about British free-­trade princi­ples. More-­skeptical American writers pointed out that British policy might just be masking self-­interest; the effects of the withdrawal of protections that had isolated British free-­labor sugar from competition with Brazilian and Cuban slave-­labor sugar in 1846 w ­ ere cited as an example. ­These writers w ­ ere also disturbed by British arguments in support of ­free l­ abor that painted Britain as the manufacturer and the rest of the world as producer of raw supplies and consumers. Of course, many free-­produce stores did not want to be reliant on British free-­labor goods, particularly when ­there was the option to source and manufacture ­those goods in a way that would support Americans. British and French sourcing of cotton from around the globe was actually worrying to many in the United States, not to just interested southerners who wanted to protect their market share. Although free-­produce advocates ­were constantly searching for new sources of supply, they did not want to see the American economy destroyed. They mostly wanted slaveholders to be convinced that f­ree ­labor was more efficient than enslaved ­labor so they would abandon the practice out of their own self-­interest rather than through government compulsion. But as arguments evolved in the 1850s, land became as impor­tant as ­labor in the economic arguments for the end of slavery. The unease about de­pen­dency that had been common in the late eigh­teenth ­century reared its head again as new capital-­intensive industries raised questions about what “­free” ­labor r­ eally meant, and who the beneficiaries of the profits of consumption ­were. Migration to new lands was increasingly posed as a solution to the erosion of the value of l­abor: Eu­ro­pean migration to the

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colonial frontiers; American migration onto Native American and Mexican lands in the West; but equally, African American migration to Canada, Mexico, Haiti, and Liberia, and West African migration to that continent’s agricultural frontiers. Seeking in­de­pen­dence from the economic dominance of the slave-­based regimes of the American South or Futa Jallon led to similar strategies as individuals sought to establish self-­ sufficient, market-­oriented ­house­holds in what for them ­were new lands. American proponents of ethical commerce, like George W. Taylor, found themselves increasingly advocating a new approach to land as a solution to the free-­labor question about who would benefit from emancipation.

Economic Nationalism Even as the British abolitionists w ­ ere seeking out ­free trade with India and the wider East Indies, Egypt, and West Africa to source new supplies of cotton, in the United States Walker’s tariff bill of 1846 increased the rates for much of the produce imported from West Africa.1 For merchants interested in sourcing ­free cotton internationally, the abolitionists ­were put in an awkward position by their stance on tariffs, mirroring the tensions that had pitted British abolitionists against each other in the sugar debates, and demonstrating that arguments for ­free trade and for ­free ­labor often worked against each other. For Britain’s abolitionist businessmen and ­women, self-­sufficiency meant ­f ree trade; for Amer­i­ca’s it meant a focus on domestic production.2 On both sides of the Atlantic the framing of that self-­sufficiency solution within free-­produce businesses influenced, and was influenced by, evolving ideas of po­liti­cal economy and the relationship of the state to business. Since the first nonimportation agreements, economic nationalism had been an impor­tant ­factor in American consumer decisions. Supporting American producers, especially at the expense of the East India Com­ pany, had been an impor­tant rallying cry uniting the colonies.3 The nonimportation agreements had articulated a vision of American self-­reliance and removal from de­pen­dency on global commerce, which would allow for an even greater consumer revolution to drive American manufacturing and infrastructure development.4 The new republic sought to fulfill t­ hese fantasies through tariff protection of domestic industries.

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Despite the initial connections between the antislavery abstention movements and Revolutionary nonimportation in framing the po­l iti­cal value of commercial be­hav­ior, the free-­produce movement, like the rest of American consumer life in the early republic, rested on many imported products. But the directors of the American ­Free Produce Association ­were e­ ager not only to draw on their heavy mercantile membership but also to promote expanded opportunities for American producers. T ­ here was a decidedly power­f ul strain of American free-­produce thinking that saw external commerce and external solutions to the slave-­labor prob­lem as insufficient. The influence of one of the early republic’s foremost po­ liti­cal economists, Mathew Carey, and other promoters of self-­sufficiency and commercial in­de­pen­dence can be seen clearly as American ­Free Produce Association members worried about production for the home market and the country’s reliance on the British Empire.5 The influence of the self-­sufficiency argument ultimately directed the country’s approach to West African commerce. Despite playing an early and impor­tant role in legitimate commerce during the Napoleonic Wars, the tariff of 1842 decisively ended the involvement of many of US legitimate-­ commerce merchants in the emerging groundnut trade, for instance. American legitimate traders (and illicit slave traders) had been the bane of British West African administration; in Gambia, Bathurst complained regularly about the ability of American ships to undercut British traders.6 In 1837 the United States was the largest importer of Gambian groundnuts, but the introduction of the tariff, which cost importers 32 cents per bushel, collapsed the US share of Gambia’s exports to just 2 ­percent of the total exports by value.7 As George Brooks notes, American trading firms ­were driven to look for the cheapest pos­si­ble groundnuts in order to maintain some profit, but ­after the introduction of the tariff, the major source of peanuts for US consumers was the American South.8 The economic imperative of promoting home production outweighed the mercantile interest, with American involvement in legitimate commerce appearing to suffer as a result. One potential beneficiary of the shift from mercantile to producer interest in American free-­produce circles w ­ ere parties interested in manufacturing free-­produce cotton. This manufacturing idea was a subject of some debate in 1839, when the American ­Free Produce Association sought

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subscribers throughout the United States. One w ­ oman wrote to abolitionist Lucretia Mott that she was not ­going to subscribe to the foundation of a free-­produce store: “It may be ignorance, but it appears to me that a manufactory for f­ree cotton exclusively is what we want more than a repository for goods.”9 She was not alone in suggesting that a joint stock com­pany could set up a factory if none existed. A representative of the Union (NY) F ­ ree Produce Association also believed that a paper factory was a more worthy investment of the society’s time and money than establishing stores.10 Manufacturing, however, was difficult. First, ­there was the issue of demand. In its fifth annual report, the AFPA was fi­nally able to announce that “this demand has been, during the past year, twice as ­great as that of any former year, and that we have been able to place in the market, manufactures of better quality and at lower prices than at any previous period of the Association’s existence.” The report posited that the change was a result of the fact that “the Association is now relieved from some disadvantages ­under which it has laboured for a few years past, in consequence of having procured a supply of goods at a time when the price of cotton and the cost of manufacturing ­were high, a large part of which supply remained on hand ­after the ­great depression in the cotton market, and which could not, without loss, be offered for sale at rates which would compete at all with the rapidly falling prices of slave-­g rown manufactures.” With the rising prices of cotton in the 1840s, free-­labor “cotton has been procured by the Association on better terms, and we hope to approximate in the price and quality of our manufactures, more nearly than ever, to o­ thers now on the market.”11 But the quantities they w ­ ere able to source ­were still low enough that centralizing manufacture was not cost effective. This debate over w ­ hether to raise funds to support the manufacture of f­ree cotton, or to support the commercial agents and merchants who found sources of ­free cotton, reflected the uneasy co­ali­tion between dif­ fer­ent businessmen and ­women involved in ­free produce. Abolitionists, of course, w ­ ere not entirely “the industrial interest.” They w ­ ere made up of the manufacturing interest sometimes, and also the mercantile interest, agricultural interest, and consumer interest. But the challenge they faced was manufacturing ­free cotton into goods that could be sold in shops. The

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Philadelphia F ­ ree Produce Society of Friends hoped that some kind of depot could be established for collecting free-­labor cotton from the south “to a single point,” from which to send it north for manufacture. They hoped this would keep prices low. One reason was that “we have at least prima facie evidence that it can be afforded at the same price” b­ ecause it was usually “mingled” with slave-­produced cotton, demonstrating that it was not manifestly more expensive or it would have been kept separate in order to charge a higher price. Once in the North, “as our northern manufactories employ freemen only, ­there appears no reason why cotton fabrics which come to us unsoiled by the sweat of the slave should be charged with any other burden than the cost of separation from the products of slave ­labour during its transit from the farm to the factory.”12 But this reasoning, which supported an argument for the low price of free-­ produce cotton, si­mul­ta­neously pointed to the problematic nature of sourcing the cotton: namely, that it was indistinguishable from slave-­ produced cotton. By the 1850s, the AFPA moved away from manufacturing its own cotton textiles t­ oward sourcing domestically produced free-­labor cotton goods to encourage in­de­pen­dent manufacturers, like Joseph Bancroft and Thomas Garrett of Wilmington, Delaware. AFPA president George W. Taylor, whose main manufacturers w ­ ere British, wrote to Gideon Smith in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, offering “14 bales good Mississippi cotton” to be made into something “saleable.”13 He acknowledged, “Of course t­ here would be mixture at beginning and ending and the only way ­will be for thee to buy the cotton and sell me the goods made of such parts of this material as should be unmixed with thy other cotton at both beginning and ending.”14 Taylor sent out cotton to textile manufacturers in Connecticut, and in Manchester and Carlisle, E ­ ngland, but he also set up his own cotton manufacturing in 1854. Putting together his factory required sourcing cotton cards, bobbins, spools, a beater lap machine, frames, brindles, and fans from Philadelphia firms Whitier & Cons, A. Jenks & Son, Hy. W. Butterworth, John Jackson, the Spread Ea­gle Com­pany in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and Dean Cotton & Machine Com­pany, in Taunton, Mas­sa­chu­setts.15 Although the decision to withdraw the AFPA from manufacturing came about ­because it looked like it would be too expensive to centralize production, the establishment of a variety of

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free-­labor cotton manufacturers had an unintended ethical dimension farther up the supply chain. If enough small manufacturers placed ­orders for the weaving components, American businesses that made the parts used in manufacturing slave-­produced cotton would also be able to be discerning in choosing their customers.

Buying Black Although the majority of free-­produce goods sold in American stores ­were sourced internationally, over the 1840s and 1850s Taylor and other businessmen involved in the movement sought to use American f­ ree ­labor, and to promote American manufacturing as one of their ethical aims. But which Americans? For f­ ree black members of the Colored ­Free Produce Society, the emphasis on the “value” of f­ree ­labor was never part of the rhetorical strategy they employed, though consumer responsibility certainly was. When thinking about the effects of positive purchasing, the benefits of buying from black-­owned businesses, or from freed slaves, ­were obvious. In 1829 the Genius of Universal Emancipation had published a report that in both Ohio and Upper Canada, “sundry colored persons from Kentucky” ­were raising tobacco.16 Colored ­Free Produce Society subcommittee member James Pierce operated a shop that sold tobacco from Kentucky, Ohio, and Connecticut.17 Buying tobacco produced by ­free black farmers from Pierce’s store, or William Whipper’s, next to the Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia, would help support both t­ hese black entrepreneurs and the ­free black farmers who ­were competing with enslaved ­labor. Supporting formerly enslaved workers’ ­labor was one way for p ­ eople to direct their consumer dollars. And ­there was an argument within vari­ous local and national black organ­izations that this was an impor­tant way to spend money. As Juliet Walker notes, both the National Negro Convention and the Jamaica Hamic Trade Association promoted “favored nation” status for the African diaspora, proposing “that economic advancement of diaspora Africans should proceed on the Jewish model.”18 The American Moral Reform Society, of which Whipper and Purvis ­were leaders, urged black Americans to “patronize only ­those businesses which accorded them equal treatment with whites.”19

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It was in this atmosphere of black “supra” and “sub” nation-­building (to borrow Peter Thompson’s phrase) that black businesses ­were operating in enterprises designed to undermine slavery.20 African American consumers could partly rectify their lack of po­liti­cal power outside of their black communities by using their economic power. Boycotting was an incredibly impor­tant tool, as had been demonstrated repeatedly in the late eigh­teenth ­century. But equally, supporting the l­ abor of f­ ree or freed black ­people would help reduce the demand for enslaved ­labor while si­mul­ta­ neously contributing to “uplift” and the demonstration of black p ­ eople’s capacity for in­de­pen­dence and success outside the degrading conditions of slavery.21 In 1854 Jacob White Jr., a friend of African American free-­produce promoters Robert Purvis and William Whipper, delivered a speech before the Banneker Institute, Philadelphia’s African American literary society, expressing his frustration with his fellow “colored Americans” for their “inconsistency.” He reiterated arguments about supply and demand, and consumers’ responsibility for the conditions of production. He was realistic in his assessment of impact, stating he did not “mean to intimate however that if the colored ­people ­were all to abstain from the use of slave products, that the abolition of slavery would be the result; But I do say that they would be acting with consistency if they ­were to make it a rule not to use any products but t­ hose of compensated l­abor.” But he did lament that “if t­ here w ­ ere but two stores in this city and one sold f­ ree produce and the other slave produce, I doubt that ­there could be found one colored person in fifty that would put themselves to the least trou­ble in order to patronize the store that sold the ­free produce.” He also called out the hy­poc­r isy of abolitionists who failed to uphold free-­produce princi­ples: “And while they utter maledictions against the slaveholders, and cry against the system of slavery as an infernal system; they at the same time encourage the slave holder to continue his business.”22 For proponents of the free-­produce cause, any abolitionists not participating in buying free-­labor goods w ­ ere inconsistent b­ ecause they failed to support their words with practical actions. All black entrepreneurs concerned about slavery ­were faced with decisions about what to do with their wealth, what their wealth represented to the community, and in what ways their accumulation of wealth might

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accidentally support slavery. The case of James Forten highlights how ­these interrelated goals could compete. Forten was, by any mea­sure, an incredibly successful businessman. His sailmaking firm was an impor­ tant contributor to Philadelphia’s maritime economy. By 1807 he was employing thirty men, white and black. He contributed to the building of the Bethel AME church, was a pillar of the Philadelphia black community, gave money to abolitionist ­causes, and assisted the Under­g round Railroad.23 But throughout his ­career to he had to use slave-­produced cotton cloth to make his sails. In fact, if he had attempted to use non-­slave-­ produced cotton for his sails, his business would have been much less successful. Very l­ ittle non-­slave-­produced cotton was available in the 1810s and 1820s, the quality of the fabric was lower, and the price was much higher. Of course, if someone with Forten’s clout had de­cided to switch to free-­labor cotton, it could have made an impor­tant symbolic impact. Given his share of the sailmaking market in Philadelphia, it could have made a real economic impact as well. But it would also have risked his business, one necessary for the support of the Philadelphia ­free black community and the wider cause of abolitionism. And Forten was by no means the only black man with business interests that tied him to the slave economy; John Black, Charles Brister, and Thomas ­L ittle, of Philadelphia, ­were all involved with sugar refining before emancipation in the West Indies.24 Buying ­t hese refiners’ sugar would support black businesses, but would also potentially support enslaved ­labor. Where in the supply chain should consumers be thinking about “positive purchasing”? Juliet Walker has argued that “black entrepreneurship” in the antebellum era “can be understood from within the Schumpeterian framework of the ‘creative cap­i­tal­ist,’ ” in which “­factors other than the achievement of monetary success can be seen as providing the motivating force for business participation.”25 She articulates the prob­lems facing the historians of black business in the antebellum period, who are required to balance the arguments for the “bourgeoisification” of black entrepreneurs and the total loss of agency of the enslaved. But she points to the existence of the business relations committee of the National Council of Colored P ­ eople to argue that “expressions of black entrepreneurship ­were ­shaped by the black community, both slave and ­free, for the promotion

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of black economic interests rather than for the profits of slave-­owners or white employers.”26 For instance, Martin Delany’s writings for the North Star in the late 1840s emphasized the importance of “Practical Industry, and money-­making business enterprises.” He argued that “we have been heretofore taught that t­ hese t­ hings w ­ ere unfit for us, as they interfered with our prospects of heaven. This our oppressors taught us to prevent us from competing with them in business.”27 Within the broader abolition movement, the success of vari­ous f­ ree ­people of color was used to demonstrate the case for the civilizing benefits of commerce. For Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and for many conservative abolitionists, the existence of wealthy f­ ree ­people of color around the Atlantic World helped prove that black p ­ eople ­were equal in their capacities. Lundy identified the unjust “­legal oppression” of Jamaica’s ­free colored population who w ­ ere forced to operate within the system of British slavery before abolition and emancipation. He pointed out that this group was “worth property to the amount of $23,000,000,” including four named individuals worth more than $100,000, who had largely cornered the island’s pimento production.28 Their success in business demonstrated the absurdity of oppressive laws that held back the African diaspora’s full participation in the Atlantic economy. For Lundy and his readers, it was another example of prejudice disrupting the other­wise efficient and just market. Black businessmen and w ­ omen ­were not trying to convince white slaveholders that their l­abor would be “more efficient” if f­ree. They w ­ ere trying to become entrepreneurs and landowners in their own right. Ethical capitalism was proposed as the most “consistent” form of re­sis­tance against the slave system, but in making positive consumption choices (not just simply boycotting every­thing), ­people’s power as consumers became an endorsement, and that fostered a proliferation of choices. T ­ here was no one obvious way to make purchases in support of the black Atlantic.

Black Coffee Taylor proposed Liberian coffee as one way that ­people could support the black diaspora with their purchases. Throughout the 1850s, Taylor sold coffee grown in Liberia on the plantations of his trading partner,

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Stephen Benson.29 Although he had regular customers for Liberian coffee, it was an acquired taste. At one point, Taylor complained to Benson “that the last parcel of Coffee tho handsome, has not the flavour that pleases my former customers for thy Coffee. W ­ hether it is want of age or some difference in the caring, I cannot tell. If thou couldst procure some trees or seeds of the best variety from Java, the Coffee would more certainly please ­every coffee drinker.”30 Liberia worked as an antislavery brand, but also posed a prob­lem. White free-­labor merchants knew that their customers wanted the brand of Liberia, partly to demonstrate the value of ­free black ­labor, partly to undercut the argument for slavery among ­those who claimed that black ­labor had to be coerced, and partly to support the freed slaves and f­ree black Americans who chose to immigrate to Africa. They bought t­ hings they d ­ idn’t need at high prices to support the proj­ect. But ­there ­were tensions that emerged between the plans, tensions that pointed to the complex position in which f­ ree black p ­ eople in the Atlantic World found themselves. Demonstrating that Liberia was a successful commercial economy could prove the equal capacity of black and white ­people; but it could also encourage an argument that said black and white ­couldn’t live together.31 Liberian coffee was not the first free-­labor brand of coffee. Haiti had been the go-to free-­labor source for coffee in the United States. Coffee production could be undertaken without enslaved l­abor, on smaller parcels of land farmed by “peasant” agriculturalists, without significant capital outlays for machinery, and with re­sis­tance interwoven in its history. Although Haiti’s commercial weight in the Atlantic ­didn’t match Cuba’s or Brazil’s in coffee production, it offered a morally power­f ul alternative source for coffee, particularly before prices dropped with Brazil’s push into coffee in the 1830s.32 Coffee production had begun to devolve to manumitted p ­ eople in the de­cade prior to the Haitian Revolution, with laborers remaining on plantations, but receiving smaller parcels of land on which to grow crops like coffee. With the movements for parcelization of land in Jean Petion’s Republic of Haiti, coffee became the dominant export, replacing sugar.33 Export duties on coffee shipped from Haiti at the end of the 1810s ­were $1.21 per hundredweight.34 This would have given the Haitian state approximately $356,000 in income from coffee exports per year on average over the first half of the 1820s. 35 This was one of the

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larger of the export duties, on a crop in ­great demand in the United States, essentially their largest market.36 As with many ideas for a post-­emancipation black l­abor force, excessive emphasis was put on the moral force of prosperity. In 1822 Jean-­Pierre Boyer came into power as the new president of the unified Haitian republic in dire need of ­labor and investment to jump-­start the economy. He sought out interest among African Americans inclined ­toward emigration as well as t­hose interested in the success of the first black republic in the Western Hemi­sphere: he offered to provide not only travel to the republic, but also land, an offer ultimately extended to more than 6,000 ­free northerners in the two years of the scheme’s operation. Boyer’s American representative, and the chairman of the Haitian Emigration Society of Colored P ­ eople, based in New York, told the first emigrants that “the happiness of millions of the pre­sent and ­future generations, depends upon your prosperity, and that your prosperity depends much upon yourselves.”37 ­Because free-­labor coffee was actually available from a variety of global sources, the appeal of supporting former slaves and ensuring the prosperity of the African diaspora was impor­tant for marketing Haitian and Liberian coffees. In fact, b­ ecause information on free-­labor sources was so hard to come by, coffee from Haiti was actually something of a trope. Free-­produce consumers knew that coffee came from Haiti, and they knew that Haiti had no slaves, so this was an easy way to assert free-­labor credentials. An other­wise unsuccessful reconnaissance by a committee appointed to look for free-­labor cultivation around the world reported, “Coffee is also produced in abundance in the island of Hayti, and some parts of South Amer­i­ca, by f­ ree ­labor. ­These productions, unstained by slavery, may now be had in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, and likewise at Wilmington in Delaware.”38 Free-­produce tracts, like Anna Richardson’s ­There Is Death in the Pot!, listed Haiti among the producers of free-­ labor coffee.39 Despite the brand recognition of Haitian free-­produce coffee, coffee was one of the first commercial agricultural experimental crops tested by Macaulay in the early Sierra Leone colony, and was being exported from West Africa as early as 1821–1822, when Daniel Dailey shipped forty-­four bags of coffee (around 37 pounds) valued at $562.50 from Princess Island

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with the returning Brown & Ives brigantine Richard. The American import duty for coffee in 1822 was 5 cents per pound, and the coffee itself cost 15 cents per pound, meaning that, at that valuation, the coffee would net roughly a 100 ­percent profit.40 This was a strong price incentive for interested Liberian-­American producer-­imported partnerships like Taylor and Benson. The price of coffee for producers in Liberia increased in the de­cades around the American Civil War, as first “per-­capita consumption grew to three pounds a year in 1830, five and a half pounds by 1850, and eight pounds by 1859,” and then increased demand collided with the conditions of the war itself when “a pound of coffee sold for 42 cents by the end of the war, having risen from 14 cents in 1861.” 41 Taylor’s advice to Benson revealed that “Liberia” could also be a free-­ produce brand. Over the course of more than a de­cade of business exchanges with Benson, Taylor made plenty of suggestions about the movement’s desires for African produce. But he also revealed that basically anything sent to him that he could label as Liberian—­and therefore the product of “­free ­labor”—­would sell. Using formerly enslaved laborers had the benefit not only of “improving” their situation, but also of demonstrating that the same laborers, in f­ree conditions, could compete with slavery. Free-­produce advocates seeking out new commodities produced “by the l­ abor of emancipated slaves, and other f­ ree persons of color, in the West Indian Islands and on the American Continent” hoped it “­will shew the extent of the pecuniary advantages which this mode of proceeding undoubtedly possesses over that of cultivating the land by slave ­labor.” 42 But looking specifically to Liberia to prove the value of ­free l­ abor was a form of positive purchasing that proponents hoped could help freed slaves.

Separate but Equal in Liberia Liberian coffee was controversial not b­ ecause of its l­abor inputs—it was produced with f­ ree ­labor, despite the rumors to the contrary—­but ­because of the associations of the country with the colonization movement. Supporting Liberian produce could be seen as supporting the argument that black and white could not coexist in the United States, that Amer­i­ca was a white-­man’s country. Mathew Carey, the American po­liti­cal economist, wrote to the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1828 to support its

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proj­ect in Liberia. A ­ fter realizing that natu­ral population increase would put the African American population at ten million by 1868, he was e­ ager to help the society “withdraw from the United States annually, so many of the colored population, and provide them a comfortable home and all the advantages of civilization in Africa, as ­will make the number ­here remain stationary.” 43 By the 1830s many felt that the possibilities for racial harmony offered by the revolutionary generation had dissipated, and in their place racial separatism was emerging as a consensus view among both moderate and conservative white Americans.44 The economic possibilities offered by migration to Liberia ­were epitomized by Taylor’s coffee supplier in Liberia, Stephen Benson. Benson was born in 1816 to f­ ree African American parents in the slave state of Mary­land. As a six-­year-­old, he emigrated with his f­amily to the newly established colony of Liberia. Benson learned Bassa, a native Liberian language, and was one of the few early presidents seen by indigenous Liberians to be making the effort to integrate both settler and indigenous into the Republic. He was only thirty-­nine when he became president of the Republic, representing the agricultural interests of the country (in contrast to Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first president, who was perceived as representing the commercial interests of the trading elite).45 Benson had established a “large coffee farm” in Bassa Cove as early as 1849, when as a thirty-­three-­year-­old he welcomed R. R. Gurley, the visiting ACS secretary, who appreciated his hospitality.46 Despite the fact that he grew up almost entirely in Liberia, Benson maintained a strong connection to the ACS and to American commercial agents in par­tic­u­lar. In setting up his coffee business, he kept in close contact with potential buyers in the American market, but also sent out feelers in the British and French markets. He began corresponding with George W. Taylor in the 1850s. Settlers like Benson wrote back to US audiences with news of the va­r i­e­t ies of ways to make money in Liberia. The Genius of Universal Emancipation, which was a fairly broad church for all kinds of antislavery schemes, reprinted from the ACS paper, the African Repository, the article “Address of the Colonists to the ­Free ­People of Color in the United States.” The colonists argued, “Our trade and commerce is chiefly confined to the coast, to the interior parts of the continent, and to foreign vessels. It is already valuable and fast increasing. It is

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carried on in the productions of the country, consisting of rice, palm oil, ivory, tortoise-­shell, dye woods, golds, hide, wax, and a small amount of coffee; and it brings us in return the products and manufactures of the four quarters of the world. Seldom, indeed, is our harbour clear of Eu­ro­pean and American shipping; and the bustle and thronging of our streets, show something, already of the activity of the smaller seaports of the United States.” 47 As editor of the Genius, Lundy kept an agent in Monrovia; in 1832 it was Dr.  J.  W. Prout. He not only sold copies of the Genius in Liberia, which would have kept Liberian settlers abreast of the developments in abolitionist arguments about legitimate commerce, f­ ree produce, and f­ ree l­ abor, but he also provided Lundy and his readers with information on the market in vari­ous commodities in West Africa. From Rev. Mr M’Gill, Monrovia, Lundy reported, “­T here is a ­g reat deal of trade carried on ­here, with foreigners, and also with the natives. ­T here are two or three arrivals almost ­every week, with supplies of nearly all kinds.” 48 Exports of sugar and coffee from Liberia both began to expand in the 1850s, peaking in the 1860s before declining from the 1870s on.49 Bassa, where Benson’s plantation was located, became the principal producer of coffee by the early 1860s. 50 The other major Americo-­Liberian coffee plantations ­were run by Allen B. Hooper, who had 70,000 to 80,000 coffee plants in the mid-1850s, and Abraham Blackledge, who had 10,000 coffee plants.51 While palm oil, rice, and camwood ­were some of the easiest, most lucrative ways to promote “legitimate” commerce from Africa b­ ecause they w ­ ere already locally produced, coffee came to be seen as Africa’s niche offering, largely as a result of the efforts of Liberian settlers and their American trading networks. Taylor found t­ here was a particularly good market for Liberian coffee: “Any coffee h­ ere may wish to sell you may very properly consign to me and I ­will get a good price for it. Any ­thing ­else thou art disposed to return which is the product of the ­labor of ­free persons.”52 Benson’s sugar and coffee consignment to Taylor netted him $122.24 in 1864.53 In 1865 George W. Taylor sold Benson’s coffee at his Philadelphia store for 45 cents per pound.54 Benson’s agricultural success overlapped with the peak of Liberia’s commercial agriculture. Coffee was an especial beneficiary of the new interest in Liberian investment that emerged with the country’s in­de­pen­dence from

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Fig 7.1 ​George W. Taylor receipt. The Library Com­pany of Philadelphia.

the controversial American Colonization Society. As an in­de­pen­dent black republic, it was a beacon of hope for ­those interested in using ethical trade to demonstrate that black and white ­people had equal capacities for self-­government and economic advancement. Coffee became a hugely successful venture, at least temporarily, for ­those involved in Liberia. Prices continued to rise through the Civil War, reaching a peak in the 1880s before declining again in the 1890s. This commodity boom created pockets of wealth in the African American diaspora. But to fully realize the profits, Liberians altered their laws so that white entrepreneurs like Edward Morris, of Philadelphia, could lease land as a foreigner, expanding Liberia’s production for the American market.55 This enriched t­hose renting the land out, and theoretically could have benefited the country as a ­whole, as new revenues from increased exports ­were reinvested in the country. But in fact, the change in the laws illustrates how success in commerce was often difficult to fully align with success in the promotion of a moral proj­ect.

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Liberia gained its in­de­pen­dence from the American Colonization Society in 1847, establishing itself as a republic run by and for African American settlers. Americo-­Liberian men gained po­liti­cal in­de­pen­dence in order to exert po­liti­cal power in an Atlantic system that had not granted them voting rights within the expanding United States, or recognition of their colonial status by rival British and Sierra Leonean merchants. 56 But they did not extend rights to the wider Liberian population, or to Americo-­Liberian ­women, and while migration to Liberia could expand the po­liti­cal and economic opportunities available to black Americans, it could also undermine the fight for po­liti­cal repre­sen­t a­t ion within the United States. Migration was a way of asserting in­de­pen­dence; it encouraged the development of smallholder capitalism, but it could weaken wider claims of po­liti­cal belonging. The ambivalence of black nationalist po­liti­cal thought in the United States ­toward the establishment of a separate nation-­state was underlined by ambivalence ­toward economic participation with black nation-­building proj­ects.57 Voting with one’s dollar was a po­liti­cal statement, but not always an entirely straightforward one when the purchase of Liberian coffee si­mul­ta­neously demonstrated the power of legitimate commerce, encouraged a black entrepreneur, and promoted a controversial colonization proj­ect based on an exclusive, separatist ethnic nationalism.

­Free Soil, F ­ ree ­Labor, White Men Colonization, of course, did not necessarily have to be a proj­ect aimed at resettling the black population. Elihu Burritt, the internationally influential abolitionist, wrote to the Quaker Ecroyd ­brothers in Britain in 1854 full of enthusiasm for a free-­labor proj­ect. He was staying with Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the two had been discussing a plan to establish a plantation “of 100 or 200 acres in South Carolina, Georgia or Alabama” to demonstrate ­free l­ abor’s superiority. Burritt wrote asking John Ecroyd if he would be willing to undertake the experiment, noting that although they would want to use “­free coloured ­labour at first, I have thought a few stalwart Germans, fresh from the continent might be the best hands we could find. They might be found in any number in New York. I think such labourers would be less likely to excite suspicion as ‘abolitionist agitators’

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in the South than any other class attainable.”58 John Ecroyd responded politely that although he thought it was a good idea in princi­ple, he was not confident of making a profit, and ­after all, “in any experiment to be tried the object must be to show to the public that t­ here w ­ ill be as much profit by cultivating Cotton with F ­ ree l­ abour as with Slaves.” But Burritt was by no means alone in believing that an emphasis on German, white l­abor would be the most popu­lar for this proj­ect. This plan followed in the footsteps of other radical abolitionist and millenarian proj­ects both within and outside of the United States, including Frances Wright’s plan for Nashoba thirty years ­earlier. Nashoba had also been or­ga­nized to bring together black and white ­labor, and Wright’s plan had envisioned enslaved laborers earning their money for self-­purchase and transportation to Liberia or Haiti.59 The fact that Burritt and Harriet Beecher Stowe had come up with their plan was notable ­because although they ­were both vocal promoters of ­free produce, Stowe was also an impor­tant voice in the resurgent colonization movement. Their plan, which emphasized white ­free l­abor, came at a time when free-­soil activism was embracing an argument for white, yeoman farmer’s ­free ­labor (and land owner­ship) replacing enslaved ­labor’s dominance of westward expansion. With the “Texas question” in the 1830s came new plans for white American colonization of western territories. Benjamin Lundy, that prolific free-­produce advocate, sought out a land grant from the Mexican government in 1835. The purpose of his proj­ect was “Mexican Colonization and Sugar, Cotton, and Rice Cultivation by ­Free ­Labor,” for which he was granted land in Tamaulipas provided he find 250 colonists to accompany him. “This section of the country,” he argued, “is adapted to the culture of sugar, rice, corn, indigo, tobacco, and cotton; also the vari­ous culinary vegetables, generally produced in our m ­ iddle and southern states.” He chose Mexico to “test the advantages of f­ ree ­l abor, on this continent” ­because “it is impor­tant that such experiments be made as near as pos­ si­ble to our slave holding states, where ­those articles are produced; (both the laws, and the prejudices of the white inhabitants, forbid its being done, effectually, therein;) and the section of country that I have chosen, is the most suitable for this purpose.” Although this was a colonization settlement within another country, Tamaulipas bordered the Rio Grande and

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was contiguous to what would become, in 1836, the Republic of Texas, and ­later part of the brief Republic of the Rio Grande. But while Texas was being settled by slaveholders, Lundy hoped to create a free-­labor, free-­soil alternative. He “succeeded in making the necessary preliminary arrangements, for a resort to the ‘practical,’ final, and hitherto incontrovertible argument, against the perpetuation of slavery. This kind of ‘argument’ has overthrown that horrible system in the British dominions, and ­will, eventually, do it h­ ere, if promptly applied.”60 If they could only get their hands on cotton-­g rowing land, they could show that f­ ree ­labor would be better than enslaved l­abor. And eventually, prob­ably, that land would become part of the United States. As the ­Free Soil, and then the Republican, Party made use of this language, ethical-­commerce advocates found their arguments making their way into the mainstream. In 1852 George W. Taylor wrote to a business partner, “I am glad thou art a ­free soil. I also voted that ticket.”61 The glorification of the work ethic, democ­ratization, and small-­producer ideology was a power­ful strain of free-­labor ideology.62 It merged with the free-­soil argument when both groups found they shared a common language over the issue of Texas annexation. The Workingman’s Advocate declared support for Texas annexation on two conditions: “First, that the abolition of all slavery, white as well as black, s­ hall be provided for, by preventing all further sale of her public lands, and reserving them for a­ ctual settlers,” and “secondly, that no ­human being ­shall be born a slave in Texas ­a fter the annexation.”63 This highlights the extent to which the ideas of wage slavery had seeped into understandings of land and ­labor inequalities by the 1840s. Of course, ­those conditions w ­ ere not adhered to, which helped fuel concerns that blossomed fully during the turbulent 1850s that none of the newly acquired soil of the West would be open to ­free ­labor. ­Free soil and f­ree ­labor became increasingly popu­lar arguments against the “slave power,” with Jacksonian Demo­crats and recent immigrants joining abolitionists in promoting arguments that enslaved ­labor was backward, inefficient, corrupting, and detrimental to the vision of American equality, even as it was propped up by a representative system that gave extra power to slaveholding states through the Constitution’s three-­fifths clause that counted enslaved p ­ eople ­towards the congressionally represented populations of ­those states.64

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Although Taylor hoped that American manufacturers would benefit from his patronage, and that by directing the manufacturing of cotton goods himself, he could be sure he could respond to his customers’ tastes, he still required regular, large supplies of guaranteed free-­labor cotton. Economic nationalism extended beyond arguments that free-­labor production should support American manufacturers. In the United States, long pervaded by a my­thol­ogy of yeoman farmer democracy, land was key to rising above the permanent wage class, or the “mudsill” as it was more derogatorily put by southern po­liti­cal economist James Henry Hammond in 1858.65 For Taylor, East India, Egyptian, or Nigerian cotton could offer a temporary solution to a prob­lem of supply. But ultimately, the goal was to transform American agriculture into the productive, free-­labor engine of American growth. Neither Eu­ro­pean nor American abolitionists wanted to rely on American enslaved l­abor. Eu­ro­pe­ans turned to colonial sources of supply; Americans turned to their own white ­labor force. American free-­produce consumers wanted to help to further the goal of making all Americans into in­de­pen­dent producers, and to rise above the wages-­for-­consumer-­goods model proposed by the British. The prolific writings of commercial abolitionists, and especially the defenses of and advertisements for their retail schemes, ­were cementing the logic of f­ ree ­labor into understandings of American po­liti­cal economy, and bringing the nationalist understandings of American po­liti­cal economy into abolitionist commerce. Lundy wrote in an early editorial, “A vast proportion of the Agriculturalists of Mary­land are fully impressed with the idea that slave-­labor is unprofitable.” In a statement that would come to be associated with the rise of the Free-­Soilers, he continued, “Upon due reflection they ­w ill find that white laborers ­w ill not ­settle among them while slavery is tolerated, and such a marked distinction, as is now vis­i­ble, exists between ­those who ­labor and ­those who do not.”66 Reaching beyond the core abolition demographic, Lundy and ­others sought to make their arguments appealing by pointing out that slavery affected white ­labor relations as much as the productivity of black workers. ­Free soil was widely appealing, and worked in tandem with the increasing glorification of l­ abor by a broad spectrum of northern society.67 The argument that newly acquired western territories should be settled by white farmers resonated with free-­produce businesses searching for

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free-­labor cotton. In 1852 the ­Free Soil Party’s presidential platform declared, “That we inscribe on our banner ­Free Soil, ­Free Speech, ­Free ­Labor, and ­Free Men, and ­under it ­will fight on and fight ever ­until a triumphant victory s­ hall reward our exertions.” This was not a new argument, but a new articulation of an idea of in­de­pen­dent production that predated the founding of the nation. Benjamin Franklin had explained that “no man who can have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by his ­labor to subsist his f­ amily in plenty, is poor enough to be a manufacturer and work for a master.”68 Improvement, the pro­gress of individuals within society, and the development of the economy as a ­whole, relied on ­people’s capacity to work and accumulate capital that could be invested in new enterprises, from f­ amily farms to small businesses, to the elusive but tantalizing rags-­to-­riches dream. But as Eric Foner points out, “economic in­ de­pen­dence” was the ultimate goal, rather than excessive wealth. 69 Mono­poly, government kickbacks, and gross accumulation ­were anathema to the m ­ iddle class, which supported free-­labor and free-­soil arguments po­liti­cally, as well as through their purchases. The search for free-­labor supplies of cotton, in par­tic­u­lar, increasingly turned to white farmers, with decreasing emphasis placed on “freed slaves.” P ­ eople like Abraham Pennock and the founding members of the Philadelphia ­Free Produce Association sought products grown and manufactured in North Amer­i­ca in order to promote American production and save on costs. The F ­ ree Produce Society of Friends saw cotton as the most pressing free-­labor issue, arguing that b­ ecause cotton is “the principal basis of our foreign commerce, as well as the support of our most lucrative manufactures in the Northern States,” it made sense for their fund-­raising to be focused on sourcing, manufacturing, and distributing free-­labor cotton.70 In the constitution of the AFPA, Pennock and James Mott set out the connections explic­itly, in a statement of princi­ples worth quoting in full: It is known that in ­those States where Slavery still prevails ­there are many persons who deprecate its continuance, some of whom are engaged by their own and the ­labor of other hired Freemen in the production of articles similar to most of t­ hose usually the result of slave ­labor. To ­these f­ ree laborers it is believed that a market for the ready

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sale of their surplus produce would be an object of importance, tending, in some degree, to compensate for the difficulties to which they are subject from being surrounded by a Slave population. By affording proper encouragement to the ­free labourer he may be brought into a full and fair competition, on the same soil and in the same climate, in the production of the same articles, with the Slave. Reason and experience teach that this ­w ill clearly demonstrate a superiority of profit to the ­free laborer; and it is confidently believed that a diminution in the use of Slaves must soon follow. Satisfy the Slave-­holder that the net income from his estate would be increased by contorting his Slaves into ­free hired laborers, and an impor­tant advance w ­ ill be made in the ­great work of emancipation.71

Echoes of this hopefully ­imagined ­free southerner would, of course, linger through the opening months of the American Civil War. Free-­labor and free-­soil ideology worked on the premise that t­ here was a majority in f­ avor of abolition ­because the “slave power” had deprived them of their ability to make their way as in­de­pen­dent yeoman farmers, in a sort of echo of the arguments made by Macaulay and Cropper that Britons would have been East India sugar consumers if the West India mono­poly had not created market inefficiencies. Already by the early 1840s the AFPA sourced raw cotton from Phineas Nixon, Borden White, Thomas Kennedy, John Kennedy, and Nathan Hunt—­a ll white North Carolina planters, connected to Quaker networks, who did not use enslaved ­labor.72 Free-­cotton supplier Esther Nixon wrote to the AFPA in 1840, “The low price of cotton holds out no ­great inducement to raise [­free cotton] for profit but few are satisfied that it is a duty.” Still, she was hopeful that combining her moral duty with some fortuitous local circumstances, she would be able to help in the uplift of a recently arrived “poor young man who has been raised on a cotton plantation who has lately come into this neighbourhood with his ­family.”73 The F ­ ree Produce Society was excited to report that “in vari­ous parts of the Union t­ here are planters who cultivate cotton by the hands of freemen. Some, b­ ecause they are unwilling or unable to purchase slaves. Some planters prob­ably prefer f­ ree to slave ­labour b­ ecause of its superior cheapness.”74 Convinced that the cheapness argument would win the day, they presented another aspect of American free-­labor arguments. In the case of cotton agriculture, free-­produce

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proponents latched onto the myth of the yeoman farmer as the fundamental actor and beneficiary of American democracy. Farmers with ­little capital ­were unable to purchase slaves or the vast plantation acreage to support an enslaved workforce, especially as the cotton ­belt was increasingly being snapped up by speculators looking to make a fortune from leveraged cotton planters. The “average farmer” who could have contributed to Amer­i­ca’s cotton supply had been squeezed out of production. This tapped into Jean-­Baptiste Say’s argument that slavery degraded master and slave, and created a condition where “­labor can never be honourable, or even respectable, where it is executed by an inferior caste.”75 As the transition from legitimate-­commerce to free-­produce to free-­ labor to free-­soil ideology was completed in some abolitionist circles, the racial and international division of l­ abor acquired a moral legitimacy. ­Because of the existing Quaker networks that drove the AFPA’s subscription lists, and b­ ecause of the existence of wholly separate colored f­ree produce associations catering to their own consumers, the production and manufacturing questions in Amer­i­ca came to rest on f­ree white l­abor. A free-­cotton label certificate, produced by the Quaker North Carolina planter Nathan Hunt Jr., assured purchasers of Philadelphia merchant Morris Longstreth’s cotton products that they w ­ ere “exclusively, cotton raised by f­ ree white persons, or at least by ­free labourers, and that no cotton, raised by slaves, has been mixed therewith.”76 The emphasis on white ­labor could be tied back to worries about fraud—­white laborers w ­ ere definitely not slaves—­but it also attested to the emerging free-­soil arguments that would dominate popu­lar antislavery by 1860. Benjamin Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation republished a calculation by Horton Jefferson Howard of the impact a shift to ­free ­labor could have on national production. “To some, it may appear that the calculation is rather extravagant; but when we consider what has already been done in the business of producing tobacco by ­free ­labor, we are led to believe that the indolence and carelessness of slaves ­w ill more than counterbalance the advantages of the southern climate, and that the cultivation of cotton, in Ohio, by ­free hands, may successfully compete with the same business, performed by slaves, in our southern states.” Building on Smith’s arguments about the inefficiency of slave ­labor, this dedicated

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abolition journal promoted an image of “indolent” and “careless” slaves to argue for the benefits of free-­labor production. Lundy editorialized that “the support of invention and improvement, which is so generally fostered by the freemen of the north, while it is discountenanced and discouraged by the slaveholders of the south” was crucial “not only in the construction of roads and canals, but in all the minutiae of business.” In other words, slavery was just bad business.77 The extracted paragraph by Horton Jefferson Howard extolled the virtues of Ohio free-­labor cotton. “We have recently seen a specimen of cotton, raised by John Smith, of Goshen Township, Belmont County, which, as far as we are able to judge, is of the first quality.” Although Quaker consumers of ­free produce in Britain, like the Sturges and Gilletts, bought American cotton “made by escaped slaves,” the majority of the free-­produce experiments taking place in the United States—in places like Mississippi, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and North Carolina—­used ­free white ­labor. Drawing on the rhe­toric of the American yeoman farmer ideal, Howard wrote, “The citizens of Ohio, when they ascertain a ­thing is practicable, have a fashion of ­doing instead of talking about it. And we give our southern brethren fair warning, that our citizens ­will shortly show them the Second Epistle to raising Tobacco! We have proved that tobacco raised by that curse of our national escutcheon, slave ­labor, cannot compete with the l­ abor of freemen. neither can it in the raising of cotton!!!”78 The argument that slave ­labor “cannot compete with the ­labor of freemen” was backed up with a lot of data—­often spurious—­reprinted from British tracts like ­those published by Macaulay and Cropper. The Western Luminary also published “An Essay on The Comparative Value of F ­ ree and Slave L ­ abor,” which calculated that a slave cost $74 per year, including $24 interest on purchase, $20 to replace capital, $15 for clothing, $5 in taxes, medical attendance and other expenses, and $10 as a proportion of overseers’ wages. In contrast, “the ordinary wages of freemen in upper ­Virginia are from $60 to $75 per ann with board. It seems then that a slave costs as much as a ­free labourer, and if he does three fourths as much work, his employer loses 15 to 20 dollars per annum by him.”79 The argument that slavery produced inefficient work by poorly incentivizing enslaved laborers was a constant, though questionable, refrain.

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A subscriber from North Carolina wrote to Lundy, sending $5 and adding, “Our state w ­ ill not flourish u­ nless our policy s­ hall become favorable to internal improvements, domestic industry, and to encourage manufactures, of which we have the materials in abundance.” Lundy editorialized, “This is certainly true. No state is better conditioned by nature for t­ hese t­ hings than North Carolina; but like V ­ irginia, she has long been losing the very cream of her population, the f­ree white laboring classes, by emigration, b­ ecause of her mistaken policy in neglecting, if not refusing, to use her ­water power, and the rich agricultural and mineral productions, for the supply of her own wants.”80 T ­ hese early editorials pieced together from reprinted articles, book reviews, and speeches, as well as Lundy’s own work with the free-­produce movement, helped form abolitionist opinion with regard to the economic benefits of antislavery to the country, and the wider appeals that the movement could make to the broadest pos­si­ble audience. The F ­ ree Produce Society of Friends, of which Taylor was a secretary, met in January 1846, and a letter from a merchant in Memphis, Tennessee, was read aloud. “As regards f­ ree ­labour cotton,” the merchant wrote, “we have no sort of difficulty in buying it in almost any reasonable quantity. About one fifth of the cotton brought to this market from north Mississippi is of that kind and always of good quality.” Confirming the suspicions of the committee about the incentives and productivity of enslaved ­labor, the merchant explained, “White p ­ eople who plant seldom make more than from five to twenty bales, and h­ andle it with more care than the large planters (who trust to their slaves) and generally get it out of the fields ­earlier.” The merchant promised, “We pay no more for f­ree l­abor cotton than any other and should your friends be induced to ­favor me with an order for a constant supply they may rely upon my honor that e­ very bale s­ hall be strictly ‘­free ­labor’ and each invoice s­ hall be sworn to before a magistrate and the name and residence of each grower be given. Such ­orders may be given me u­ nder limit using the Liverpool standard of quality.”81 George W. Taylor and the wider American ­Free Produce movement came to rely on one man in par­tic­u­lar in their search for white free-­labor cotton: Nathan Thomas. Thomas traveled the South for Taylor and the Association, sourcing small batches of cotton grown by white farmers

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without enslaved ­labor. In 1845 he sourced sixty-­three bales from fifteen dif­fer­ent producers. Ginning the cotton, which took place before it was shipped, added “a small additional expense for bailing, in order to make it entirely clear from Slave ­labor.” He managed this b­ ecause “a part we got white men to ­handle entirely by renting gins and other part was ginned through the Christmas Holladays when the slaves got the entire proffit and the rest we have had to pay the slaves (with the concent of their claimants) for ther servises over and above the usual toll for ginning according to the number of them engaged in it as the gins are all owned by the large planters, we have had to seek the most favourable opportunities for having it put up right, which makes by far the greatest difficulty in obtaining ­free cotton.”82 Once again, the prob­lem of ensuring an ethically guaranteed supply reared its head. Wages, for Thomas, w ­ ere one way around the prob­lem.

Wage Slavery and Peasant Freedom Despite reliance on proof of wages as a means of establishing a slave-­free supply chain, “wage slavery” itself emerged as a regular economic villain in the 1830s in both Britain and Amer­i­ca.83 Eric Foner has argued that “many Americans experienced the expansion of capitalism not as an enhancement of the power to shape their world, but as a loss of control over their own lives.”84 The emergence of arguments against “wage slavery” ­were at least partially the result of abolitionist campaigning. Amy Dru Stanley has written, “A wealth of studies have demonstrated how antislavery itself, by establishing the slave as the absolute symbol of un-­ freedom, thereby vindicated the freedoms of wage laborers vested with formal rights. So too, it has been argued, did the prerogatives (‘wages’) of whiteness elevate ostensibly unfree proletarians far above the status of black chattels.”85 ­There was a growing fear, from the 1830s onward, that the degredations of slavery ­were creeping into other aspects of American society through physical and l­ egal expansion, as well as through the “wage slavery” that, many worried, came along with the industrial changes emerging in the North’s urban centers.86 This was echoed across the North Atlantic: at the same time that legitimate-­commerce proponents ­were justifying “domestic” slavery in African contexts by narrowing the

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definition of slavery, the definition was being expanded by critics of waged ­labor conditions in industrializing countries. In large part this reflected, as Jonathan Glickstein has argued, the overlapping arguments about the ­causes of poverty that informed both approaches to African ­labor and issues of poor relief in industrial cities. The familiar argument that consumerism would operate as a “positive incentive” to a work ethic echoed in both discourses.87 American activists felt the need to respond to proslavery arguments that seized on the radical critique of wage slavery to cast the condition of the laboring classes of the world as “fearful” b­ ecause industrialists w ­ ere not responsible for the well-­being of their workers, or, in fact, their longevity.88 This case was built on the same economic logic that anti-­slave-­ trade activists had used to claim that the continued flow of new slaves into the West Indies was allowing slave ­owners to “consume” them (their ­labor) without paying any attention to ensuring their welfare, in order to profit from their initial investment. Slaves ­were too cheap and ready, and so slaveholders could squeeze as much ­labor as pos­si­ble out of them for as ­little input as pos­si­ble. Cutting off more supplies of slaves would vastly improve the conditions ­under which enslaved laborers operated. By this same logic, proslavery polemics in the 1840s and 1850s argued that the wages for l­abor ­were too cheap in the manufacturing districts of the US North, but with nowhere e­ lse to turn, and fierce competition from a large immigrant l­abor supply, workers ­were more and more enslaved to their employers, without any reciprocated benefits. 89 Proslavery arguments about wage slavery w ­ ere intended to point out abolitionists’ hy­poc­risy, but also to equate the two systems in an attempt to prevent aggrieved factory workers from sympathizing with the enslaved. Fears of wage slavery and de­pen­dency characterized French responses to British antislavery’s new global division of ­labor as well. Despite the failure of French plans for Senegalese cotton and sugar plantations by 1831, sugar continued to feature in French abolition plans in this period. As with British debates, the role of tariffs was crucial to framing the free-­ labor argument. The French agronomist and sugar-­beet cultivator, Mathieu de Dombasle, worried that “the inevitable abolition of slavery in the Amer­i­cas, propounded by Britain’s cynical efforts to increase the profitability of its Indian possessions, would further reduce the supply of Amer-

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ican sugar and make France dependent upon British and Dutch importations from their Asian colonies.”90 The French debate in the early 1840s about protecting their sugar-­producing colonies in Africa and the Ca­rib­ bean with tariffs mirrored the British deliberations. But the country’s most influential po­liti­cal economists regularly pointed to the deep inequalities in Britain, and the poor conditions of waged laborers ­there, to argue for a national rather than imperial approach to both agriculture and industry that emphasized l­abor value over consumer value—­that is, making improvements in the standard of living by raising wages rather than by lowering the cost of goods. Sugar beets grown in France, they reasoned, would benefit France more than sugar cane grown in French colonies ­because it would provide employment for French laborers. Both French and American economic thought was concerned that the f­ ree trade promoted by British liberals would benefit Britain by encouraging French and American de­pen­dency on British manufactures.91 Indigenizing production was essential to national economic in­de­pen­dence. But avoiding the dependent condition that had emerged among the laboring classes in Britain was equally impor­tant. Access to land—­and the myth of agricultural self-­sufficiency—­provided a solution to that prob­lem. Access to land in the North American West could help prevent in the United States the degradation associated with the industrial working classes of Britain. By converting their factory wages into savings that could be used to purchase land, and in­de­pen­dence, white men in Amer­i­ca w ­ ere assured of the temporary nature of their l­abor conditions, and a condition that was temporary, it was argued, could not be slavery.92 The contradictions inherent in what Ian McGuire refers to as “mainstream ­free laborism” could only “reconfigure rather than eradicate hierarchies of race and class.”93 The British encountered this prob­lem as they sought to justify global slavery and indenture as a means of “improving” the conditions of African and Asian populations by allegedly turning them into productive consumers. But unlike ­those African and Asian populations, the white male wage workers of the United States ­were increasingly represented in the halls of power. As the franchise expanded, po­liti­cal power could be added to commercial power, and so white men—­unlike ­women and most African Americans—­could exercise po­liti­cal power through voting, rather than merely purchasing. And the free-­produce movement

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adapted its arguments to address the critiques offered by both eco­nom­ ically radical and proslavery publications’ invocations of the wage slavery prob­lem facing white northern men. Land access and mobility w ­ ere strategies that occupied nationalist po­ liti­cal economy in the United States and France, but they ­were not ­limited to ­those countries. The possibility of migration in both the United States and West Africa also held the same potential for smallholding as a form of economic in­de­pen­dence. Mi­grants from the overpopulated Futa Jallon plateau spread out through the region to its northwest—­a region controlled by the kingdom of Kaabu—­looking for opportunities to establish themselves in groundnut cultivation, or to find secure supplies of salt and pasture for livestock rearing. In the Siin region of Senegal, archaeological evidence shows that the Serer developed a dispersed pattern of village settlement to grow groundnuts, participating in the wider trend—­a sense that land would solve the prob­lem of unequal l­ abor relations.94 The need for mi­grant ­labor in the production of groundnuts in Senegal allowed slaves to emancipate themselves, moving far from their ­owners and working as f­ree laborers u­ ntil they accumulated enough wealth to set up their own h­ ouse­holds.95 As Boubacar Barry argues, “They ­were drawn ­there by the growth of peanut farming, which, while using a ­g reat deal of slave ­labor, also provided employment for hired seasonal workers.”96 This suggests that legitimate commerce ultimately did provide opportunities for the some of the formerly enslaved workers of West Africa. Even for t­ hose who stayed put a­ fter emancipation, this decision could be influenced by access to land, as Benedetta Rossi writes of the mi­grants of slave descent in Ader, Niger, on the northern border of the Sokoto Caliphate: “If they could not access property in their regions of migration, they could at least retain their recently acquired lands in Ader and thereby avoid turning into proletarians in other parts of West Africa, a condition that would have been reminiscent of their erstwhile disenfranchisement as slaves.”97 Migration and economic change through the mid-­nineteenth ­century gave rise to new West African religious leaders who challenged the state power of the old order with revolutionary visions of the state. As discussed in Chapters 2 and 5, Al Hajj Umar Tal waged a war that pitted jihadis against French-­backed Wolof states. But he was not alone in challenging

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the ­union of Eu­ro­pean and African commercial interest, nor was he the only revolutionary who drew in mi­grants hoping to f­ ree themselves from the predations of both colonial and African states.98 ­These proliferating religious and po­liti­cal wars then caused more migration and increasing competition for productive land. When the marabout wars erupted in the Saloum Delta, ­people fled to the Gambia River, where Governor D’Arcy granted “the starving refugees from the Salum country” land in Fitzgerald Town, frustrating “the natives of Albreda” who contested his right to cede that land.99 Amadou Bamba, the marabout who founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883, offered a dif­fer­ent route to challenge the encroachment of the French and British states, emphasizing pacifism as well as industrious agricultural ­labor.100 Throughout Senegal and the Western Soudan, his Mouride brotherhood r­ ose in prominence, gathering followers and establishing new commercial agrarian colonies.101 Mourides would work for the brotherhood for ten years, growing groundnuts that built up and supported the community, and a­ fter that period they would receive land of their own but continue to contribute part of their crop to the community via their marabouts.102 Praising the industriousness of the Mourides, even as they arrested and exiled Bamba, the French noted that their groundnut fields “are im­mense and magnificent” and, u­ nder the influence of the marabouts, “they stay in their fields ­until eleven ­o’clock in the eve­ning, then go to pray at the mosque.”103 Association with the Mouridiyya was a way for individuals to assert moral and economic autonomy from the Wolof aristocrats in their alliance with the French, even as it conferred new economic, po­liti­cal, and moral authority to the marabouts. Lisa Lindsay writes of Yorubaland (southern Nigeria) in the period of transition to wage ­labor at the end of the nineteenth ­century, “Young men generally took advantage of agricultural commercialization and the expansion of wage l­abor to become increasingly autonomous from their elders.”104 For ­these young men, as for factory workers in Amer­i­ca’s eastern cities, working in wage l­ abor, as a temporary condition, could allow them to save enough money to get married, buy land of their own, and set themselves up as “big men.” Land meant in­de­pen­dence. Liberian colonists from Amer­i­ca like Jacob Gibson and George Ellis McDonogh could declare themselves pleased with “five acre lots” b­ ecause that land offered

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possibilities for self-­sufficiency in “potatoes, cassadoes, arrow root, corn.”105 The settlers in Freetown, who had parcels of agricultural land beyond the town limits, “value their allotments, and cling to them, with as much tenacity as an Irish Peasant to his ‘Spot of Land.’ ”106 Once established, smallholders in Africa, the Ca­rib­bean, and the United States and Eu­rope ­were not likely to make vast fortunes in plantation-­style commodity production. But their participation in “peasant agriculture” did not mean they ­were unable to participate in global trade or ­were enacting a timeless, traditional way of living. The shift from large scale, state-­ backed agricultural proj­ects for legitimate produce to a system that rewarded smallholders at l­ ittle to no investment on the part of the state was pos­si­ble in part ­because of the emerging liberal po­liti­cal economy that abolitionist businessmen and ­women had seized on in making their arguments for ethical capitalism.107 Land promised freedom to work and to consume industriously, with dignity. De­pen­dency on the “frivolous materiality” of the consumer revolution, de­pen­dency on the ­labor of ­others, and de­pen­dency on the wages of laboring for another ­were all interlocking challenges that by the mid-­ nineteenth ­century ­were part of a wider argument about citizenship, belonging, in­de­pen­dence, and masculinity. Among American free-­soilers, the embrace of masculine equality and in­de­pen­dence echoed the concerns of feminization that had been pre­sent in the eighteenth-­century debates about luxury. The ideological construction of slavery (de­pen­dency) and of its opposite, f­ ree l­ abor, w ­ ere dif­fer­ent in settings where the availability of land and the relative scarcity of ­labor made economic in­de­pen­dence and self-­sufficiency a potent po­liti­cal trope. The ability to migrate and establish a new h­ ouse­hold was a form of success recognizable to p ­ eople around the Atlantic World in the nineteenth c­ entury. But ­whether migration and the establishment of in­de­pen­dent landholding generated po­liti­cal power, or the recognition of fundamental equality among diverse p ­ eoples, or the success of a par­tic­u ­lar ethnic community, was more contested. “Peasant” or “yeoman” categories of cash crop producer ­were ideologically framed as in­de­pen­dent of the power of slave ­owners, landlords, and states. As consumers, ­these laborers represented the ideal of industrious, household-­level production and promised the kinds of growth that had

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accompanied the e­ arlier consumer revolution. As exemplars of a certain kind of abolitionist hope for emancipation, in places like Ghana and Senegambia, peasant smallholders exceeded abolitionists’ wildest expectations. But as national aggregators of wealth, smallholders w ­ ere less satisfactory, ­because theirs ­were not large, capital-­intensive investments. In fact, the kinds of economic growth promised by both West African and western US smallholder agriculture w ­ ere extensive rather than intensive: bringing new lands into production rather than radically transforming efficiencies. And for commercial middlemen and tariff-­oriented states, the in­de­pen­dence of ­these producers could be frustrating, as Mill and Carlyle both found in the case of the British West Indies.108 Self-­sufficiency could be framed as a “backward” step in the formation of cap­i­tal­ist modernity even as it was embraced by a wide range of Atlantic actors for the freedoms it promised, b­ ecause it undermined the po­liti­cal and economic elites—­ whether Ca­rib­bean or West African—­who had been the target of other commercial abolitionist policies aimed at maintaining the status quo. In the United States, the Republican Party won the election of 1860 on the back of a campaign that had incorporated arguments about ­free ­labor, ­free white male ­labor, colonizationism, and f­ ree soil that had been mixing in American po­liti­cal discussions for de­cades. It was given additional power as the po­liti­cal repre­sen­ta­tion of white men expanded and farmers on the rural frontier ­were incorporated as citizens. ­After the Civil War, white yeoman cotton farming expanded from 17 ­percent to 44 ­percent of all US cotton production as prices dropped for cotton-­growing land.109 The search for consumers and producers of free-­produce goods had helped abolitionists articulate specific arguments about the ethical American economy and the beneficiaries who would win from abolition. In Amer­i­ca, black laborers, producers, and consumers fit awkwardly into the vision of national economic welfare for white ethical-­commerce advocates. In West Africa, where “peasant” agriculture had the possibility to transform land–­labor relations, the contest among proposed beneficiaries of the transition to legitimate commerce intensified. Land was the answer to the search for freedom, in West Africa and in Amer­i­ca, but as a result, control of migration to the productive hinterlands of the global economy became a fundamental po­l iti­cal priority of mid-­n ineteenth c­ entury Atlantic nation-­states. President Abraham Lincoln’s support for colonization

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proj­ects for former slaves drew criticism from black and white abolitionists, but was not inconsistent with the free-­soil and free-­labor vision set out by abolitionist businessmen like George W. Taylor.110

taylor’s search for cotton produced by white yeoman farmers and his support of Liberian colonization w ­ ere both part of the same emerging logic of ethical consumption in the 1850s and 1860s. Consuming ethically was more complicated than simply switching from goods produced by enslaved l­abor to goods produced by f­ ree l­abor; once the economic argument had been made that consuming goods made by enslaved l­abor was endorsing them or providing incentive for their production, it became clear, if it ­wasn’t already, that the act of purchasing was always a po­liti­cal act. No longer could conscientious consumers make purchases mindlessly. They had to worry about supply chains and guarantees, they had to think about what their money was supporting. And they had to make decisions. If they bought a bag whose proceeds went to supporting recently freed slaves, was that the same value, ethically, as buying cotton produced by white, American f­ree ­labor? Did buying Haitian coffee mean the same t­ hing in the immediate aftermath of the Haitian Revolution as it did ­under President Boyer? Did purchasing Liberian coffee support the black diaspora, or did it support efforts to relocate Amer­i­ca’s black population? Was it more impor­ tant to support American manufacturers or American farmers? Arguments about cotton supplies had shifted British arguments about what constituted ethical f­ ree l­ abor “at home” versus f­ ree ­labor “abroad.” But thinking about questions of agricultural l­abor in the United States, where cotton was a domestic product, aligned in slightly dif­fer­ent ways with the racialized arguments emerging around indentured l­ abor and domestic African slavery. White settler colonialism and American westward expansion ­were overlapping ideologies of land appropriation and cultivation, and similar ideas of “white only” territory ­were familiar in the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury in Algeria, Australia, Canada, and South Africa, where the violent destruction of indigenous ­peoples’ communities, cultures, and economies allowed for expanded cash crop production.111

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But as cash crop production encouraged the migration of former slaves away from masters and the erosion of po­liti­cal power among African slave-­ trading polities, legitimate-­commerce proponents began to worry about how to maintain trading ties and a stable consumer market in the face of shifting po­liti­cal fortunes for their allies. They encouraged a view that the most reasonable course, one in the consumer’s best interest, was to support traditional authorities and trading partners and encourage them to “train” their enslaved and formerly enslaved laborers. In­equality was assumed to be a natu­ral part of the world order. Indenture and domestic slavery ­were justified by ethical capitalism. African colonization and free-­ soilerism worked alongside ­free produce ­because they articulated a similar view of in­equality, in which distance ameliorated in­equality by creating localized, relative equality. Americans could participate in the same arguments about the global division of ­labor as Eu­ro­pean colonialists, and would do so increasingly in the era ­after the American Civil War.112 But this ­wasn’t a new, postwar development. It had roots in the imagination of global and domestic production that arose with abolitionists’ attempts to appeal to as wide a range as pos­si­ble of consumers, merchants, and producers to promote an economic argument against slavery. Ethical commerce did not provide an answer to the questions of who should benefit from emancipation, but the questions themselves ­were influential in shaping the arguments that came to a head with the American Civil War. Working in co­ali­tion with t­ hese dif­fer­ent voices brought the economic arguments against slavery into the mainstream in an incredibly power­ful way. As an aggrieved writer noted in DeBow’s Review, New Orleans’s proslavery agricultural and industrial newspaper, “Po­liti­cal economists have, for the most part [since the eigh­teenth ­century], been constantly tending, with a stronger and stronger bias, against slavery.”113 But “positive purchasing” also made it clear that the variety of commercial solutions to the prob­lem of slavery did not all point to the same result, and the economic beneficiaries of a more moral consumerism ­were by no means guaranteed to be the enslaved, in Africa or in Amer­i­ca.

 Epilogue

Global Social Responsibility

I

n 1884, four years before Brazil became the last New World power to abolish slavery and a year before the Berlin Conference would be credited with starting the Scramble for Africa, the Lever b­ rothers, William and James Darcy, launched Sunlight Soap. The soap used palm oil rather than animal fats, which allowed it to work well in both hot and cold ­water, and it was marketed as being gentle on clothes and skin. Lever ­Brothers innovated in more than just their product, though. They created new advertising campaigns and famously, like their contemporaries Cadbury and Ford, developed a model village to h­ ouse their workers. Port Sunlight, Lever ­Brothers’s model village in Cheshire, ­England, was an exercise in late Victorian corporate paternalism. William Lever planned it in response to critiques of industrial ­labor conditions and the demeaning effects of wage ­labor. Workers w ­ ere paid a living wage, and they rented neat f­amily homes in the town. T ­ here w ­ ere ­music socie­ties, an art gallery, schools, churches, and temperance socie­ties. Lever also developed a profit-­sharing model, which reinvested profits to improve the village. The conditions ­were genuinely much better than in other factories in the region. And Lever and other corporate paternalists w ­ ere impor­ tant leaders in developing cap­i­tal­ist responses to calls for a socialist welfare state. Their models of corporate social responsibility can be seen as 238

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the logic of f­ ree ­labor coming full circle, as the argument for the cheapness of f­ ree ­labor ran its course. But something more than that was at work in Port Sunlight. By thinking about consumption and production together, about consumers as producers and producers as consumers, Lever carried into the late nineteenth and early twentieth ­century many of the arguments of the ­earlier generations of ethical-­commerce proponents. He wanted to make cheap manufactured goods, using British l­ abor and (government-­assisted) overseas commodities. He wanted ­those goods to be consumed globally, by ­people who could afford them ­because they earned a wage. And he believed in the improving nature of wages on ­people’s moral life. His factory in Port Sunlight was a good example, but so, he believed, was the transformative power of legitimate commerce, which had created a cheap supply of the product at the heart of his soap empire. Palm oil, which had peppered the accounts of legitimate traders like Brown & Ives since the 1810s, and had been one of the two government-­ contracted staples in Sierra Leone, became the dominant West African export by midcentury. The Liberated African Department in Sierra Leone had tendered for 5,000 gallons of palm oil at a time to feed newly arriving recaptive slaves.1 Between 1820 and 1825, the Department collected 132,531 gallons of palm oil from merchants in Freetown, who accepted it as payment for debts accrued in the purchase of goods sold at their stores. By 1830, the colony was collecting enough palm oil to export what ­wasn’t used by the settlers. Zachary Macaulay’s son, Henry, explained how Macaulay & Babington’s store in Freetown worked: “Generally speaking, except Gold and Ivory, which we get by Trade, we get all our African Produce from our debtors, and it consists principally of ­Cattle, Rice, and Palm Oil. The ­Cattle are sold as soon as we get them. The Rice is chiefly consumed at Macorrie, which uses about a Ton a Week . . . ​Oil is collected slowly and shipped when ­there is a sufficient quantity of it.”2 For Brown & Ives, by 1819, palm oil (which h­ adn’t been included in 1817 price lists) was getting 13 to 14 cents per gallon, and the import duty had dis­appeared.3 Just a few months a­ fter their schooner Peacock returned to Rhode Island, William Alston, one of Brown & Ives’s commission agents in Boston, wrote to the firm in 1818 asking, “Have you any more palm oil on hand? The quantity in selling hands is now small and am of opinion

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from the inquiries made about it recently it is getting more in use & ­will be a regular article with our Soap and Candle manufacture. The quotation at 10c in small quantities is I think a fair one.” 4 A few months ­later Allston tried again, alerting the com­pany that t­ here was “very ­little Palm oil in the hands of importers. That article is getting daily in f­avor with our Soap Manufacturers, which are numerous and extend far in this and New Hampshire. S ­ hall give the next lot consigned me a good long try.”5 By 1860, palm oil, palm kernels, and groundnuts accounted for three-­ quarters of Africa’s exports to the Atlantic by value, their value estimated to be “equal to the slave trade at its peak.”6 African imports from the Atlantic had jumped from £10.6 million in the 1820s to £41.3 million by the 1860s, much of it financed by debt.7 The trade in both palm products and groundnuts was largely driven by African producers and middlemen, who turned to the production of t­ hese goods on “new” lands. Ralph Austen notes, “In the northern Nigerian case, it confounded British hopes that the colony might become a major supplier of raw cotton to Lancashire.”8 Export traders received financing from Eu­ro­pean h­ ouses like Baring ­Brothers, who recognized the potential value of palm oil as an industrial lubricant and invested accordingly.9 Rising prices for the product, as well as declining prices for manufactured goods imported into West Africa, saw living standards rise in coastal communities, fi­nally offsetting the effects of the abolition of the slave trade on places like the Niger Delta and around Ouidah, the sources of the majority of British palm oil.10 But rising prices for the product also encouraged competition. By the time William Lever began searching for palm oil supplies, in an attempt to vertically integrate his production, Africa’s palm oil was in competition with Rus­sian, Malaysian, and Indonesian producers, and cocoa had become the new hot commodity for West African agriculture.11 Lever, who had built an ethical brand that emphasized co-­ownership, good wages, and clean living, turned for his palm oil to the Belgian Congo, which had been at the epicenter of the early twentieth ­century’s largest humanitarian campaign. U ­ nder the personal rule of Belgium’s king, Leopold II, the ­people of the Congo had been forced into terrible ­labor conditions in order to extract the high-­value rubber and other goods Leopold used to transform Belgium into a wealthy imperial state. But brutal l­abor conditions and reports of atrocities committed by his police force became the focus

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of the Congo Reform Association. This successful international campaign brought together a variety of missionaries, businessmen, government officials, and committed humanitarians who challenged the nature of Leopold’s rule, but not necessarily the nature of colonial capitalism itself. Once control of the colony had been transferred from Leopold to the Belgian government, the newly styled Belgian Congo was a perfect location for Lever to find incredibly cheap ­labor and to apply his responsible corporate image to an existing humanitarian brand.12 Lever’s model for his Congolese plantations differed from the model for his En­glish factory village. Workers ­were paid a reasonable local wage, but they w ­ ere not ­housed, nor ­were they made “co-­partners” like the workers in ­England. Lever collaborated with missionaries, who provided (Christian) education, and as part of his contract with the Belgians, he invested in some welfare provisions like schools and hospitals. For Lever, the mark of his success in this venture was the perceived rise in civilization among his plantation workers, who could use their wages to buy cheap consumer goods, discounted at “20 ­percent less than ­those charged by the merchants in town.”13 Lever’s corporate model explic­itly made reference to his Christian values, and his emphasis in ­England as well as in Africa on Christian education should be no surprise.14 But he also had commercial pre­ce­dents to draw on for his approaches to ethical capitalism. And the consumers of his products did too. The question of wage l­abor’s “value,” the civilizing nature of l­abor and consumption, the relationships between cap­i­ tal­ist, producer, and consumer, the role of brand identity, and the relationship between national welfare and global consumption had all been addressed, even if they ­hadn’t been resolved, by the men and ­women who participated in abolitionism’s ethical commerce experiments. Resolving the contradictions of ethical capitalism was, and is, nearly impossible. One of the major impediments is the relationship between the consumer and the producer, as the abolitionists discovered, but as Lever and o­ thers who took up their legacy learned too. Who bears moral responsibility within capitalism: the producer or the consumer (or both)? Producers needed to be incentivized by consumers—­supply and demand was the foundation of their understanding of capitalism. But ­because consumers w ­ ere also producers of some sort in their own right, ­whether as

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factory workers or farmers, cap­i­tal­ists or merchants, shop­keep­ers or servants, they w ­ ere always searching for ways to improve their standard of living by earning more and consuming more cheaply. Lever knew this, explic­itly marketing Sunlight Soap as requiring “less ­labor.” Self-­interest was not wiped out by ethical considerations; throughout the movement, it was the hope of moral commerce proponents that self-­interest could yield ethical results. Some consumers w ­ ere willing to pay a small premium for ethically produced goods, but their ability to pay that premium depended on a global division of ­labor that generally kept prices low for consumers, and therefore low for producers. This was largely pos­si­ble ­because ­either colonies or free-­trade arrangements allowed ­people to take advantage of differences in standards of living, while still making an argument that the slight premium for an ethical product was d ­ oing some good. A perfectly ethical supply chain seemed impossible, which meant that decisions needed to be made about who would benefit, how much, and in what ways. International commerce, in par­tic­u­lar, gave rise to discrepancies in how the moral value of a good was mea­sured. Assumptions about the nature of African economies led abolitionists to justify certain forms of trade, trading practices, and production practices as marginally beneficial. But equally, attempts to promote the “brand” of ethical produce led to somewhat suspect business practices, encouraging monopsony in West Africa, using government contracts, and accessing networks of government influence to promote ethical businesses and change tariff policies. By arguing that it could be profitable and by throwing their own commercial weight ­behind it, abolitionists who promoted commercial solutions tried to convince producers they would profit from the abolition of the slave trade and the introduction of f­ ree l­ abor. They asserted that competition in a f­ ree market would prove that the practice of using enslaved ­labor was not only morally abhorrent but also uneco­nom­ical. Between price premiums, market segmentation, and abolitionism as fashion, some merchants found ethical commerce profitable. On the other hand, ­there w ­ ere costs associated with sourcing, ethical compliance, and market reach that may have deterred some. Profit was not controversial, but it was a prob­lem. Of course, shop­keep­ers, middlemen, and end-­producers needed to profit from this system, other­wise they would

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not respond to the incentives provided by the consumers. But within this demand-­led supply chain, ­there was room for fraud, corruption, and deceit, made pos­si­ble by the fact that a demand for free-­produce goods generated a price premium. Everyday commercial decisions in the Atlantic—­what to buy, who to buy from, how much to buy, and what to pay—­influenced abolitionists’ arguments about how commerce should take place. Not all abolitionists ­were interested in free-­labor produce or legitimate commerce. Many radical abolitionists eschewed economic solutions to what they construed to be a po­liti­cal and moral prob­lem. But for o­ thers, the slave trade and slavery ­were commercial prob­lems, caused by commodification of ­people resulting from demand, which originated with the consumer. Once they saw the connection between consumer demand and slave production, they could not unsee it. T ­ hese w ­ ere not exceptional businesses. They ­were businesses trying to make money, reach consumers, and get the best deals from producers. But in a rapidly changing global economy, abolitionist businesses tried to convince consumers to become capitalism’s moral compass. West Africa was the site for a lot of this experimentation in commercial abolitionism, and for shaping ideas about global trade, l­ abor relations, and land use. But West Africans w ­ ere also engaging in their own arguments about the ethics of Atlantic trade and shaping new regimes to reflect shifting ideas of po­liti­cal economy. From boycotting Atlantic slave trading to constructing new ideologically oriented states, from focusing increasingly on the production of primary commodities by enslaved l­ abor to the migration and settlement of new “peasant” farming communities, the changes in West African po­liti­cal economy reflect shared, Atlantic-­ wide trends that stretch deep into the nineteenth ­century. Some of this was catalyzed by ethical commerce itself; some was the result of localized phenomena or regional po­liti­cal developments. Looking at ­these West African developments together with the wider Atlantic trends, however, helps to show both how intercultural trade with the region s­ haped ethical trade and how t­ hose trading relationships effected arguments about who could benefit from commerce, and how. Palm oil’s rise to replace the slave trade illustrates nicely the moving goalpost of ethical commerce. What was once the legitimate-­commerce

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product all abolitionists had looked to as the savior of the African continent—­palm oil—is now an object of derision, boycotted by many ­because the establishment of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia has been extremely destructive of the natu­ral environment. Nineteenth-­century activists ­were almost never concerned with the global environmental impact of capitalism, and although many lamented the loss of the countryside to industrial development and urbanization, agriculture was seen as the epitome of civilization, as was clear from abolitionist fantasies of model farms and West African plantations. Nevertheless, many of the ways t­ hese actors considered the externalities of capitalism continue to echo in our organic, local, rainforest alliance, non-­GMO, and sustainably sourced labeling and marketing. Lever’s contemporaries, the Quaker Cadbury’s, have negotiated t­ hese same dilemmas for over one hundred years.15 The consumer boycotts and ­free produce movement have made their way into popu­lar memory of the abolition movements, particularly as it becomes clear that the transatlantic abolition movements helped to create so many of the social justice campaign ideas used to this day. Fair trade ­didn’t just spring out of nowhere.16 The moral responsibility placed on consumers to incentivize producers, businesses, and cap­i­tal­ists was fundamental to the abolitionist conception of “just and honorable” commerce.17 But for contemporaries, reconceptualizing the role of the consumer had its corollary in a reimagining of the role of the producer and the hierarchies of production. Beyond that, it involved reimagining the producers’ locations and ethnicities. The age of abolition was also the age of the rise of industrial capitalism and an era of demo­cratic revolutions, so it should be no surprise that this was a time when ­people w ­ ere exploring new ways of thinking about the relationships between producers and consumers, between colonies and metropoles, between laborers and cap­i­tal­ists, and between personal and national economies. As the global economy changed, economic thinkers, businesspeople, and consumers reflected on questions of l­ abor, global interconnection, and morality. In attempting to make international commerce, especially between West Africa and the Atlantic World, more just and ethical in the wake of the crises over the slave trade in the late eigh­teenth ­century, abolitionist

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businessmen and ­women ­were forced to confront the contradictions inherent in their consumer arguments. In vari­ous places around the Atlantic World, commercial responses to the overcommodification and de­pen­ dency of the eigh­teenth c­ entury emerged out of a desire to use consumer power as po­liti­cal power. But as commercial realities began to affect the arguments and strategies of abolitionist businesses, as they negotiated with the practicalities and ethical frameworks of West African commerce, lobbied governments for tariff reform, set up new commodity colonies, or established new approaches to credit and debt, businesspeople refined and narrowed their arguments about the specific benefits and beneficiaries of ethical commerce. Questions of l­ abor, supply chains, and consistency ­were at the heart of arguments for ethical capitalism. Commercially minded abolitionists attempted to reimagine a global capitalism that would benefit every­one. ­T here was no easy answer to “whose l­abor” would replace enslaved ­labor. ­There was no ready solution to ensure a perfectly ethical supply chain. And although, theoretically, buying only free-­labor goods was the most consistent way to combat slave ­labor, just as its proponents argued, the emphasis on consistency allowed critics to cast the movement as hypocritical and narrow-­minded when, as a result of the practicalities of international business, abolitionists failed to be perfectly consistent. The questions ­these abolitionists had to deal with are per­sis­tent, and continue to be faced by ­those trying to be ethical within global capitalism ­today. Looking at the abolitionists’ contributions helps us understand the be­hav­ior of fair-­trade consumers, corporate social responsibility campaigns, and the ideologies of in­equality in consumer-­producer relationships that continue to shape global capitalism.

Abbreviations

ANS HCQSC HSP JCBL NCAC SLNA TNA

Archives Nationale du Senegal Haverford College Quaker Special Collections Historical Society of Pennsylvania John Car­ter Brown Library National Center for Arts and Culture, The Gambia Sierra Leone National Archives, Fourah Bay College, Freetown The National Archives, UK

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Notes

I n t r o d u c t i o n: B a d T o b a c c o 1. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter JCBL), BFBR B.513 F.6, extracts from Martin Benson’s Journal, Ship Charlotte, November 29, 1794. 2. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 13, September 15, 1796. Suzanne Schwarz, Zachary Macaulay and the Development of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, 1793–4 (Leipzig, 2000) is an invaluable source for anyone interested in Macaulay’s involvement in Sierra Leone. 3. JCBL, BFBR B.513 F.6, extracts from Martin Benson’s Journal, Ship Charlotte, November 29, 1794. 4. https://­w ww​.­measuringworth​.­com​/­u kcompare​/­relativevalue​.­php. 5. Huntington Library, MSS MY 489, July 2, 1799, to Selina; Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son (New Haven, 2012). 6. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 166. 7. A Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester President of the African Institution from Zachary Macaulay, Esq. Occasioned by a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Thorpe, Late Judge of the Colony of Sierra Leone, 2nd ed. (London, 1815), 44. 8. Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told (New York, 2014); Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, eds., Slavery’s Capitalism (Philadelphia, 2016); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014); Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams (Cambridge, MA, 2013). 9. Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce (Ithaca, NY, 2016); Martha Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good while ­Doing Well: The Decision to Manufacture Products That Supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in ­Great Britain,” Slavery and Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008): 219–231; Lawrence Glickman, “ ‘Buy for the Sake of the Slave’:

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  Notes to Pages 6–7

Abolitionism and the Origins of American Consumer Activism,” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 889–912; Charlotte Sussman, Consuming Anx­i­eties (Stanford, 2000); Clare Midgley, ­Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (Oxford, 1992). 10. For instance, Emily Conroy-­K rutz, Christian Imperialism (Cornell, 2015); Rosemary Zagarri, “The Significance of the ‘Global Turn’ for the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (2011): 1–37; Caitlin Fitz, Our ­Sister Republics (New York, 2016); Nancy Shoemaker, “The Extraterritorial United States to 1860,” Diplomatic History 42, no. 1 (2018): 36–54. 11. Walter Johnson, “The Pedestal and the Veil: Rethinking the Capitalism / Slavery Question,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2 (2004): 304. 12. Gareth Austin, “Capitalism and Colonies,” in The Cambridge History of Capitalism, ed. Larry Neal and Jeffrey Williamson (Cambridge, 2014), 309; Sven Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire,” American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (2004): 1405–1438; Padraic Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors (New Haven, 2017). 13. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1998); Mariana Candido, An African Slaving Port in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2015); Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-­Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil during the Era of the Slave Trade (Cambridge, 2014); Jose C. Curto, “Alcohol ­u nder the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade,” Cahiers d’etudes africaines 201 (2011): 51–85; Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-­ Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2012); James Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2011); Mouser, “Trade, Coasters, and Conflict in the Rio Pongo from 1790 to 1808,” Journal of African History 14, no. 1 (1973): 45–64; and George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen: A History of American Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth C ­ entury (Boston, 1970). 14. For instance, Christina Mobley, “The Kongolese Atlantic: Central African Slavery and Culture from Mayombe to Haiti” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2015); Laurent Dubois, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic,” Social History 31, no. 1 (2006): 1–14. For more on the integration of the French Atlantic, see Bradley Bond, French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World (Baton Rouge, 2005); Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill, NC, 2012); Jennifer L. Palmer, Intimate Bonds: ­Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic (Philadelphia, 2016); James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce (Cambridge, 2003); Sara E. Johnson, “ ‘Your ­Mother Gave Birth to a Pig’: Power, Abuse, and Planter Linguistics in Baudry des Lozière’s Vocabulaire Congo,” Early American Studies 16, no. 1 (2018): 7–40. 15. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in ­England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002), xvii. 16. Beckert and Rockman, Slavery’s Capitalism; Joseph Inikori and Stanley Engerman, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Raleigh, NC, 1992); Nick Draper, The Price of Emancipation (Cambridge, 2013); Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic (Raleigh, NC, 2005);

Notes to Pages 7–10 

• 251

Stephanie Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2000). 17. Joseph Inikori, “The Credit Needs of the African Trade and the Development of the Credit Economy in ­England,” Explorations in Economic History 27 (1990): 197–231. 18. Robin Pearson and David Richardson, “Social Capital, Institutional Innovation and Atlantic Trade before 1800,” Business History 50, no. 6 (2008): 765–780. 19. Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970), 171–172; A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973); Marion Johnson, Henry Gemery, and Jan Hogendorn, “Evidence on En­glish / African Terms of Trade in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Explorations in Economic History 27, no. 2 (1990): 157–177; Toby Green, Fistful of Shells (London, 2019). I have found Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, particularly instructive ­here. 20. Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 262; François Manchuelle, “The ‘Regeneration’ of Africa: An Impor­tant and Ambiguous Concept in 18th and 19th ­Century French Thinking about Africa,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 36, no. 44 (1996): 559–588; Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison, WI, 1973). 21. For instance, Holcomb, Moral Commerce; Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good while D ­ oing Well”; Lawrence Glickman, “ ‘Buy for the Sake of the Slave’: Abolitionism and the Origins of American Consumer Activism,” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 889–912; Robin Law, ed., From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce (Cambridge, 1995); Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa (Cambridge, 1997); K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (Oxford, 1956). For instance, Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, WI, 1975); James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce: The Senegal River Valley, 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1993); Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970); Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1998); Brooks, Yankee Traders. This is an emerging field, as revealed in the chapters by George E. Brooks, Philip J. Havik, Marika Sherwood, and José Lingna Nafafé in Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-­Colonial Western Africa, ed. Toby Green (Oxford, 2012), and in Christopher Brown’s current research in the Senegambia gum arabic trade. 22. See Dike, Trade and Politics; A. G. Hopkins, “Economic Imperialism in West Africa, Lagos 1880–92,” Economic History Review 21 (1968): 580–606; Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973); Patrick Manning, “Slaves, Palm Oil and Po­l iti­cal Power on the West African Coast,” African Historical Studies 2 (1969); Law, From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce; Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa (Cambridge, 1997); Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, “The Initial ‘Crisis of Adaptation’: The Impact of British Abolition on the Atlantic Slave Trade in West Africa, 1808–1820,” in Law, From Slave Trade, to “Legitimate” Commerce, 32–56; Brooks, Yankee Traders. 23. Ralph Austen, “The Abolition of the Overseas Slave Trade: A Distorted Theme in African History,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5, no. 2 (1970): 270. 24. Ann Brower Stahl, “Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches,” American Anthropologist, n.s., 104, no. 3

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  Notes to Pages 10–15

(2002): 827–845; Ann Brower Stahl and Adria LaViolette, “Introduction: Current Trends in the Archaeology of African History,” Journal of African History 42, no. 3 (2009): 354; Ibrahima Thiaw, “Atlantic Impacts on Inland Senegambia: French Penetration and African Initiatives in Eighteenth-­and Nineteenth-­Century Gajaaga and Bundu (Upper Senegal River),” in Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives, ed. J. Cameron Monroe and Akinwumi Ogundiran (Cambridge, 2012), 57; Sherene Baugher and Robert W. Venables, “Ceramics as Indicators of Status and Class in Eighteenth-­Century New York,” in Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology, ed. Suzanne M. Spencer-­Wood (New York, 1987), 31–53. 25. Stanley Engerman, “Mercantilism and Overseas Trade, 1700–1800,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, ed. R. Floud and D. N. McCloskey (Cambridge, 1994), 194; C. W. Newbury, “Credit in Early Nineteenth ­Century West African Trade,” Journal of African History 13, no. 1 (1972): 84; Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port, 1727–1892 (Athens, OH, 2004), 133–135; Paul G. E. Clemens, “The Consumer Culture of the M ­ iddle Atlantic, 1760–1820,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2005): 580; Frank Trentmann, “Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption,” Journal of Con­temporary History 39, no. 3 (2004): 378; Robin Pearson and David Richardson, “Social Capital, Institutional Innovation and Atlantic Trade before 1800,” Business History 50, no. 6 (2008): 767; Joseph Inikori, “The Credit Needs,” 199. 26. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944); Ralph Austen and Woodruff Smith, “Images of Africa and British Slave-­Trade Abolition: The Transition to an Imperialist Ideology, 1787–1807,” African Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (1969): 69–83; Curtin, The Image of Africa; Brown, Moral Capital; Austen, “Abolition of the Overseas Slave Trade.” 27. Albert O. Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests (Prince­ton, 1977, 2013). 28. Richard Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (New York, 2015). 29. David Todd, ­Free Trade and Its Enemies in France, 1814–1851 (Cambridge, 2015). 30. James Huston, “Economic Landscapes Yet to Be Discovered: The Early American Republic and Historians’ Unsubtle Adoption of Po­l iti­cal Economy,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2 (2004): 219–231; Christopher Clark, “The Agrarian Context of American Cap­i­t al­ist Development,” in Capitalism Takes Command, ed. Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith (Chicago, 2011). 31. Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development and the Prob­lem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 (Chicago, 2011). See also Sujit Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire (Cambridge, 2005); Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government (New Haven, 2000). 32. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison, WI, 1969). 33. The term “West Africa” ­w ill refer throughout to the region as defined by the United Nations: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-­ Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. It does not include West Central Africa (Cameroon through Angola).

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• 253

34. This is a West Africa–­oriented periodization, although somewhat ironically inspired by J. F. Ade Ajayi and B. O. Oloruntimehin, who argue that the overemphasis on the subject of abolitionism in Eu­ro­pean writing about West Africa in this period reflects their, and not West Africa’s, preoccupations. “West Africa in the Anti-­Slave Trade Era,” in The Cambridge History of Africa, ed. John E. Flint (Cambridge, 1977), 5:200. See also Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau, ed., From Slave Trade to Empire (Oxford, 2004). 35. Randy M. Browne, Surviving Slavery in the British Ca­rib­be­an (Philadelphia, 2017); Justin Roberts, Slavery and the Enlightenment in the British Atlantic (Cambridge, 2013); J. R. Oldfield, Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, 2013); David Brion Davis, The Prob­lem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 1999). 36. Todd, F ­ ree Trade, 124. 37. Carol Faulkner, “The Root of the Evil: ­Free Produce and Radical Antislavery, 1820–1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 3 (2007): 377–405. 38. Paul Finkelman, ed., Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895 (Oxford, 2009). In 1829–1830 Lundy’s partner was William Lloyd Garrison, who would go on to be a much more radical antislavery voice. 39. Lawrence Jennings, French Anti- ­Slavery (Cambridge, 2000); Patricia Motylewski, La Société pour l’abolition de l’esclavage, 1834–1850 (L’Harmattan, 1998); Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau, La Révolution abolitionniste (Paris, 2017). 40. Emma Rothschild, The Inner Lives of Empires (Prince­ton, 2011), 124–125. 41. Kenneth Pomeranz, The G ­ reat Divergence (Prince­ton, 2000); Gareth Austin, “Reciprocal Comparison and African History,” African Studies Review 50, no. 3 (2007): 1–28; Polly Hill, Studies in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge, 1970), 3–17; Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Theory from the South,” Anthropological Forum 22, no. 2 (2012): 113–131. 42. For challenges to this, see Morten Jerven, Africa: Why Economists Get It Wrong (London, 2015); Jerven, “The History of African Poverty by Numbers: Evidence and Vantage Points,” Journal of African History 59, no. 3 (2018): 449–461; Gareth Austin, “The ‘Reversal of Fortune’ Thesis and the Compression of History: Perspectives from African and Comparative Economic History,” Journal of International Development 20, no. 8 (2008): 996–1027; Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg, “Africa Rising? A Historical Perspective,” African Affairs 117, no. 469 (2018): 543–568. 43. Austin, “Reciprocal Comparison”; also Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South. 44. Klas Ronnback, “Living Standards on the Pre-­Colonial Gold Coast: A Qualitative Estimate of African Laborers’ Welfare Rations,” Eu­ro­pean Review of Economic History 18 (2014): 185–202; A. G. Hopkins, “The New Economic History of Africa,” Journal of African History 50, no. 2 (2009): 155–177; Morten Jerven, “African Growth Recurring: An Economic History Perspective on African Growth Episodes, 1690–2010,” Economic History of Developing Regions 25 (2010): 127–154; Morten Jerven, “Capitalism in Pre-­Colonial Africa: A Review,” African Economic History Network Working Paper no. 27.

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  Notes to Pages 22–27

45. See Rhiannon Stephens, “Poverty’s Pasts: A Case for Longue Durée Studies,” Journal of African History 59, no. 3 (2018): 399–409. 46. Thomas Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Parts 1 and 2,” in The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Prob­lem in Historical Interpretation, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley, 1992); Williams, Capitalism and Slavery. 47. Jonathan Connolly, “Indentured ­Labor Migration and the Meaning of Emancipation,” Past & Pre­sent 238, no. 1 (2018): 85–119; Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning (Ithaca, NY, 2012); Padraic Scanlan, “The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-­Slavery,” American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1085–1113; Andrea Major, Slavery, Abolitionism, and Empire in India (Liverpool, 2012). 1 . A n x i ou s C o n s u m e r s 1. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, folder 15, October 20, 1796. 2. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Prince­ton, 1977, 2013). 3. John Ashworth, “The Relationship between Capitalism and Humanitarianism,” American Historical Review 92, no. 4 (1987): 824; Philip Gould, Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury (Cambridge, MA, 2009). 4. Thomas Haskell, “Capitalism and Humanitarian Sensibility, 1,” reprinted in The Antislavery Debate, ed. Thomas Bender (Berkeley, 1992), 111; Debra Satz, Why Some ­T hings Should Not Be for Sale (Oxford, 2010), 192–195. 5. Haskell, “Capitalism and Humanitarian Sensibility,” 112. 6. Michael Sandel, What Money ­Can’t Buy (New York, 2012), 121, citing Fred Hirsch. 7. David Brion Davis, “What the Abolitionists W ­ ere Up Against” (Oxford, 1999), reprinted in Bender, The Antislavery Debate, 19. 8. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, 105. 9. Ann Brower Stahl, “Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches,” American Anthropologist, n.s., 104, no. 3 (2002): 827–845. 10. Akinwumi Ogundiran, “Of Small ­T hings Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, nos. 2–3 (2002): 427–457; Neil Norman, “Hueda (Whydah) Country and Town: Archaeological Perspectives on the Rise and Collapse of an African Atlantic Kingdom,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (2009): 387–410. 11. Philip Misevich, “The Sierra Leone Hinterland and the Provisioning of Early Freetown, 1792–1803,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 3 (2008). Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, WI, 1975); Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1998); Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY, 2011); Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port (Athens, OH, 2005); Silke Strickrodt, Afro-­European Trade in the Atlantic World (Rochester, NY, 2015); Mariana Candido, An African Slaving Port in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2013).

Notes to Pages 28–29 

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12. John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies (London, 1735), 159. See also Chris Evans and Göran Rydén, “ ‘Voyage Iron’: An Atlantic Slave Trade Currency, Its Eu­ro­pean Origins, and West African Impact,” Past & Pre­sent 239, no. 1 (2018): 41–70; Harvey Feinberg and Marion Johnson, “The West African Ivory Trade during the Eigh­teenth ­Century: The ‘. . . ​a nd Ivory’ Complex,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 15, no. 3 (1982): 435–453. 13. Francois Richard, “Recharting Atlantic Encounters: Object Trajectories and Histories of Value in the Siin (Senegal) and Senegambia,” Archaeological Dialogues 17, no. 1 (2010): 12; Jane Guyer, “Wealth in ­People and Self-­R ealization in Equatorial Africa,” Man 28 (1993): 243–265; Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution (Cambridge, 2008), 25–37; Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of ­T hings (New York, 1986). 14. Beverly Lemire, Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures (Cambridge, 2018), 190–247. 15. Anna Maria Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the years 1791–1792–1793 (London, 1794), February 10, 1791. 16. J. Montefiore, An Au­then­tic Account of the late Expedition to Bulam on the Coast of Africa, with a description of the pre­sent settlement of Sierra Leone and the Adjacent Country (London, 1794), Sierra Leone, November 28, 1792, 42. 17. Robert DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic (Cambridge, 2016). 18. Ty ­R eese, “Liberty, Insolence, Rum: Cape Coast and the American Revolution,” Itinerario 28, no. 3 (2004), 18–38; George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen: A History of American Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth ­Century (Boston, 1970), 7; Jay Coughtry, Notorious Triangle (Philadelphia, 1981), 6–7. 19. The National Archives, United Kingdom (hereafter cited as TNA), CUST 17 / 10; John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL), BFBR B.523 F.5, Isles de Loss, July 14, 1817, W. Leigh and Samuel Samo to Brown & Ives; Colleen Kriger, “ ‘Guinea Cloth’: Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 105–126. 20. George E. Brooks, “ ‘Artists’ Depictions of Senegalese Signares: Insights concerning French Racist and Sexist Attitudes in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Genéve Afrique /  Geneva Africa 18, no. 1 (1980): 75–90; René Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, L’Afrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des africains: Le Sénégal (Paris, 1814); Bronwen Everill, “All the Baubles They Needed: ‘Industriousness’ and Slavery in Saint-­Louis and Gorée,” Early American Studies (Fall 2017): 714–739; Hilary Jones, The Metis of Senegal (Bloomington, IN, 2013). 21. For instance, Kazuo Kobayashi, “Indian Textiles and Gum Arabic in the Lower Senegal River,” African Economic History 45, no. 2 (2017): 27–53; Jody Benjamin, “The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce, and History in Western Africa, 1700–1850” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016); Anne Ruderman, “Supplying the Slave Trade: How Eu­ro­pe­a ns Met African Demand for Eu­ro­pean Manufactured Products, Commodities and Re-­exports, 1670–1790” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2016); DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic; Colleen Kriger, Cloth in West African

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  Notes to Pages 29–31

History; Toyomu Masaki, “Export of Indian Guinée to Senegal via France: Intercolonial Trade in the Long Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Socio-­Economic History 81, no. 2 (2015): 239–260; Richard Roberts, “Guinée Cloth: Linked Transformations within France’s Empire in the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 32, no. 128 (1992): 597–627. 22. Marion Johnson, “Commodities, Customs, and the Computer,” History in Africa 11 (1984): 10; Jan Hogendorn and Philip Gemery, “The ‘Hidden Half ’ of the Anglo-­ African Trade in the Eigh­teenth ­Century: The Significance of Marion Johnson’s Research,” in West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of Marion Johnson, ed. Devid Henige and T.C. McCaskie (Madison, 1990), 83; Katharine Frederick, “Global Competition in the Local Marketplace: The Impact of Foreign Cotton Cloth Imports on British West African Cotton Textile Industries during the Pre-­Colonial and Colonial Eras” (PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2013). 23. François Richard, “Po­l iti­cal Transformations and Cultural Landscapes in Senegambia during the Atlantic Era: An Alternative View from the Siin (Senegal)?,” in Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa, ed. J. Cameron Monroe and Akin Ogundiran, (Cambridge, 2012), 100–101. 24. Curtin, Economic Change, 323. 25. James F. Searing, “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), 4–9; Michael Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad (Cambridge, 1992). 26. Catherine Coquery-­Vidrovitch, “Research on an African Mode of Production,” Critique of Anthropology 2, no. 4 / 5 (1975): 38–71. 27. J. Cameron Monroe and Akin Ogundiran, eds., Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa (Cambridge, 2012), 2. 28. Stahl, “Colonial Entanglements,” 827–845; Ann Brower Stahl and Adria LaViolette, “Introduction: Current Trends in the Archaeology of African History,” Journal of African History 42, no. 3 (2009): 354. 29. Ibrahima Thiaw, “Atlantic Impacts on Inland Senegambia: French Penetration and African Initiatives in Eighteenth-­and Nineteenth-­Century Gajaago and Bundu (Upper Senegal River),” in Monroe and Ogundiran, Power and Landscape, 57. 30. Susan Keech Mcintosh and Ibrahima Thiaw, “Tools for Understanding Transformation and Continuity in Senegambian Society, 1500–1900,” in West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Christopher DeCorse (Leicester, 2001), 30–31. 31. Richard, “Po­l iti­cal Transformations,” 100; Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (Routledge, 2005). 32. J. A. LeBrasseur, Mémoire pouvant servir de réponse à la letter de Monseigneur de Sartines (1776), as quoted in Francois Richard, “Po­l iti­cal Transformations and Cultural Landscapes in Senegambia during the Atlantic Era: An Alternative View from the Siin (Senegal)?” in Power and Landscape, ed. Monroe and Ogundiran, 100. 33. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad, 77–79. 34. Archives Nationale du Senegal (hereafter cited as ANS), AOF 13G1, Traites, “Articles convenus entre Mr le General et Ordonnateur Dumentel de Clergeau et les marchands de boeufs de St Louis,” August 26, 1782.

Notes to Pages 31–33 

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35. Mark Hinchman, “House and House­hold on Gorée, Senegal, 1758–1837,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65, no. 2 (2006): 166–187; Ibrahima Thiaw, “Slaves without Shackles: An Archaeology of Everyday Life on Gorée Island, Senegal” in Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, ed. Paul Lane and Kevin MacDonald, (Oxford, 2011), 147–166; Monroe and Ogundiran, Power and Landscape. 36. John Thornton, “African Po­l iti­cal Ethics and the Slave Trade,” in Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, ed. Derek Peterson (Athens, OH, 2010), 39. 37. J. Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone (London, 1788), 122–129; Thomas Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (London, 1803), 238; Alexander Gordon Laing, Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa (London, 1825), 85–86, as cited in Rosalind Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (Chicago, 2002), 218. 38. Eltis and Jennings, “Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-­Colonial Era,” American Historical Review 93, no. 4 (1988): 936–959. 39. Not to mention demographics: Paul Lovejoy, “Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Lit­er­a­ture,” Journal of African History 30 (1989): 365–394; Candido, An African Slaving Port; James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce (Cambridge, 1993); Roquinaldo Ferreira, Cross-­Cultural Exchange in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2012); Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans-­Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa (Cambridge, 2011); Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750 (Oxford, 1991); G. Ugo Nwokeji, The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2010). 40. Adama Gueye, “The Impact of the Slave Trade on Cayor and Baol: Mutations in Habitat and Land Occupancy,” in Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, ed. Sylviane A. Diouf (Athens, OH, 2003), 50–61. 41. An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (London, 1803); Adam Afzelius, Sierra Leone Journal, 1795–1796 (Uppsala, 1967), 14. 42. Fajara Oral Archive, The Gambia. 200A 27 / 2 / 73. 43. Kevin C. MacDonald and Seydou Camara, “Segou, Slavery, and Sifinso,” in Monroe and Ogundiran, Power and Landscape, 177–178. 44. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery (Cambridge, 1983, 2011); Candido, An African Slaving Port; Nwokeji, The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra, 117. 45. Christopher DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau: Northern Sierra Leone in the Pre-­Atlantic and Atlantic Worlds,” in Monroe and Ogundiran, Power and Landscape, 278–308; Ray Kea, “The Local and the Global: Historiographical Reflections on West Africa in the Atlantic Age,” in Monroe and Ogundirun, Power and Landscape, 339–375. 46. James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce (Cambridge, 1993), 129–162; interviews with Yammar Diagne, Saloum, February 2015; Klas Rönnbäck and Dimitrios Theodoridis, “African Agricultural Productivity and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: Evidence from Senegambia in the Nineteenth ­century,” Economic History Review 72, no. 1 (2019): 209–232.

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  Notes to Pages 33–36

47. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad, 75. 48. Transatlantic Slave Voyages Database, www​.­slavevoyages​.­org. 49. Compiled from ­t ables in David Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns and Their Influence on the Eigh­teenth ­Century En­glish Slave Trade,” in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (New York, 1979), 312–315. 50. Rudolph T. Ware III, The Walking Qur­an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill, NC, 2014), 118. 51. Ty M. ­R eese, “ ‘Eating’ Luxury: Fante Middlemen, British Goods, and Changing Dependencies on the Gold Coast,” William and Mary Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2009): 864. This is dif­fer­ent from local inflation, a hotly debated topic in African economic history. See Marion Johnson, “The Cowrie Currencies of West Africa, Parts I and II,” Journal of African History 11, no. 1 (1970): 17–49, and 11,no. 3 (1970): 331–353; Karl Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade (Seattle, 1966); Robin Law, “Posthumous Questions for Karl Polanyi,” Journal of African History 33 (1992): 387–420; Toby Green, “Africa and the Price Revolution,” Journal of African History 57, no. 1 (2016): 1–24; Klas Ronnback, “The Challenge of Studying Inflation in Precolonial Africa,” History in Africa 45 (2018): 5–18; Toby Green, “The Challenge of Studying Inflation in Precolonial Africa: a Response,” History in Africa 45 (2018): 19–28. 52. H. A. Gemery, Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson, “Evidence on En­glish / African Terms of Trade in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury,” Explorations in Economic History 27 (1990): 168. 53. Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, “British Abolition and Its Impact on Slave Prices along the Atlantic Coast of Africa, 1783–1850,” Journal of Economic History 55, no. 1 (1995): t­ able 3, 113. 54. Report of the Committee Managing a Fund Raised by some Friends, for the Purpose of Promoting African Instruction; with an account of a visit to the Gambia and Sierra Leone (London, 1822), 47. 55. Shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade, 205. See also John Thornton, “Cannibals, Witches, and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2003): 273–294. 56. Jean Boyd and Beverly Blow Mack, The Collected Works of Nana Asma’u in En­glish (Ann Arbor, 1997), 387. 57. Ralph Austen, “The Moral Economy of Witchcraft: An Essay in Comparative History,” in Modernity and Its Malcontents, ed. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (Chicago, 1993), 94; E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the En­glish Crowd in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 50 (1971): 76–136; Tim Rogan, The Moral Economists (Prince­ton, 2017). 58. Winterbottom, An Account; Adam Afzelius, Sierra Leone Journal, 1795–1796, ed. Alexander Peter Kup (Uppsala, 1967), 14; Matthews, A Voyage, 154–155. 59. Matthews, A Voyage, 154. 60. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, June 30, 1793; Bruce Mouser, “Rebellion, Marronage and Jihad: Strategies of Re­sis­t ance to Slavery on the Sierra Leone Coast, c. 1783–1796,” Journal of African History 48 (2007): 38–39.

Notes to Pages 37–38 

• 259

61. Ismail Rashid, “Escape, Revolt, and Marronage in Eigh­teenth and Nineteenth ­Century Sierra Leone Hinterland,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 3 (2000): 666–670; Rashid, “ ‘A Devotion to the Idea of Liberty at Any Price’: Rebellion and Antislavery in the Upper Guinea Coast in the Eigh­t eenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Diouf, Fighting the Slave Trade, 132–151; Walter Rodney, “Jihad and Social Revolution in Futa Djalon in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4, no. 2 (1968): 283–284. 62. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, December 12, 1793. 63. Rashid, “Escape, Revolt, and Marronage,” 659; H. F. C. Smith, “A Neglected Theme of West African History: The Islamic Revolutions of the 19th ­Century,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2, no. 2 (1961): 174–175; Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (Athens, OH, 2016), 42. 64. P. B. Clarke, “Islamic Millenarianism in West Africa: A ‘Revolutionary’ Ideology?,” Religious Studies 16, no. 3 (1980): 339; Ware, The Walking Qur’an, 339; Jerry Muller, The Mind and the Market (New York, 2002), 151. 65. Ware, The Walking Qur’an, 129; Dominique Lamiral, L’Affrique et le ­people affriquain consideres sous tous leurs rapports avec notre commerce et nos colonies (Paris, 1789), 174; Clarke, “Islamic Millenarianism,” 317–339. 66. Emma Rothschild, “An Alarming Commercial Crisis in Eighteenth-­C entury Angouleme: Sentiments in Economic History,” Economic History Review 51, no. 2 (1998): 268–293; Muller, Mind and the Market; Ellen Hartigan-­O’Connor, The Ties That Buy (Philadelphia, 2009). 67. Frank Trentmann, Empire of T ­ hings (London, 2016); Lemire, Global Trade. 68. H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Com­pany and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge, 2005), 6; Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain (Cambridge, 1992), 280; William Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt (Chapel Hill, NC, 2014). 69. John Styles and Amanda Vickery, “Introduction,” in Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North Amer­i­ca, 1700–1830, ed. Styles and Vickery (New Haven, 2006), 2; Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-­Century ­England (London, 1982), 2. 70. Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 182 (2004): 92. 71. William M. Reddy, “The Structure of a Cultural Crisis: Thinking about Cloth,” in The Social Life of ­T hings, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), 268; Felicia Gottmann, Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of Economic Liberalism (Basingstoke, 2016). 72. De Vries, The Industrious Revolution, 181. 73. P. J. Marshall, “The British in Asia: Trade to Dominion, 1700–1765,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford, 2002), 487. His source is the statistical t­ ables compiled in K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the En­glish East India Com­pany, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 1978), 547–548. 74. Ellen Hartigan-­O’Connor, The Ties That Buy (Philadelphia, 2009), 50–51.

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  Notes to Pages 38–41

75. James Deetz, In Small T ­ hings Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York, 1977, 1996), 62. 76. James Axtell, “The First Consumer Revolution,” in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. Lawrence Glickman (Ithaca, NY, 1999), 85–99; David Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia, 2010), 2; Martha Zierden, “A Trans-­Atlantic Merchant’s House in Charleston: Archaeological Exploration of Refinement and Subsistence in an Urban Setting,” Historical Archaeology 33, no. 3 (1999): 73–87; Deetz, In Small T ­ hings Forgotten, 83–88; Billy G. Smith, “The Material Lives of Laboring Philadelphians, 1750 to 1800,” William and Mary Quarterly 38, no. 2 (1981): 163–202; Bettye Hobbs Pruitt, “Self-­Sufficiency and the Agricultural Economy of Eigh­teenth ­Century Mas­sa­chu­ setts,” William and Mary Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1984): 333–364; Jennifer Van Horn, The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-­Century British Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill, NC, 2017). 77. Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice, 3rd ed. (London, 2000), chap. 3. 78. De Vries, Industrious Revolution, 181, 185. 79. Deetz, In Small T ­ hings Forgotten, 84–85; Lemire, Global Trade, 85; Robert DuPlessis, “Cloth and the Atlantic Economy,” in The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eigh­teenth Centuries, ed. Peter Coclanis (Columbia, SC, 2005), 83. 80. McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society, 14–15. 81. McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society, 14–15. 82. De Vries, Industrious Revolution, 70, 65; Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onuf, A Union of Interests: Po­liti­cal and Economic Thought in Revolutionary Amer­i­ca (Lawrence, KS, 1990), 20. 83. Hartigan-­O’Connor, The Ties That Buy, 164–165; Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, 2004). 84. Emma Rothschild, The Inner Lives of Empires (Prince­ton, 2012), 121–125; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun (New York, 2001), 199. 85. Hartigan-­O’Connor, The Ties That Buy, 124. 86. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale (New York, 1990); see the debates between Davis, Haskell, and Ashworth in Bender, The Antislavery Debate. 87. Tillman Nechtman, Nabobs: Identity and Empire in Eigh­teenth ­Century Briton (Cambridge, 2010). I am indebted to Brennan Monaco for his insight h­ ere. 88. Historical Society of Philadelphia, 9455.F, “West India Luxury,” George 11132 Afr-465 Cartoons 1808 Wes. 89. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford, 1988); Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006); Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning (Ithaca, NY, 2012). 90. Muller, Mind and the Market, 126. 91. Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 199. 92. Muller, Mind and the Market, 42–43. 93. Madeleine Dobie, Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-­Century French Culture (Ithaca, NY, 2010), 14–15; François Manchuelle, “The ‘Regeneration

Notes to Pages 42–45 

• 261

of Africa’: An Impor­t ant and Ambiguous Concept in 18th and 19th ­Century French Thinking about Africa,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 36, no. 144 (1996): 559–588. 94. Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the H ­ uman Species, 3rd ed. (London, printed in Philadelphia,1787), 103–104; Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic (Durham, NC, 2005); James Walvin, The Zong (New Haven, 2011). See also Charlotte Sussman, Consuming Anx­i­eties (Stanford, 2000), 24–25; Clare Midgley, “Slave Sugar Boycotts, Female Activism and the Domestic Base of British Anti-­ Slavery Culture,” Slavery & Abolition 17, no. 3 (1996): 137–162. 95. Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic, 109–112. 96. Charles Rappeleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown B ­ rothers, the Slave Trade and the Revolution (New York, 2007); Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, Documents http://­cds​ .­l ibrary​.­brown​.­edu​/­projects​/­sally​/­. 97. Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa; Manuel Barcia, “An Atlantic Islamic Revolution: Dan Fodio’s Jihad and Slave Rebellion in Bahia and Cuba, 1804–1844,” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 2, no. 1 (2013): 6–18; Jennifer Lofkrantz, “Protecting Freeborn Muslims: The Sokoto Caliphate’s Attempts to Prevent Illegal Enslavement and Its Ac­cep­t ance of the Strategy of Ransoming,” Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 1 (2011): 109–127. 98. Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa, 88–89; see also William Gervase Clarence-­Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (London, 2006); Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau, La Révolution abolitionniste (Paris, 2017), 37–46. 99. Ware, The Walking Qur­an, 126; Lovejoy, Jihad in West Africa, 91. 100. Nana Asma’u, “The Way of the Pious” (Tanbīh al-­ghāfilīn), in Boyd and Mack, Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, 24, 26–27. 101. Ghyslaine Lydon, On Trans-­Saharan Trails (Cambridge, 2009), 310. 102. Stephanie Smallwood, “Commodified Freedom,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2 (2004): 296. 103. JCBL, BFBR B.513 F.7, Freetown, January 30, 1795, Martin Benson to Brown, Benson & Ives. 104. Transatlantic Slave Voyages Database, http://­slavevoyages​.­org​/­t ast​/­database​/­search​ .­faces​?y­ earFrom​=­1514&yearTo​=­1866&ptdepimp​= ­20100. 105. Sire-­A bbas-­Soh, Chroniques du Fouta Senegalais (Paris, 1913); Curtin, Economic Change, 23; David Robinson, “The Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, no. 2 (1975): 185–221; Martin Klein, “Social and Economic ­Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia,” Journal of African History 13, no. 3 (1972): 419–441; Searing, “God Alone Is King”; Michael A. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (Cambridge, 1992), 72. 106. Joseph C. Miller, “The Dynamics of History in Africa and the Atlantic ‘Age of Revolutions,’ ” in The Age of Revolutions in Global Context c.1760–1840, ed. David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (Basingstoke, 2009), 119. Mariana Candido has recently argued of Central Africa that, “invested in the Atlantic economy, local traders w ­ ere the primary impetus for the expansion of slavery and the creation of a colonial society that did not differ much from o­ thers around the Atlantic.” Candido, An African Slaving Port, 13.

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  Notes to Pages 45–48

107. ANS, Dakar, 13G 9, Section 5, Agreement of March 31, 1785; Thiernor Diallo, Les Institutions politique du Fouta Dyalon au XIXe siècle (Dakar, 1972). 108. ANS, Dakar, 13G 9, Section 5, Agreement of March 31, 1785. 109. Transatlantic Slave Voyages Database, http://­slavevoyages​.­org​/­t ast​/­database​/­search​ .­faces​?y­ earFrom​=­1514&yearTo​=­1866&mjbyptimp​= ­60100​.­60200. 110. Robinson, “Islamic Revolution of Futa Toro,” 202–203, 211; ANS, Dakar, Coutumes, AOF 13G1, March 31, 1785. 111. TNA T70 / 1550; Coughtry, Notorious Triangle, 111; Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY, 2011). 112. Robert Harms, The Diligent (New York, 2008), chap. 18. 113. Coughty, Notorious Triangle, 31; Matson and Onuf, A Union of Interests, 25. 114. T. H. Breen, “ ‘Baubles of Britain’: The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 119 (1988): 76. 115. See the large lit­er­a­ture on “gentlemanly capitalism,” beginning with P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (London, 1993). 116. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt; Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain (Cambridge, 1995); Ann Carlos and Frank Lewis, Commerce by a Frozen Sea (Philadelphia, 2010). 117. Joanna Cohen, Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-­ Century Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia, 2017); T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics S­ haped American In­de­pen­dence (Oxford, 2005); Terrence H. Witkowski, “Colonial Consumers in Revolt: Buyer Values and Be­hav­ior during the Nonimportation Movement, 1764–1776,” Journal of Consumer Research 16, no. 2 (1989): 216–226; Ulrich, The Age of Homespun; Lawrence Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in Amer­i­ca (Chicago, 2009), 31–60. 118. ANS, Dakar, Coutumes, AOF 13G13, Coutumes du Cayor; Searing, West African Slavery, 74; Richard, “Recharting Atlantic Encounters,” 1–27. 119. The alcohol trade directly resulted in 400,000 slave exports from Luanda, in Angola, for instance: Jose Curto, “Alcohol ­under the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Case of Benguela and Its Hinterland (Angola),” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 201, no. 1 (2011): 52; C. H. Ambler, “Alcohol and the Slave Trade in West Africa, 1400–1850,” in Drugs, L ­ abor and Colonial Expansion, ed. W. Jankowiak and D. Bradburd (Tucson, 2003), 75. 1 20. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, May 8, 1797. “Palaver” derives from the Portuguese crioulo, which was the lingua franca along much of the eighteenth-­century West African coast. See Colleen Kriger, Making Money (Athens, OH, 2017), 67. 121. Ahmed Reid, “Sugar, Slavery and Productivity in Jamaica, 1750–1807,” Slavery & Abolition 37, no. 1 (2016): 159–182; Trevor Burnard and John Garrigus, The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-­D omingue and British Jamaica (Philadelphia, 2016); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944); Seymour Dresher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977, 2010). 1 22. An Account of the Quantity of British Plantation Sugar and Rum Imported into and Exported from G ­ reat Britain, House of Commons Papers, vol. 121.

Notes to Pages 49–52 

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1 23. J. R. Oldfield, Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, 2013), 96. 1 24. William Fox, An Address to the ­Peoples of ­G reat Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum, 10th ed. (London, printed in Philadelphia, 1792), 1. 1 25. National Portrait Gallery D12417 Gillray 1792, “Barbarities in the West Indies”; Sussman, Consuming Anx­i­eties, 115–116; Huntington Library, Historical Print Collection, Trade Cards, 347.12; 347.14 / 1–29. 1 26. Cooper, Considerations on the Slave Trade; and the Consumption of West Indian Produce (London, 1791), “Advertisement.” 127. Emphasis added. This quotation was actually further extracted from Cooper’s Letters on the Slave Trade, published in 1787. See Peckham Ladies African and Anti-­Slavery Association, Reasons for Using East India Sugar (London, 1828), 8; Julie Holcomb, “Blood Stained Sugar: Gender, Commerce, and the British Slave-­Trade Debates,” Slavery & Abolition 35, no. 4 (2014): 619; New York Journal and Patriotic Register, April 25, 1792, as cited in Holcomb, “Blood Stained Sugar,” n20; Midgley, “Slave Sugar Boycotts,” 138; TNA CUST 17 / 10, Exports from Britain to Africa 1787. 1 28. Elias Hicks, Observations on the Slavery of Africans and Their Descendants, and on the Use of the Produce of Their ­Labour (New York, 1811); Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce (Ithaca, NY, 2016), 73. 1 29. Holcomb, Moral Commerce, 13. 130. Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate, not Gradual Abolition; or, An Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West-­Indian Slavery (London, 1824), 4. 131. For more on Heyrick, see Midgley, “The Dissenting Voice of Elizabeth Heyrick: An Exploration of the Links between Gender, Religious Dissent, and Anti-­Slavery Radicalism,” in ­Women, Dissent, and Anti-­Slavery in Britain and Amer­i­ca, 1790–1865, ed. Elizabeth Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey (Oxford, 2011), 88–110; Clare Midgley, ­Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London, 1992), 61; Holcomb, Moral Commerce, 89–106. 132. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, bk. 4, chap. 8, v. ii, para. 49. 133. An Address to the Members of the Religious Society of Friends, on the Propriety of Abstaining from the Use of the Produce of Slave L ­ abour (Philadelphia, 1838), 5–6. 134. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Committee on Requited L ­ abor, Minutes, 1837–1839 (Ams 841); Glickman, “Buy for the Sake of the Slave,” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 894. 135. Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. 4, chap. 2, p. 456, para. 9. 136. Dupont de Nemours, cited in David Allen Harvey, “Slavery on the Balance Sheet: Pierre-­Samuel Dupont de Nemours and the Physiocratic Case for ­Free ­Labor,” Journal of the Western Society for French History 42 (2014): 80–81. 137. Fox, “Address to the ­people of G ­ reat Britain and Ireland to abstain from the use of West India Sugar, &c.” (1791), as quoted in Genius of Universal Emancipation, September 1830, 112.

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  Notes to Pages 52–59

138. “Tea-­Table Talk” by Agnes, Genius of Universal Emancipation, November 1832, 14–15. 139. Amy Dru Stanley, “Wages, Sin and Slavery,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2 (2004): 285. 2 . G o o d s o f Qu e s t i o n a b l e M o r a l i t y 1. Huntington Library, MSS 418, box 20, folder 20, January 30–­May 27, 1797, May 8. 2. Huntington Library, MSS 418, box 20, folder 20, January 30–­May 27, 1797, May 8. 3. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Prince­ton, 1977, 2013); Paul Cheney, Revolutionary Commerce (Cambridge, MA, 2010), 65. 4. Eric Noreen, “The Economics of Ethics: A New Perspective on Agency Theory,” Accounting, Organ­izations and Society 13, no. 4 (1988): 359–369; Cheryl S. McWatters and Yannick Lemarchand, “Accounting for Triangular Trade,” in French Accounting History: New Contributions, ed. Yves Levant (London, 2011), 133–135; Albane Forestier, “Principal-­Agent Prob­lems in the Slave Trade: The Case of the Rochelais Armateurs and Their Agents,” Working Paper no. 13 / 05, London School of Economics, http://­eprints​.­lse​.­ac​.­uk​/­22478​/­1​/­w p13​.­pdf; Robin Pearson and David Richardson, “Social Capital, Institutional Innovation, and Atlantic Trade before 1800,” Business History 50, no. 6 (2008): 765–780; Thomas M. Jones, “Instrumental Stakeholder Theory: A Synthesis of Ethics and Economics,” Acad­emy of Management Review 20, no. 2 (1995): 404–437; Stephen Behrendt, “Merchant Decision Making in the British Slave Trade,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 196. 5. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 109; V. R. Dorjahn and Christopher Fyfe, “Landlord and Stranger: Change in Tenancy Relations in Sierra Leone,” Journal of African History 3 (1962): 391–397. 6. Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY, 2011); Randy Sparks, Where the Negroes Are Masters (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 68–121; Robert Harms, The Diligent (New York, 2008); Margaret Priestley, West African Trade and Coast Society (Oxford, 1969); Hilary Jones, The Metis of Senegal (Bloomington, IN, 2013); Philip Havik, Silences and Soundbytes (Munster, 2004); Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are ­Here (Athens, OH, 2011); Pernille Ipsen, ­Daughters of the Trade (Philadelphia, 2015); Colleen Kriger, Making Money (Athens, OH, 2017). 7. Olatunji Ojo, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Local Ethics of Slavery in Yorubaland,” African Economic History 41 (2013): 81. 8. G. Ugo Nwokeji, The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra (Cambridge, 2010), 137–138. 9. Jennifer Lofkrantz and Paul Lovejoy, “Maintaining Network Bound­aries: Islamic Law and Commerce from Sahara to Guinea Shores,” Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 2 (2015): 219; Vincent Hiribarren, History of Borno (London, 2017). 10. Lofkrantz and Lovejoy, “Maintaining Network Bound­aries,” 214–215. 11. Ghyslaine Lydon, On Trans-­Saharan Trails (Cambridge, 2009), 313–314. 12. Lydon, On Trans-­Saharan Trails, 312–313, n160. 13. Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, WI, 1975), 327.

Notes to Pages 59–61 

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14. The “geegaw myth”: Curtin, Economic Change, 312; Stanley Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of Eu­ro­pean Trade Goods,” History in Africa 22 (1995): 6; Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 182 (2004): 110–112. 15. The National Archives, UK (hereafter cited as TNA) T 70 / 1268, Accra, July 15, 1791. 16. Marion Johnson, “The Ounce in Eighteenth-­Century West African Trade,” Journal of African History 7, no. 2 (1966): 214. 17. Karl Polanyi, “Sortings and Ounce Trade in the West African Slave Trade,” Journal of African History 5, no. 3 (1964): 383; Adam Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels: A History of the Galinhas Country (West Africa), 1730–1890 (Wiesbaden, 1983), 28; Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa. 18. James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce (Cambridge, 2003), 69. 19. Malachy Postlethwayt, Britain’s Commercial Interest (London, 1772), 222; William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Com­pany and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013), 206–207; Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006), 272–273. 20. Olaudah Equiano, The In­ter­est­ing Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (London, 1789), reprinted in Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade, ed. Philip D. Curtin (Long Grove, IL, 1997), 77. W ­ hether Equiano had ever actually lived in Africa has been a subject of long-­standing historical debate. For our purposes, the answer is somewhat irrelevant, ­because the abolitionists at the time believed he had, and they ­shaped their arguments about African consumerism around his narrative. 21. Curtin, Economic Change, 156–157. 22. Curtin, Economic Change, 155. 23. Jennifer Lofkrantz, “Protecting Freeborn Muslims: The Sokoto Caliphate’s Attempts to Prevent Illegal Enslavement and its Ac­cep­t ance of the Strategy of Ransoming,” Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 1 (2011): 109–127; Bruce Hall, A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (Cambridge, 2011); Lofkrantz and Lovejoy, “Maintaining Network Bound­aries,” 213. 24. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1998), 314. 25. A. D. H. Bivar, “The Wathiqat ahl al-­Sudan: A Manifesto of the Fulani Jihad,” Journal of African History 11, no. 2 (1961): 240–241. 26. Bivar, “The Wathiqat ahl al-­Sudan,” 240–241. 27. Nana Asma’u, “Be Sure of God’s Truth (Tabbat hakika),” verse 20, in Jean Boyd and Beverly Blow Mack, The Collected Works of Nana Asma’u in En­glish (Ann Arbor, 1997), 51. 28. Bivar, “The Wathiqat ahl al-­Sudan,”: 241; Jennifer Lofkrantz, “Idealism and Pragmatism: The Related Muslim West African Discourses on Identity, Captivity and Ransoming,” African Economic History, 42 (2014): 90. 29. Nana Asma’u, “Be Sure of God’s Truth (Tabbat hakika),” verse 27, in Boyd and Mack, Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, 52; Lofkrantz, “Idealism and Pragmatism,” 90; William Gervase Clarence-­Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (Oxford, 2005), 152–155.

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  Notes to Pages 61–66

30. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Pro­g ress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-­Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1839), 167. 31. Report of the Committee Managing a Fund Raised by Some Friends, for the Purpose of Promoting African Instruction; with an Account of a Visit to the Gambia and Sierra Leone (London, 1822), 32–33. 32. Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce (Ithaca, NY, 2016), 17–19. Holcomb cites significant protests in 1688, 1693, and 1698 that support this line of argument. 33. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (London, 1689), V.28. 34. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, IV.23. 35. Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP) AM 6825, “A Report on the State of the Slave Trade on the Western Coast of Africa by Commodore Sir Robert Mends,” 1822. 36. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, July 14, 1793. 37. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, V.I.19. 38. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Collection 490, London, August 1, 1809, Zachary Macaulay to Benjamin Rush, chairman. 39. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Princi­ple of Population, 6th ed. (London, 1826), appendix. 40. Frederic Shoberl, ed., Africa: Containing a Description of the Manners and Customs, with Some Historical Particulars of the Moors of the Zahara, and of the Negro Nations between the Rivers Senegal and Gambia: Illustrated with Two Maps, and Forty-­Five Coloured Engravings (London, 1821), 4:1–2; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment (Oxford, 2002), 221. 41. Shoberl, Africa, 4:1–2. 42. Ralph Austen and Woodruff Smith, “Images of Africa and British Slave-­Trade Abolition: The Transition to an Imperialist Ideology, 1787–1807,” African Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (1969): 69–83; Philip Curtin, Image of Africa (London, 1965). 43. James Stanfield, Observations on a Guinea Voyage (London, 1788), 22. 44. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son (New Haven, 2014), 29. 45. Lawrence Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in Amer­i­ca (Chicago, 2009), 61. 46. Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, “Introduction,” in Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade, and Slavery in Atlantic Africa, ed. Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt (Rochester, NY, 2013), 2; Christopher Brown, “The Origins of ‘Legitimate Commerce,’ ” in Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt, Commercial Agriculture, 138–157. Legitimate commerce has been the subject of much writing on West Africa, but is largely focused on the Bights of Benin and Biafra in the period of palm oil expansion. 47. The National Archives, United Kingdom (henceforth cited as TNA) T 70 / 35, Governor and Council to African Committee, December 26, 1809; Ty M. R ­ eese, “ ‘Eating’ Luxury: Fante Middlemen, British Goods, and Changing Dependencies on the Gold Coast, 1750–1821,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66, no. 4 (2009): 869. 48. See Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freetown (Jefferson, NC, 1999); Gibril Cole, The Krio of Sierra Leone (Athens, OH, 2013); Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962); Bronwen Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone

Notes to Pages 66–70 

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and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013); Padraic Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors (New Haven, 2017); Maya Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles (New York, 2011). 49. Bruce Mouser, “Accommodation and Assimilation in the Landlord-­Stranger Relationship,” available at http://­w ww​.­tubmaninstitute​.­ca​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­fi le​ /­accommodation ​_­80​.­pdf. 50. Mouser, “Accommodation.” 51. Suzanne Schwarz, “Commerce, Civilization and Chris­t ian­ity: The Development of the Sierra Leone Com­pany,” in Liverpool and Transatlantic Antislavery, ed. David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz, and Anthony Tibbles (Liverpool, 2007), 268. 52. TNA CUST 5 / 2, 1812. 53. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL) BFBR B.513 F.6, Newport, August 9, 1794, Martin Benson to Brown, Benson & Ives. 54. Archive National du Senegal (hereafter cited as ANS), Dakar, O1 Navigation, 1809. 55. JCBL BFBR B.611, Schooner Olive Branch. 56. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20, folder 19, January 18–­May 20, 1797, February 22. 57. JCBL BFBR B.591 F.7, Disbursements at Sierra Leone, Trade Book. 58. Compare to ­later purchasing power in nineteenth-­century Freetown, Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013), 42–45; or to Gold Coast standards of living in the first half of the eigh­teenth ­century, Klas Ronnback, “Living Standards on the Pre-­colonial Gold Coast: A Quantitative Estimate of African Laborers’ Welfare Ratios,” Eu­ro­pean Review of Economic History 18 (2014): 185–202. 59. Anna Maria Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the years 1791–1792–1793 (London, 1794), December 28, 1792; James L. A. Webb Jr. “On Currency and Credit in the Western Sahel, 1700–1850,” in Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, ed. Endre Stiansen and Jane Guyer (Uppsala, 2000), 40. 60. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20, folder 21, June 7, 1797, “Remarks on the Health, Trade, Cultivation, and Civilization of Sierra Leone.” 61. JCBL BFBR B.611, Schooner Olive Branch. 62. JCBL BFBR B.611 F.8, Schooner Olive Branch. 63. E. Frances White, Freetown’s ­Women Traders (Ann Arbor, 1987). 64. Assuming 8½ yards of fabric for a typical, fash­ion­a ble late eighteenth-­century gown. 65. France Magrabi, Young Sook Chung, Sanghee Sohn Cha, and Se-­Jeong Yang, The Economics of House­hold Consumption (New York, 1991). 66. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 21, June 7, 1797, “Remarks on the Health, Trade, Cultivation, and Civilization of Sierra Leone.” 67. Falconbridge, Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone, letter 9, Sierra Leone, August 25, 1792. 68. In Freetown, in the Gambia River, and in the Senegal River, the ­going rate for pi­lotage was the equivalent of £2. JCBL BFBR B.636; Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s Papers, “Trade In and Out.” 69. JCBL B.611 F.8, Schooner Olive Branch, bill for 1802 for Martin Benson, “bought of the S. L. Com­pany Store,” June 14.

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  Notes to Pages 70–72

70. Warren Whatley, “The Gun-­Slave Hypothesis and the 18th ­Century Slave Trade,” African Economic History Working Paper Series, No. 35 / 2017. 71. Walter Hawthorne, “Strategies of the Decentralized: Defending Communities from Slave Raiders in Coastal Guinea-­Bissau, 1450–1815,” in Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies, ed. Sylviane A. Diouf (Ohio, 2003), 161; Alvares, Ethiopia Minor, cited by Hawthorne, “Strategies of the Decentralized,” 163; Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2011), 66–68; Randy Sparks, Where the Negroes Are Masters (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 126. 72. National Center for Arts and Culture, The Gambia, Fajara Oral Archive, the Gambia: 306A 15 / 9 / 74; Alhaji Kemo Kuyate; Niumi History . . . ​Slave Trade; Banjul; B. Km Sidibe and D. Wright; account of Kemo Kutate, griot of the Singate and Maskalo families of Baddibu Saba. 73. P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678–1712 (London, 1962); J. Montefiore, An Au­then­tic Account of the late Expedition to Bulam on the Coast of Africa, with a description of the pre­sent settlement of Sierra Leone and the Adjacent Country (London, 1794), 46. 74. Christopher DeCorse, “Fortified Towns of the Koinadugu Plateau: Northern Sierra Leone in the Pre-­Atlantic and Atlantic Worlds,” in Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa, ed. J. Cameron Monroe and Akinwumi Ogundiran (Cambridge, 2012), 293–294. 75. Osborn, Our New Husbands Are ­Here, 69–70. 76. Rudolph T. Ware III, The Walking Qur’an (Chapel Hill, NC, 2014), 118. 77. David Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns and Their Influence on the Eigh­t eenth ­C entury En­g lish Slave Trade,” in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (New York, 1979); Jeremy Prestholdt, “On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 755–781. 78. Gavin White, “Firearms in Africa: An Introduction,” Journal of African History 12, no. 2 (1971): 179; Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970), 175. 79. Joseph Inikori, “The Import of Firearms into West Africa 1750–1807: A Quantitative Analy­sis,” Journal of African History 18, no. 3 (1977): 355. 80. Inikori, “Quantitative Analy­sis,” 355; Rory Pilossof, “  ‘Guns ­Don’t Colonise ­People . . .’: The Role and Use of Firearms in Pre-­colonial and Colonial Africa,” Kronos 36, no. 1 (2010); Robin Law, “Horses, Firearms, and Po­l iti­cal Power in Pre-­colonial West Africa,” Past & Pre­sent 72 (1976): 112–132. 81. Rodney, A History, 171–172. See also Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa, chap. 3; Curtin, Economic Change; Toby Green, ed. Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-­colonial Western Africa (Oxford, 2012). 82. TNA CUST 17 / 10. 83. Inikori, “Quantitative Analy­sis,” 346. 84. TNA CUST 8 / 3.

Notes to Pages 72–77 

• 269

85. ANS, Dakar AOF S1 2, “Notes sur le ser­v ices des douanes a Gorée: Ils se procurent des Americains du rhum, du tombac, du farine, et du plancher” and “Les Anglais du comptoir du St Marie leur fournissent du fer, de la poudre.” 86. TNA CUST 8 / 1. 87. Falconbridge, Two Voyages to Sierra Leone; Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, “Introduction,” in Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt, Commercial Agriculture, 2. 88. JCBL BFBR B.591 F.6, list of goods on freight for the Sierra Leone Com­pany; Martin Benson memorandum for Sierra Leone Cargo. Brown, Benson & Ives was the first partnership, which lasted from 1792 to 1796. Brown & Ives was its successor, operating from 1796 to 1914. 89. JCBL, BFBR B.591 F.7, Disbursements at Sierra Leone. 90. Marion Johnson, “Polanyi, Peukert and the Po­l iti­cal Economy of Dahomey,” Journal of African History 21 (1980): 396; Law, “Horses, Firearms,” 112–132. 91. TNA T70 / 1262. 92. Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns,” 312–315. 93. ANS, Dakar Coutumes, AOF G 13G15, 1807. 94. Stanley Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their Slaves,” 21; Ray Kea, “Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of African History 12, no. 2 (1971): 185–213; Priya Satia, Empire of Guns (New York, 2018), 187–188. 95. William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (Boston, 1826), 261. 96. Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury,” 85–142. 97. Inikori, “Quantitative Analy­sis,” 361. 98. Jean-­Pierre Warnier, “Trade Guns in the Grassfields of Cameroon,” Paideuma 26 (1980): 85. 99. Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World (Berkeley, CA, 2008) 7; Daniel Headrick, Tools of Empire (Oxford, 1981), 106–107. 100. Curtin, Economic Change, 153. 101. Holcomb, Moral Commerce; Glickman, Buying Power. 102. Simon Heap, “The Quality of Liquor in Nigeria During the Colonial Era,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 29–47. 103. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20, folder 19, January 18–­May 20, 1797, February 25, 1797. 104. Hogg’s Instructor, vol. 1, July–­December 1853, “Recent Discoveries in South Africa,” 432. 105. Hogg’s Instructor, “Recent Discoveries in South Africa.” 106. Michael Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad (Cambridge, 1992), 124–132. 107. Bruce Mouser, “Trade and Politics in the Nunez and Pongo Rivers, 1790–1865” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–­Lacrosse, 1972); TNA CO 271 / 2, January 26, 1822. 108. Reports from Committees, 1865, vol. 1, House of Commons, June 26, 1865, “Report from the Select Committee Appointed to Consider the State of the British Establishments on the Western Coast of Africa, Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee on Africa (Western Coast),” April 27, 1865, 95–96.

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  Notes to Pages 77–84

109. Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 127; Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City (Bloomington, IN, 2007), 91–102; Parliamentary Papers, 1852, LIV (221), Papers relative to the reduction of Lagos by Her Majesty’s forces on the west coast of Africa, 191–192. 110. Heap, “The Quality of Liquor,” 29. 111. James F. Searing, “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal (Portsmouth, NH, 2002); Martin Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal (Stanford, 1968). 112. Justin Willis, “Drinking Power: Alcohol and History in Africa,” History Compass 3 (2005): 1. 113. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt. 3. Protect ing Ethic a l Br a nds 1. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 19, folder 2, October 5–­December 12, 1793, October 19, 1793. 2. Huntington Library, MSS MY 404, November 23, 1828, Selina to Zachary Macaulay. 3. Anna Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement, and British Anti-­Slavery campaigns: the ­Free ­Labor Cotton Depot in Street,” (PhD diss., University of Brighton, 2012), 105; The Friend, 6th month, 1846; “­Free ­Labour Ware­house,” The Slave, January 1851, 3. 4. Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP), “Constitution of the American F ­ ree Produce Association,” Preamble. 5. Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 1831, 154. 6. Genius of Universal Emancipation, February 1831, 169. 7. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Mary Johnson, Buckingham Female Anti-­Slavery Society, August 4, 1837, to Mary Grew. 8. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL) BFBR B.637, November 23, 1819, set of instructions for John Bowers and Jeremiah Goff. 9. The National Archives, UK (hereafter cited as TNA) CO 270 / 1, Gazette, January 17, 1818. 10. William Novak, The P ­ eople’s Welfare (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 88–90, 287–288. A huge variety of regulations w ­ ere on the books for governing the labeling or marking of barrels and other shipped goods. 11. Hannah Farber, “The Marks of War,” paper presented at the conference “Coming to Terms?,” McNeil Center for Early American Studies, November 8–10, 2018. 12. Maxine Berg, “From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in Eighteenth-­ Century Britain,” Economic History Review 55 (2002): 1–30. This is basically the opposite argument of many institutionalists: see Douglass North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981); Keith E. Maskus, Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy (Washington, DC, 2000). 13. Charles Rappeleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown B ­ rothers, the Slave Trade and the Revolution (New York, 2007). 14. Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 182 (2004); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014).

Notes to Pages 84–87 

• 271

15. Nora Slonimsky, “ ‘The Engine of ­Free Expression’: The Po­l iti­cal Economy of Copyright in the Colonial British Atlantic and Early National United States” (PhD diss, City University of New York, 2017); Steven Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters (Cambridge, MA, 2007); Oren Bracha, “Early American Printing Privileges: The Ambivalent Origins of Authors’ Copyright in Amer­i­ca,” in Privilege and Property: Essays on the History of Copyright (Cambridge, 2010), 89–114. 16. Phil Handler, “Forgery and the End of the ‘Bloody Code’ in Early Nineteenth ­Century E ­ ngland,” Historical Journal 48, no. 3 (2005): 689. 17. Randall McGowan, “From Pillory to Gallows: The Punishment of Forgery in the Age of the Financial Revolution,” Past & Pre­sent 165 (1999): 107. 18. Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters; Teresa da Silva Lopes and Mark Casson, “Brand Protection and the Globalization of British Business,” Business History Review 86 (2012): 287–310; Berg, “From Imitation to Invention; Toyin Falola, “ ‘Manufacturing Trou­ble’: Currency Forgery in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria,” African Economic History 25 (1997): 128. 19. Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains (Chicago, 2004), 93. 20. Paul G. E. Clemens, “The Consumer Culture of the M ­ iddle Atlantic, 1760–1820,” William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2005): 609. 21. Mark Dodgson, “Exploring New Combinations in Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Social Networks, Schumpeter, and the Case of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795),” Industrial and Corporate Change 20, no. 4 (2011): 1133–1139. 22. Martha Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good while D ­ oing Well: The Decision to Manufacture Products That Supported the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in G ­ reat Britain,” Slavery & Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008): 219–231; Lawrence Glickman, “ ‘Buy for the Sake of the Slave’: Abolitionism and the Origins of American Consumer Activism,” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 889–912; Deirdre Coleman, “Con­spic­u­ous Consumption: White Abolitionism and En­glish W ­ omen’s Protest Writing in the 1790s,” ELH 61, no. 2 (1994): 341–362; Clare Midgley, “Slave Sugar Boycotts, Female Activism and the Domestic Base of British Anti-­Slavery Culture,” Slavery & Abolition 17, no. 3 (1996): 137–162; Julie Holcomb, “Blood Stained Sugar: Gender, Commerce, and the British Slave-­Trade Debates,” Slavery & Abolition 35, no. 4 (2014): 620; Terry Newholm, Sandra Newholm, and Deirdre Shaw, “A History for Consumption Ethics,” Business History 57, no. 2 (2015): 6; Sam Margolin, “ ‘And Freedom to the Slave’: Antislavery Ceramics, 1787–1865,” Ceramics in Amer­i­ca (2002): 80–109; L. A. Compton, “Josiah Wedgwood and the Slave Trade: A Wider View,” Northern Ceramic Society 100 (1995): 50–69; Mimi Sheller, “Bleeding Humanity and Gendered Embodiments: From Antislavery Sugar Boycotts to Ethical Consumers,” Humanity 2, no. 2 (2011): 176–177; Mary Guyatt, “The Wedgwood Slave Medallion: Values in Eighteenth-­Century Design,” Journal of Design History 13 (2000): 93–105; Carol Faulkner, “The Root of the Evil: ­Free Produce and Radical Antislavery, 1820–1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 3 (2007): 377–405. 23. T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial Amer­i­ca, 1690–1776,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 4 (1986): 476; Jon Stobart, “Selling (through) Politeness: Advertising Provincial Shops in Eigh­teenth C ­ entury ­England,” Cultural and Social History 5, no. 3 (2008): 309–328; E. Robinson, “Eighteenth-­Century

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  Notes to Pages 87–90

Commerce and Fashion: Matthew Boulton’s Marketing Techniques,” Economic History Review (1963): 39–60. 24. Joanna Cohen, Luxurious Citizens (Philadelphia, 2017), 149–180; David Jaffee, A New Nation of Goods (Philadelphia, 2010). 25. Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good while ­Doing Well,” 219–231. 26. Society of Friends Library, London. East India sugar basins. B Henderson, china-­warehouse, Rye-­Lane, Peckham. Printed at the Camberwell Press, by J. B. G. Vogel (ca. 1828) and B. Henderson. 27. Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce (Ithaca, NY, 2016), 36–62; Midgley, “Slave Sugar Boycotts,” 137–162. 28. Compare to modern theory: “Fair trade labels are not only purveyors of ‘choice’ information but impor­t ant signifiers providing the material symbolism required for self and social identity communication,” in John Connolly and Deirdre Shaw, “Identifying Fair Trade in Consumption Choice,” Journal of Strategic Marketing 14, no. 4 (2006): 361. 29. Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good by ­Doing Well,” 225. 30. Ashli White, “Selling Revolution across the Atlantic,” paper presented at the CRE Annual Conference, February 2014. 31. “Taste is caught up in the politics of value and, often intimately, though not invariably, involved in practices of distinction,” in Ann Brower Stahl, “Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches,” American Anthropologist, n.s., 104, no. 3 (2002): 833–834. Cary Carson, Face Value (Charlottesville, VA, 2017), 184; Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of ­T hings (New York, 1986); Pierre Bourdieu, “The Aesthetic Sense as the Sense of Distinction,” reprinted in The Consumer Society Reader, ed. Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt (New York, 2000), 206. 32. Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Prince­ton, 2011), 55–56; Lawrence Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in Amer­i­ca (Chicago, 2009), 72. 33. James Bartholemew claims credit for the invention of this phrase: “I In­ven­ted ‘Virtue Signalling.’ Now It’s Taking Over the World,” The Spectator, October 10, 2015. Philip Corr and Anke Plagnol, Behavioural Economics: The Basics (Basingstoke, 2018), 21; Martha A. Starr, “The Social Economics of Ethical Consumption: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence,” Journal of Socio-­Economics 38 (2009): 916–925. 34. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Pro­g ress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-­Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1808), 2:191–192. 35. W. P. Garrison, “­Free Produce among the Quakers,” Atlantic Monthly, 22 (1868): 485–494. 36. Library of the Society of Friends, London, n.d. (1790s), East India Sugar Sold, Raw and Refined, by Smith and Leaper, No. 43 Bishopsgate Street Within, and No. 157, Bishopsgate Without London. 37. Haverford College Quaker Special Collections (hereafter HCQSC), George W. Taylor letterbooks, August 10, 1853, to Josias F. Browne & Co.

Notes to Pages 91–96 

• 273

38. All prices from Carroll D. Wright, “Comparative Wages, Prices, and Cost of Living,” from the sixteenth annual report of the Mas­s a­c hu­s etts Bureau of Statistics of ­L abor, for 1885, 91. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbook, October 27, 1853. 39. Wright, “Comparative Wages,” 118. 40. HCQSC, George W. Taylor account books, 2:28. 41. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, September 7, 1852; and Report of the Board of Man­ag­ers of the ­Free Produce Association of Friends of New-­York Yearly Meeting, New York, 1853. 42. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbook, October 30, 1860, “To His Excellency, S. A. Benson, President Republic of Liberia.” 43. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement and British Anti-­ Slavery Campaigns,” 13; Katz-­Hyman, “­Doing Good while D ­ oing Well,” 219–231; Coleman, “Con­spic­u­ous Consumption,” 341–362. 44. Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, “Domestic Economy,” Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 1831. 45. Chandler, “Domestic Economy.” 46. Glickman, Buying Power, 82–83. 47. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement,” 57. 48. Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 26, 1828, “­Free Cotton Goods.” 49. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Joseph Bancroft, Wilmington, DE, November 4, 1839. 50. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, American F ­ ree Produce Association Correspondence, incoming: 1838–1840, letter from Samuel Hill, Randolph County, North Carolina, December 4, 1839. 51. Genius of Universal Emancipation, August 1830. 52. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement,” 106; Deborah Rossi, “The Stuff of History: American F ­ ree Produce Association Label 1839–1847,” Connecticut History 47, no. 2 (2009): 252–255. 53. “­Free ­Labour Ware­house”; Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement,” 106. 54. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Samuel Hill, Randolph County, North Carolina, December 4, 1839; letter from Thomas Kennedy, Wayne County, North Carolina, to DLM, December 13, 1839; letter from Pindar Anbrim, Woodbury, NJ, to DLM, December 18, 1839; letter from Borden White, Galen County, North Carolina, May 12, 1839. 55. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, August 8, 1852, to Joel Parker. 56. Katherine Carté Engel, “The Stranger’s Store: Moral Capitalism in Moravian Bethlehem, 1753–1775,” Early American Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 90–126. 57. James L. Huston, “Abolitionists, Po­l iti­cal Economists, and Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 3 (2000): 489. 58. Library of the Society of Friends, London, MS box 8.3 / 1–2, MS box 8.4; Vaughan Kett, “Quaker W ­ omen, the F ­ ree Produce Movement”; Anna P. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women and Anti-­Slavery Activism: Eleanor Clark and the F ­ ree ­Labor Cotton Deport in Street,” Quaker Studies 19, no. 1 (2014): 137–156.

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  Notes to Pages 96–101

59. Ruth Ketring Nuermberger, The F ­ ree Produce Movement: A Quaker Protest against Slavery (Durham, NC, 1942), 119. 60. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from W. Hance, Galena, Delaware County, Ohio, to DLM, November 18, 1839. 61. Robert Purvis and Frederick Hinton, “Colored ­Free Produce Society, Report of the Committee,” Genius of Universal Emancipation, May 1831; The Liberator, April 5, 1834; Julie Winch, ed. The Elite of Our P ­ eople: Joseph Willson’s Sketches of Black Upper-­Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia (University Park, PA, 2000), 136–139. 62. HSP, Fifth Annual Report of the American F ­ ree Produce Assoc., 1843. Lydia White is listed as a grocer in the 1840 Philadelphia Directory, based at 219 N 2. A. McElroy’s Philadelphia Directory for 1840 (Philadelphia, 1840), 271. For 1844 she is listed at NW 5th and Cherry (337), and is not listed in 1833. 63. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Esther Jones, North Carolina (a Quaker), November 14, 1839. 64. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Elizabeth Kent, March 30, 1840. 65. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Joshua Ely, Attlebon, March 13, 1840. 66. Genius of Universal Emancipation, August 11, 1827. 67. O’Brien’s Commercial Intelligencer (Philadelphia, 1840). 68. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, December 5, 1837, Society of Friends, Philadelphia yearly meeting, Committee on Requited L ­ abor, minutes, 1837–1839, Ams 841. 69. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20A, folder 28, August 8, 1798. 70. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, Macaulay’s journal, June 30 1793. 71. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20, folder 20, January 30–­May 27, 1797, May 8. 72. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 19, folder 2, October 5–­December 12, 1793, October 19, 1793. 73. Farber, “The Marks of War.” 74. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 19, folder 2, October 5–­December 12, 1793, October 19, 1793. 75. Jane Guyer, ed., Money M ­ atters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Heinemann, 1994), 22. 76. Frank Trentmann, “Crossing Divides: Consumption and Globalization in History,” Journal of Consumer Culture 9, no. 2 (2009): 192; Jeremy Prestholdt, “On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 755–781. 77. Frederic Shoberl, ed., Africa: Containing a Description of the Manners and Customs, with Some Historical Particulars of the Moors of the Zahara, and of the Negro Nations between the Rivers Senegal and Gambia: Illustrated with Two Maps, and Forty-­Five Coloured Engravings (London, 1821), 1:161–166. 78. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, August 13, 1796. See Falola, “ ‘Manufacturing Trou­ble,’ ” for a ­later example.

Notes to Pages 101–104 

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79. Sara Horrell, “Consumption, 1700–1870,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, vol. 1, 1700–1870, ed. Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, and Paul Johnson (Cambridge, 2014), 248. 80. A. J. H. Goodwin, “Archaeology and Benin Architecture,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 1, no. 2 (1957): 65–85. 81. Berg, “From Imitation to Invention,” 14; Neil De Marchi and Hans J. Van Miegroet, “Ingenuity, Preference, and the Pricing of Pictures: The Smith-­R eynolds Connection,” in Economic Engagements with Art, ed. Neil De Marchi and Draufurd D. W. Goodwin (Durham, NC, 1999), 383–385. 82. Guyer, Marginal Gains, 91–92. 83. Guyer, Marginal Gains, 92. 84. Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Glencoe, IL, 1950), 318; Sara Horrell, “Consumption, 1700–1870,” 252–253. 85. Nana Asma’u, “Be Sure of God’s Truth (Tabbat hakika),” verse 28, in Jean Boyd and Beverly Blow Mack, The Collected Works of Nana Asma’u in En­glish (Ann Arbor, 1997), 52. 86. Anne Ruderman, “Supplying the Slave Trade: How Eu­ro­pe­a ns Met African Demand for Eu­ro­pean Manufactured Products, Commodities and Re-­exports, 1670–1790” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2016); Jody Benjamin, “The Texture of Change: Cloth, Commerce, and History in Western Africa, 1700–1850” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2016); Kazuo Kobayashi, Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa (Basingstoke, 2019). See also David Richardson, “West African Consumption Patterns and Their Influence on the Eighteenth-­Century En­glish Slave Trade,” in The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, ed. Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (New York, 1979), 308. For more on African consumerism, see Prestholdt, “On the Global Repercussions,” 755–781; Ty M. R ­ eese, “ ‘Eating’ Luxury: Fante Middlemen, British Goods, and Changing Dependencies on the Gold Coast, 1750–1821,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66, no. 4 (2009): 851–872; George Metcalf, “A Microcosm of Why Africans Sold Slaves: Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s,” Journal of African History 28 (1987): 377–394; Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (Oxford, 1960, 1996), 108; Stanley B. Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of Eu­ro­pean Goods,” History in Africa 22 (1995): 5–43; Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970), 171–172. 87. Anna Maria Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the years 1791–1792–1793 (London, 1794), January 11, 1793. 88. Suzanne Schwarz, “A Just and Honourable Commerce: Abolitionist Experimentation in Sierra Leone in the Late Eigh­teenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” African Economic History 45, no. 1 (2017): 1–45. 89. JCBL BFBR B.513, Ship Charlotte, F.7, account of sales in Sierra Leone. 90. JCBL BFBR B.513, Ship Charlotte, F.7, Freetown, January 30, 1795. 91. Jan Hogendorn, “Mechanisms to Assure the Quality of Imported Goods in Precolonial West African Trade,” African Economic History 27 (1999): 29–30, 26–27.

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  Notes to Pages 105–111

92. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, journal of Zachary Macaulay, box 19, folder 1, June 16, 1793. 93. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 19, folder 1, June 16–­October 15, 1793, September 26, 1793. 94. JCBL BFBR B.513, Ship Charlotte, F.6, bought by John Tilley, Bance Island. 4. Rot ten Cr edit 1. Huntington Library, MSS MY 369, August 16–­September 7, 1830, Henry William Macaulay to Zachary Macaulay. 2. Nana Asma’u, “Be Sure of God’s Truth (Tabbat hakika),” verse 38, in Jean Boyd and Beverly Blow Mack, The Collected Works of Nana Asma’u in En­glish (Ann Arbor, 1997), 55. 3. Gareth Austin, “Indigenous Credit Institutions in West Africa, c. 1750–1960,” in Local Suppliers of Credit in the Third World, 1750–1960, ed. Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara (Chippenham, 1993), 114. 4. Colin W. Newbury, “Credit in Early Nineteenth C ­ entury West African Trade,” Journal of African History 13, no. 1 (1972): 94. 5. Jan Hogendorn, “Mechanisms to Assure the Quality of Imported Goods in Precolonial Africa,” African Economic History 27 (1999): 23–43; Stephen Behrendt, A. J. H. Latham, and David Northrup, The Diary of Antera Duke: An Eighteenth-­ Century African Slave Trader (Oxford, 2010), 79. 6. Philip Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, WI, 1975), 302. 7. James L. A. Webb, “On Currency and Credit in the Western Sahel, 1700–1850,” in Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, ed. Endre Stiansen and Jane Guyer (Uppsala, 2000), 40; Robin Law, “Cowries, Gold, and Dollars: Exchange Rate Instability and Domestic Price Inflation in Dahomey in the Eigh­teenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Money ­Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, ed. Jane Guyer (Heinemann, 1994), 53–73. 8. Gareth Austin, “Indigenous Credit Institutions in West Africa, c. 1750–1960,” in Local Suppliers of Credit in the Third World, 1750–1960, ed. Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara (Chippenham, 1993), 108; Gareth Austin, ­Labour, Land, and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to F ­ ree ­Labor in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester, NY, 2005), 138. 9. Ghyslaine Lydon, On Trans-­Saharan Trails (Cambridge, 2009), 336–337. 10. Austin, ­Labour, Land and Capital, 138. 11. Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith, “An American Revolutionary Tradition,” in Capitalism Takes Command, ed. Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith (Chicago, 2012), 3. 12. Wendy Woloson, “In Hock: Pawning in Early Amer­i­ca,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 39. 13. James Searing, West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce (Cambridge, 2003), 128; Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2011), 133; Paul Lovejoy and Toyin Falola, eds., Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa (Trenton, 2003); Austin, ­Labour, Land and Capital, 140.

Notes to Pages 111–113 

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14. Curtin, Economic Change, 307. 15. Bonnie Martin, “Neighbor-­to-­Neighbor Capitalism: Local Credit Networks and the Mortgaging of Slaves,” in Slavery’s Capitalism, ed. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia, 2016), 112. See also Edward Baptist, “Toxic Debt, Liar Loans, Collateralized and Securitized ­Human Beings, and the Panic of 1837,” in Capitalism Takes Command, ed. Michael Zakim and Gary Kornblith (Chicago, 2012); Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837 (Cambridge, 2015); Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy (Oxford, 2004). 16. Austin, ­Labour, Land, and Capital, 140–150. Curtin, Economic Change, 303–304; Paul E. Lovejoy, “Pawnship, Debt, and ‘Freedom’ in Atlantic Africa during the Era of the Slave Trade: A Reassessment,” Journal of African History 55, no. 1 (2014): 55–78; Judith Spicksley, “Pawns on the Gold Coast: The Rise of Asante and Shifts in Security for Debt, 1680–1750,” Journal of African History 54, no. 2 (2013): 147–175; Webb, “On Currency and Credit,” 47–48. 17. J. Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone (London, 1788), 155. 18. David Richardson, “Anglo-­A frican Credit Relations,” in From Slave Trade to Empire, ed. Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau (Oxford, 2004), 55–57. 19. Austin, “Indigenous Credit Institutions,” 104–105; 101; Kwame Arhin, “Aspects of the Shanti Northern Trade in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Africa 60 (1970): 365. 20. Duncan Foley, Adam’s Fallacy (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 116; Martin, “Neighbor-­to-­ Neighbor Capitalism”; Baptist, “Toxic Debt”; Bronwen Everill, “All the Baubles They Needed: ‘Industriousness’ and Slavery in Saint-­Louis and Gorée,” Early American Studies (Fall 2017): 714–739. 21. Thomas Cooper, Facts Illustrative of the Condition of the Negro Slaves in Jamaica (London, 1824), 26. 22. Joseph Hawkins, A History of a Voyage to the Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1797), 112. For more on the onerous debt of the slave trade in the Angolan trade, see Joseph Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, WI, 1988), 226–241. 23. The National Archives, United Kingdom (hereafter cited as TNA), WO 1 / 352, “Report from the Committee on the Petition of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Com­pany,” 1802, 16–17. 24. Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY, 2011), 59. 25. Nathalie Sarthou-­Lejous, L’Ethique de la dette (Paris, 1997), 2, quoted in Janet Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa (Prince­ton, 2005), 75. 26. Roy Dilley, “The Visibility and Invisibility of Production among Senegalese Craftsmen,” in Social Life of ­T hings, ed. Arjun Appadurai (New York, 1986), 231. 27. Charles Piot, “Of Slaves and the Gift: Kabre Sale of Kin,” Journal of African History 37 (1996): 36. 28. Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern ­England (Basingstoke, 1998); E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the En­glish Crowd in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Past & Pre­sent 50 (1971): 76–136.

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  Notes to Pages 113–118

29. Laurence Fontaine, The Moral Economy (Cambridge, 2014), 186–187. 30. Fontaine, The Moral Economy, 205–206. 31. Jerry Muller, The Mind and the Market (New York, 2002), 94. 32. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 150. 33. Haverford College Quaker Special Collections (hereafter cited as HCQSC), ­Free Produce Society of Friends, “At an Adjourned Meeting of the Board of Man­ag­ers Held at No 231 High Street 10th Month 4th 1845,” 13. 34. TNA CO 270 / 2, Minutes of Council, November 4, 1793; Suzanne Schwarz, “Commerce, Civilization and Chris­t ian­ity: The Development of the Sierra Leone Com­pany,” in Liverpool and Transatlantic Antislavery, ed. David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz, and Anthony Tibbles (Liverpool, 2007), 264. 35. Angus Dalrymple-­Smith and Pieter Woltjer, “Commodities, Prices and Risk: The Changing Market for Non-­Slave Products in Pre-­a bolition West Africa,” African Economic History Working Paper, No. 31 / 2016. 36. George E. Brooks, Yankee Traders,, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen: A History of American Trade with West Africa in the Nineteenth C ­ entury (Boston, 1970), 17; Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837; Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 44. 37. Huntington Library, MSS MY 584, January 30, 1816; MY 586, July 16, 1816; MY 673, July 18, 1816; MY 587, July 23, 1816; MY 619, January 23, 1822. 38. Huntington Library, MSS MY 134, January 31, 1822. 39. Huntington Library, MSS MY 428, March 26, 1815. 40. Huntington Library, MSS MY 105, MY 153, MY 954, MY 436. 41. TNA CO 270 / 1, Sierra Leone Gazette, “A List of Merchant Vessels and Their Burthen,” January 31, 1818. 42. Newbury, “Credit,” 87. 43. Austin, “Local Suppliers of Credit”; Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962), 143. 44. JCBL BFBR B.513, Newport, September 11, 1794, Martin Benson to Brown, Benson & Ives; Rappeleye, Sons of Providence; Slavery and Justice: Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice; The Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, http://­c ds​.­l ibrary​.­brown​.­e du​/­projects​/­s ally​/­; finding aids compiled by Catherine Osborne DeCesare and Carole Foster, 1996, John Car­ter Brown Library. 45. Between 1801 and 1811, twenty-­t wo ships left Philadelphia for West African ports, primarily Senegal, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP), Maritime Rec­ords Arrivals and Clearances, sec. 3, vols. 2–5. Many of t­ hese ­were prob­a bly still participating in the slave trade to the Ca­r ib­bean, ­because the slave and legitimate trades occurred si­mul­t a­neously and, as George Brooks has described, symbiotically. George E. Brooks, Western Africa and Cabo Verde, 1790s–1830s: Symbiosis of Slave and Legitimate Trades (Bloomington, IN, 2010); James Fichter, So ­G reat a Proffit (Cambridge, MA, 2010); Norman Bennett and George Brooks, eds., New E ­ ngland Merchants in Africa (Boston, 1965), xxviii–­x xix. 46. Sierra Leone National Archives, Fourah Bay College, Freetown (hereafter cited as SLNA), Secretary of State Despatches, April 3, 1809; Fichter, So ­G reat a Profitt, 3;

Notes to Pages 118–121 

• 279

see also Nathan Perl-­R osenthal, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2015). 47. Gambia National Archives, Banjul, CSO 1 / 1, July 12, 1815. 48. Fichter, So ­G reat a Profitt, 107. 49. JCBL BFBR Vessels, Brigantine Pilgrim, B.631, F.2, July 30, 1811–­December 28, 1811, Thomas Carew account current with Brig Pilgrim. TNA CO / 270, journal of Smith’s voyage to Kisi Kisi, 1802; Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 147. 50. JCBL BFBR B.631 F.4, Brigantine Pilgrim papers, 2nd voyage to Gorée, Gideon Young master, April 4, 1812–­August 7, 1812. 51. JCBL BFBR B.629, Schooner Peacock, Cape Coast ­Castle, September 11, 1817, W. H. Leigh to B&I; Elmina, October 10, 1817, Jan Neiser at Elmina to B&I; BFBR B.636 Brigantine Richard, Elmina C ­ astle, April 17, 1819, Jan Neiser to B&I. 52. E. Frances White, Sierra Leone’s Settler ­Women Traders (Ann Arbor, 1987); Gibril Cole, The Krio of West Africa (Athens, OH, 2013); Kristin Mann, “­Owners, Slaves and the Strug­gle for L ­ abor in the Commercial Transition at Lagos,” in From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce, ed. Robin Law (Cambridge, 2002), 147; Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone; Bronwen Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013). 53. JCBL BFBR B.637 F.4, Providence, August 11, 1821, B&I to Dailey. 54. JCBL BFBR B.637, March 4, 1820, Jan Nieser, Elmina to B&I. 55. JCBL BFBR B.637 F.2, Elmina, March 4, 1820, Jan Neiser to B&I. 56. JCBL BFBR B.637 F.4, Providence, August 11, 1821, B&I to Dailey. 57. Marion Johnson, Henry Gemery, and Jan Hogendorn, “Evidence on En­glish / African Terms of Trade in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury,” Explorations in Economic History 27, no. 2 (1990): 157–177; Dalrymple-­Smith and Woltjer, “Commodities, Prices and Risk”; Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Rochester, NY, 2013); Toby Green, ed., Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-­colonial Western Africa (Oxford, 2012). 58. Christopher Leslie Brown, “The Origins of Legitimate Commerce,” in Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt, Commercial Agriculture, 138–157. 59. Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea (Philadelphia, 1771), 143–144; Brown, “Origins of Legitimate Commerce,” 156–157; Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, 2006), 324. 60. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Pro­g ress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-­Trade by the British Parliament (London, 1808), 373. See Marcus Wood, “Packaging Liberty and Marketing the Gift of Freedom: 1807 and the Legacy of Clarkson’s Chest,” Parliamentary History 26, suppl. (2007): 203–223. The chest is on display at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Cambridgeshire. 61. JCBL BFBR B.513 F.6, Newport, August 9, 1794, Martin Benson to Brown Benson & Ives. 62. JCBL BFBR B.513 F.6, Newport, September 11, 1794, Martin Benson to BB&I; John McCusker, Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic World (New York, 2014); Sherylynne Haggerty, “Merely for Money?” Business Culture in the British Atlantic, 1750–1815 (Liverpool, 2014).

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  Notes to Pages 121–126

63. JCBL BFBR B.629 F.1, Providence, June 14, 1817, B&I instructions to Capt. Daniel D. Daily for Schooner Peacock. 64. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.1, Providence, October 30, 1817, to William Allston, Boston. 65. Henry Noble Sherwood, “Afro-­A merican Interests,” Journal of Negro History 8, no. 2 (1923): 203. 66. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.1, Boston, November 1, 1817, to Brown & Ives. 67. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.3, Providence, February 12, 1818, to Allston; Boston, February 13, 1818, to Brown & Ives. 68. JCBL BFBR B.637 F.1, set of instructions for John Bowers and Jeremiah Goff, November 23, 1819. 69. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.1, Providence, October 30, 1817, to William Allston, Boston. 70. JCBL BFBR B.636, Brig Richard, Providence, June 26, 1818, instructions for Capt. George H. Hallowell. 71. JCBL BFBR B.523, Ship Charlotte papers, April 9, 1816. 72. Bruce Mouser, “The Trial of Samuel Samo and the Trading Syndicates of the Rio Pongas,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 46, no. 3 (2013): 423–441; Robert Thorpe, The Trial of the Slave Traders Samuel Samo, Joseph Peters and William Tufft (London, 1813). 73. JCBL BFBR B.523 F.10, account with Samo. 74. Quoted in Allan McPhee, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa (London, 1926), 31n2, as cited in A. G. Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 129. 75. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, American F ­ ree Produce Association Correspondence, incoming: 1838–1840. 76. HCQSC, George W. Thayer letterbook, November 17, 1852, to Stephen A. Benson. 77. HCQSC, George W. Thayer letterbook, November 17, 1852, to Stephen A. Benson. 78. Many thanks to the apothecary staff at Colonial Williamsburg for their assistance with squills; John Sims, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (London, 1806), vol. 23, plate 918. 79. JCBL BFBR B.523, Ship Charlotte papers. 80. Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837; Richard Follett, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn, eds., Plantation Kingdom: The American South and Its Global Commodities (Baltimore, 2016); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014); Hopkins, Economic History. 81. TNA CO Reports 1848 (Gambia), 323, as cited in Newbury, “Credit,” 87. 82. JCBL BFBR B.523, Ship Charlotte to Africa, Providence, October 2, 1816, B&I to Young, “Instructions for Capt Gideon Young, Master of the Ship Charlotte, for a Voyage to the Coast of Africa.” 83. JCBL BFBR B.523, Ship Charlotte to Africa, F.5, Crawford’s Island, Isle de Loss, July 22, 1817, Leigh to B&I regarding the loss in the squill transaction. 84. JCBL BFBR B.636 F.5, produce paid Capt. Hallowell. 85. JCBL BFBR B.637 F.1, Providence, November 23, 1819, B&I to Kenneth Macaulay. 86. JCBL BFBR B.637, November 23, 1819, set of instructions for John Bowers and Jeremiah Goff. 87. JCBL BFBR B.637, Providence, November 23, 1819, B&I to Kenneth Macaulay.

Notes to Pages 127–131 

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88. JCBL BFBR B.637, November 23, 1819, set of instructions for John Bowers and Jeremiah Goff. 89. Huntington Library, MSS MY 632, May 7, 1831, Zachary Macaulay to James Stephen. 90. Huntington Library, MSS MY 403, November 18, 1826, Selina to Zachary Macaulay. 91. Huntington Library, MSS MY 403, November 18, 1826, Selina to Zachary Macaulay. 92. TNA CO 270 / 1, Sierra Leone Gazette, January 3, 1818. 93. London Metropolitan Archives, ACC / 0283 / 011, May 2, 1825, George Stephen Collection, Writ to Sheriff of Surrey to take up William Easton late of London, gent., administrator of Joseph Easton, late of Sierra Leone gent., to answer Zachary Macaulay and Thomas Gisborne Babington in action to recover debt, in Court of King’s Bench. 94. Huntington Library, MSS MY 645, letters, London, November 17, 1827, to “My dear Kenneth,” marked private. 95. Polly Hill, Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (Cambridge, 1970); Jennifer Lofkrantz and Paul Lovejoy, “Maintaining Network Bound­aries: Islamic Law and Commerce from Sahara to Guinea Shores,” Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 2 (2015): 225–226; Jane Guyer, Marginal Gains (Chicago, 2004), 55. 96. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 22, January 6, 1798. 97. Archives Nationale du Senegal (hereafter cited as ANS), Dakar AOF T1, État et liquidations des dettes du Senegal. 98. ANS, Dakar, AOF T1, 1808 debts of 12,524, and 1,200 in “fournitures.” 99. Curtin, Economic Change, 303. 100. M. Le Baron Roger, Fables Senegalaises, recuillies de L’Ouolof, et mises en vers français, avec des notes sur la Senegambie (Paris, 1828), 13–14. 101. Searing, West African Slavery, 163–164; François Richard, “Hesitant Geographies of Power,” Journal of Social Archaeology 13, no. 1 (2012): 61; Martin Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal (Stanford, 1968); Samba Thiam, “Les indigenes paysans entre maisons de commerce et administration colonial: Practiques et institutions de credit au Sénégal (1840–1940)” (PhD diss., Montpellier 1, 2001). 102. Newbury, “Credit,” 87. See also Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau, “Cultural Systems of Repre­sen­t a­t ion, Economic Interests and French Penetration into Black Africa, 1780s–1880s,” in Pétré-­Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire, 169–176. 103. TNA FO 84 / 858, October 27, 1851, Beecroft to Palmerston; Newbury, “Credit,” 89; K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (Oxford, 1956), 158; Lynn, “The West African Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth C ­ entury and the ‘Crisis of Adaptation,’ ” in Law, From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce, 57–77; Richardson, “Anglo-­A frican Credit Relations,” 57–61. 104. Curtin, Economic Change. 105. This is the subject of some debate among archaeologists. Thiaw argues that the apparent decline in the quality of pottery may have been related to the import of copper basins, but equally to the replacement of certain kinds of pottery vessels with other materials, leaving only the lowest quality of vessel as a continued pottery tradition. Ibrahima Thiaw, “Archaeological Investigation of Long-­Term Culture Change in the Lower Faleme (Upper Senegal Region) A.D. 500–1900” (PhD diss., Rice University, 1999, 268).

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  Notes to Pages 132–137

106. TNA CO 271 / 1, August 25, 1820. 107. ANS, Saint-­Louis, Doc 607, Roger Pasquier, “Les Traitants des Comptoirs du Senegal au Milieu du XIXe siècle,” Colloque Enterprises et Entrepreneurs en Afrique (XIXe et XXe siècles), Université Paris 7, December 1981, page 4. 108. Newbury, “Credit,” 88. 109. Austin, “Indigenous Credit Institutions,” 133. 110. Newbury, “Credit,” 88; Pétré-­Grenouilleau, “Cultural Systems”; François Richard, “ ‘In [Them] We ­Will Find Very Desirable Tributaries for Our Commerce’: Cash Crops, Commodities, and Subjectivities in Siin (Senegal) during the Colonial Era,” in The Archaeology of Capitalism in Colonial Contexts, ed. Sarah Crouch and Lindsay Weiss (New York, 2011), 193–218. 111. Newbury, “Credit,” 88. 112. Margaret O. McLane, “Commercial Rivalries and French Policy on the Senegal River, 1831–1858,” African Economic History 15 (1986): 48. 113. Newbury, “Credit,” 88. See also McLane, “Commercial Rivalries,” 46. 114. Report of Her Majesty’s Colonial Territories (1849 and 1850), 175, as cited in N. A. Cox-­George, Finance and Development in West Africa: The Sierra Leone Experience (London, 1961), 141. 115. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 2, Neil Campbell to Earl Bathurst, May 16, 1827. 116. Hopkins, Economic History, 131. 117. Huntington Library, MSS MY 834, July 17, 1834, Sir James Stephen to Zachary Macaulay. 118. Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 187. 119. Huntington Library, MSS MY 369, September 7, 1830. 1 20. TNA CUST 4 / 22–24. 121. TNA CO 270 / 1, Gazette, January 17, 1818. 1 22. Huntington Library, MSS MY 369, August 16–­September 7, 1830, Henry William Macaulay to Zachary Macaulay. 1 23. SLNA, Licenses Book, 1820–1842. 1 24. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 2, petition from merchants at Bathurst, May 3, 1826. 1 25. Smith, The Wealth of Nations, chap. 4, bk. 3. 1 26. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Prince­ton, 1977, 2013), 74, 80–81, 100. 127. Mansour Aw, “L’Occupation anglaise du Senegal (1758–1783),” in Saint-­Louis et l’esclavage, ed. Djibril Samb (Dakar, 1998), 85–94; Lydon, On Trans-­Saharan Trails; George Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa (Athens, OH, 2003); Philip Havik, Silences and Soundbytes (Munster, 2004); Philip Curtin, Cross-­Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984); Pernille Ipsen, ­Daughters of the Trade (Philadelphia, 2015); Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are ­Here (Athens, OH, 2011); Hilary Jones, The Metis of Senegal (Bloomington, IN, 2013). 1 28. Richardson, “Anglo-­A frican Credit Relations,” 57–61; Hopkins, “Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain’s Annexation of Lagos, 1861,” Journal of Economic History 40, no. 4 (1980): 777–798.

Notes to Pages 137–144 

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1 29. TNA CO 87 / 45, MacDonnell to Grey, June 20, 1849, cited in Hopkins, “Property Rights,” 782. 130. TNA FO 84 / 1115, Brand to Russell, April 9, 1860, cited in Hopkins, “Property Rights,” 788. See also Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City (Bloomington, IN, 2007); Everill, Abolition and Empire. 5. Pick i ng W i nner s 1. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, bk. 4, chap. 7. 2. William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Com­pany and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill, NC, 2013). 3. Zachary Macaulay, A Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester (London, 1815), 31. 4. Macaulay, A Letter to His Royal Highness, 32, 35, 33. 5. Huntington Library, MSS MY 133, December 18, 1821. 6. Macaulay, A Letter to His Royal Highness 37. 7. The National Archives, United Kingdom (hereafter cited as TNA), CUST 5 / 3 and 5 / 4. 720 cwt worth £540 2s 8d; in 1815, 199 hundredweights was worth £149 6s 7d. 8. See essays in Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Rochester, NY, 2013). 9. Suzanne Schwarz, “Commerce, Civilization and Chris­t ian­ity,” in Liverpool and Transatlantic Antislavery, ed. David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz, and Anthony Tibbles (Liverpool, 2007), 257. 10. Richard Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton: Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800–1946 (Stanford, 1996), 60–75. 11. Jenna Nigro, “Colonial Logics: Agricultural, Commercial and Moral Experiments in the Making of French Senegal, 1763–1870” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014), 152; Roger Pasquier, “Les Traitants des comptoirs du Senegal au milieu du XIXe siècle” (diss., Archives du Saint Louis au CRDS, doc. 607); Archives Nationale du Senegal (hereafter cited as ANS), Dakar, AOF 16Q 14, 16Q 18; Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014), 122–123; Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton, 64–65. 12. TNA 270 / 1, April 15, 1820. 13. Peter Coclanis, “The Road to Commodity Hell: The Rise and Fall of the First American Rice Industry,” in Plantation Kingdom: The American South and Its Global Commodities, ed. Richard Follett, Sven Beckert, Peter Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn (Baltimore, 2016); Paul Richards, “Rice as Commodity and Anticommodity,” in Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures: Commodities and Anti-­Commodities in Global History, ed. Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Maat (Basingstoke, 2016), 10–28; Judith Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Amer­i­cas (Cambridge, MA, 2002); Edda Fields-­Black, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington, IN, 2008). 14. TNA CUST 5 / 1A. 15. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 19, folder 1, September 21, 1793.

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  Notes to Pages 144–148

16. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (Oxford, 1962); Huntington Library, MSS MY 418; Sierra Leone National Archives, Fourah Bay College, Freetown (hereafter cited as SLNA) governor’s letterbook, 1808–1811. 17. Michael J. Turner, “The Limits of Abolition: Government, Saints and the ‘African Question,’ c. 1780–1820,” En­glish Historical Review 112, no. 446 (1997): 319–357; Padraic Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors (New Haven, 2017); Suzanne Schwarz, “A Just and Honourable Commerce: Abolitionist Experimentation in Sierra Leone in the Late Eigh­teenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” African Economic History 45, no. 1 (2017): 1–45. 18. Huntington Library, Macaulay Papers, MSS MY 2, August 1, 1793, to April 16, 1794, “Reasonable Assortment of Goods for the Purchase of a Ton of Rice at 100 Bars.” 19. TNA WO 1 / 352, January 12, 1803, Questions proposed by Commodore Hallowell, with the Governor & Council’s answers. 20. TNA WO 1 / 352, Report from the Committee on the Petition of the Court of Directors of the Sierra Leone Com­pany, 1802, 30. 21. Macaulay, A Letter to His Royal Highness, appendix 2, “Extract of a Letter from Messrs. Z. Macaulay and Babington, to Their Agent at Sierra Leone, M. Macmillan, Esq., dated London, Dec. 4, 1812,” 60. 22. TNA CO 270 / 1, Sierra Leone Royal Gazette, August 16, 1817. 23. TNA CO 267 / 91, appendix 15A, Rice Contracts. 24. SLNA, governor’s letterbook, 1808–1811, K. Macaulay to Thomas Craig, May 21, 1811. 25. TNA CO 270 / 1, Gazette, February 16, 1822. 26. TNA CO 271 / 2, Gazette, April 6, 1822. 27. Richards, “Rice as Commodity and Anticommodity.” 28. TNA CO 271 / 2, Sierra Leone Gazette, February 22, 1823, letter to the editor. 29. Scanlan, “The Rewards of Their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808–1823,” Past & Pre­sent 225 (2014); Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 166. 30. Huntington Library, MSS MY 369, September 7, 1830. 31. Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 166–167. 32. Anna Maria Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone during the years 1791–1792–1793 (London, 1794), letter 3, May 13, 1791, Granville Town. 33. SLNA, license book, 1820–1842: April 22, 1824; June 25, 1824; January 9, 1826; January 1, 1827. 34. TNA CO 267 / 111, 281. They lived at 25 Goodrich Street, with their d ­ aughter, Hannah, and four sons, John, Thomas, William, and Henry, as well as eight Liberated African ­children (four boys and four girls) listed as “servants” in the census. 35. E. Frances White, “Creole ­Women Traders in the Nineteenth ­Century,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 14, no. 4 (1981): 631. Unfortunately, in 1853, “Betsey Carew occupied the best room in the Debtors’ Prison.” Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, 257. 36. Special Report of the Directors of the African Institution, Made at the Annual General Meeting on the 12th of April, 1815, respecting the Allegations Contained in a Pamphlet Entitled “A Letter to William Wilberforce, Esq. &c. by R. Thorpe, Esq., &c.” (London,

Notes to Pages 149–155 

• 285

1815); Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 1, petition from merchants about Albreda, October 26, 1824; TNA CO 271 / 2, March 9, 1822, list, “Principal Merchants of Gambia”; Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1998), 146; Marika Sherwood, ‘ “Legitimate’ Traders, the Building of Empires, and the Long-­Term After-­Effects in Africa,” in Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Precolonial Western Africa, ed. Toby Green (Oxford, 2012). 37. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 1, to Wm. Allen from James Hook, February 21, 1823. 38. Christopher L. Miller, “Forget Haiti: Baron Roger and the New Africa,” Yale French Studies 107 (2005): 39–69; Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, “Critiques raisonnées: Lettres africaines ou Histoire de Phédima et d’Abensar, par M. Butini,” Les Ephémérides du Citoyen (1771): 242–244; Olivier Pétré-­Grenouilleau, La Révolution abolitionniste (Paris, 2017), 407–414; David Allen Harvey, “Slavery on the Balance Sheet: Pierre-­Samuel Dupont de Nemours and the Physiocratic Case for ­Free L ­ abor,” Journal of the Western Society for French History 42 (2014): 75–87; François Manchuelle, “The ‘Regeneration’ of Africa: An Impor­t ant and Ambiguous Concept in 18th and 19th ­Century French Thinking about Africa,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 36, no. 44 (1996): 578–579. 39. Nigro, “Colonial Logics,” 123. 40. Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors. 41. Special Report of the Directors of the African Institution; Scanlan, “Rewards of  Their Exertions.” 42. Iain Whyte, Zachary Macaulay, 1768–1838: The Steadfast Scot in the British Anti- ­Slavery Movement (Liverpool, 2011), 202, 205. 43. TNA CO 268 / 19, Bathurst, August 29, 1813; Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 122–123; A Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, 43. 44. Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 122–123. 45. TNA CO 270 / 1, July 31, 1819. 46. SLNA, governor’s letterbook, 1808–1811. 47. As cited in Basil Davidson, The African Slave Trade (Oxford, 1960; 1996), 108. 48. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 1, MacCarthy to Bathurst, June 30, 1823. 49. Quoted in Schwarz, “Just and Honourable Commerce,” 28. 50. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418 Folder 2, October 17, 1793. 51. TNA CO 270 / 1 Gazette, 21 February 1818. 52. Margaret O. McLane, “Commercial Rivalries and French Policy on the Senegal River, 1831–1858,” African Economic History 15 (1986): 55; James L. A. Webb, “The Trade in Gum Arabic: Prelude to French Conquest in Senegal,” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 149–168. 53. TNA CO 267 / 229 Governor Kennedy to Sir John Packington, December 21, 1852. 54. See the debate over the “crisis of adaptation”: K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (Oxford, 1956); A. G. Hopkins, “Economic Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–92,” Economic History Review 21 (1968): 580–600; Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa (Cambridge, 1997). 55. ANS, Dakar, AOF G 13G16; Barry, Senegambia,160–169; Bruce Mouser, “Trade and Politics in the Nunez and Pongo Rivers, 1790–1865” (PhD diss., University of

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  Notes to Pages 155–160

Wisconsin–­Lacrosse, 1972); Charles Emmanuel Sorry, “Monographie historique du Rio Pongo du XVème à la fin du XIXeme siècle,” Institut Polytechnique Gamal Abdel Nassar, Conakry, 1973–1974; Oumar Sow, “Le Commerce européen sur les côtes de la Guinee en 19e siècle: Réalités et rôle dans le pénétration étrangère,” Memoire IPC, Conakry, 1973; Lamin Sanneh, “Futa Jallon and the Jakhanke Clerical Tradition,” Journal of Religion in Africa 12, no. 1 (1981): 38–64. 56. National Center for Arts and Culture, The Gambia (hereafter cited as NCAC), Fajara Oral Archive, The Gambia, 200A 27 / 2 / 73; Ibrahima Thiaw, “Archaeological Investigation of Long-­Term Culture Change in the Lower Faleme (Upper Senegal Region) A.D. 500–1900” (PhD diss., Rice University, 1999, 268), 271–272. 57. NCAC, Fajara Oral Archive, 029A 1967. 58. Barry, Senegambia, 171. 59. Donald Wright, “The Epic of Kelefa Saane as a Guide to the Nature of Precolonial Senegambian Society and Vice Versa,” History in Africa 14 (1987): 287–309; NCAC, Fajara Oral Archive, The Gambia, 029A 1967. 60. NCAC, Fajara Oral Archive, The Gambia, 200A 27 / 2 / 73. 61. David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal (Oxford, 1985); Michael Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad (Cambridge, 1992), 122–123; Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Socie­ties (Cambridge, 2014); William Gervase Clarence-­Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (London, 2006), 155–156. 62. E. Ann McDougall, “In Search of a Desert-­Edge Perspective: The Sahara-­Sahel and the Atlantic Trade, c. 1815–1890,” in From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce, ed. Robin Law (Cambridge, 2002), 215–233. 63. Parliamentary Papers, 1865, V (412), 429, The Duke of Newcastle to Governor G.A.K. D’Arcy, 5 December 1861. 64. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL), BFBR B522, Ship Charlotte, 1815–1816, F.8, Bristol, September 29, 1817, from Jacob Babbitt to B&I. 65. Haverford College Quaker Special Collections, George W. Taylor letterbooks, May 30, 1853, to James Hall, Colonisation Rooms, Baltimore. 66. JCBL BFBR B.611, trade book for the Olive Branch. 67. JCBL BFBR B.523 F.1, October 17, 1817, from Loomis and Learned. 68. JCBL BFBR B.522, Ship Charlotte papers, Bristol, September 29, 1817, from Jacob Babbitt to B&I. 69. JCBL BFBR B522, Ship Charlotte, 1815–1816. F.8, in the Senate of the United States, January 4, 1819. 70. Marc-­William Palen, The “Conspiracy” of F ­ ree Trade: The Anglo-­American Strug­gle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896 (Cambridge, 2016), 3. 71. W. Caleb McDaniel, The Prob­lem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery (Baton Rouge, 2013), 163–164. 72. Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP), Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from the Committee on Requited ­Labor to the Association, 1839. 73. Simon Morgan, “The Anti-­Corn Law League and British Anti-­Slavery in Transatlantic Perspective, 1838–1846,” Historical Journal 52, no. 1 (2009): 87–107; James L. Huston, “Abolitionists, Po­l iti­cal Economists, and Capitalism,” Journal of the Early

Notes to Pages 160–164 

• 287

Republic 20, no. 3 (2000): 487–521. For more on how commercial rivalry effected transatlantic cooperation in the wider abolition movement, see Bronwen Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013). 74. Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2016); Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837 (Cambridge, 2015); Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 289; Marc-­William Palen, “Free-­Trade Ideology and Transatlantic Abolitionism: A Historiography,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 37, no. 2 (2015): 291–304. 75. Andrew Shankman, “Capitalism, Slavery, and the New Epoch,” in Slavery’s Capitalism, ed. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia, 2016), 252–256; Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2008); Robin Einhorn, “Slavery and the Politics of Taxation in the Early United States,” Studies in American Po­liti­cal Development 14 (2000): 156–183. 76. Palen, “Free-­Trade Ideology,” 294. 77. In 1820: 3,283,058 hundredweight of West India sugar; 99,440 of East India. “Account of Quantity of East and West India Sugar entered for Home Consumption, 1813–20,” 1821, House of Commons Papers, 533, XVII.215, vol. 17. 78. Coclanis, “Road to Commodity Hell,” 36. 79. Zachary Macaulay, East India Sugar, or an Inquiry Respecting the Means of Improving the Quality and Reducing the Cost of Sugar Raised by ­Free ­Labour in the East Indies (London, 1824), 5. 80. Huntington Library, MSS MY 367, January 15, 1825, Henry William Macaulay to the ­family; Whyte, Zachary Macaulay. 81. HSP Roberts Vaux Correspondence, January–­June 1825, Collection 684, box 2, folder 18, May 30, 1825; see also Missionary Register, May 1825, p. 232; Parliamentary Papers, 1825: March 25, p. 267; March 29, p. 283; March 30, p. 291; April 14, p. 303; May 18, p. 433; May 30, p. 466; May 31, p. 955; May 31, p. 474. 82. Thornton & Co . . . ​Rus­sia merchants . . . ​6 King’s Arms yd, Coleman st, Robson’s Improved London Directory, Street Guide, and Carrier’s List, for 1820 (London: William Robson and Co, 1820). 83. Tropical Free-­Labour Com­pany prospectus, printed by Ellerton and Henderson, Printers, Gough Square, London. 84. John Bull, June 1824; Whyte, Macaulay, 207. 85. Macaulay, East India Sugar, 15, 14. 86. Macaulay, East India Sugar, 5. 87. The Correspondence between John Gladstone, Esq. MP and James Cropper, Esq. on the Pre­sent State of Slavery in the British West Indies and in the United States of Amer­i­ca; and on the Importation of Sugar from the British Settlements in India (Liverpool: Printed for the West India Association, 1824), 35. This form of agency is associated with Matthew Forster, a merchant who operated in the Gold Coast. Edward Reynolds, “Economic Imperialism: The Case of the Gold Coast,” Journal of Economic History 35, no. 1 (1975): 94–116, at 98–99. 88. Macaulay, East India Sugar, 8. 89. ART. X. 1., “Letters Addressed to William Wilberforce, M. P.,” Edinburgh Review, 1802–1929; February 1823, 38, 75; British Periodicals, pp. 213, 215, 223.

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  Notes to Pages 164–169

90. Reprinted in the Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 20, 1827, 123–124. 91. John Jackson, A Treatise on the Capability of Our Eastern Possessions to Produce ­T hose Articles of Consumption, and Raw Material for British Manufacture, for Which We Chiefly Depend on Foreign Nations, and the Incalculable Advantages of a ­Free Trade to and Settlement in India, to All Classes of His Majesty’s Subjects (London, 1829), 16. 92. Thomas Clarkson, Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British Colonies, with a View to Their Ultimate Emancipation; and on the Practicability, the Safety, and the Advantages of the Latter Mea­sure, 2nd ed. (London, 1823), 57. 93. Elizabeth Heyrick, Immediate, not Gradual Abolition; or, An Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West-­Indian Slavery (London, 1824), 20. 94. Correspondence between John Gladstone, Esq. MP and James Cropper, Esq., 15–16; David Brion Davis, “James Cropper and the British Anti-­Slavery Movement, 1821–1823,” Journal of Negro History 45, no. 4 (1960): 241–258; Andrea Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India (Liverpool, 2012), 305. 95. Tropical ­Free ­Labour Com­pany, Report of the Provisional Committee, October 9, 1826; Merseyside Maritime Museum, D_CR_11_54; Davis, “James Cropper,” 241–258. 96. Huntington Library, MSS MY 810, May 28, 1828, James Stephen to Zachary Macaulay. 97. Nick Draper, The Price of Emancipation (Cambridge, 2010); Catherine Hall, Nick Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donnington, and Rachel Lang, Legacies of British Slave Owner­ship (Cambridge, 2014). 98. Trevor Getz, Slavery and Reform in West Africa (Athens, OH, 2004), 78; Roger Pasquier, “À propos de l’émancipation des esclaves au Sénégal en 1848,” Outre-­Mers, Revue d’histoire (1967): 188–208. 99. Richard Huzzey, “­Free Trade, ­Free ­Labor, and Slave Sugar in Victorian Britain,” Historical Journal 53, no. 2 (2010): 359–379; C. Duncan Rice, “ ‘Humanity Sold for Sugar!’ The British Abolitionist Response to F ­ ree Trade in Slave-­Grown Sugar,” Historical Journal 13, no. 3 (1970): 402–418; Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment (Oxford, 2004). 100. The Sugar Question: Being a Digest of the Evidence Taken Before the Committee on Sugar and Coffee Plantations. Which was moved for by Lord George Bentinck, M. P., 3rd February 1848. By one of the witnesses. Part I. The East Indies and the Mauritius (London, 1848), 22. 101. The Sugar Question, 166. 102. Governor Reid, of Barbados, in a despatch to Earl Grey, dated February 26, 1848, and Governor Higginson of Antigua to Grey, December 26, 1847, both in Samuel Wilberforce, Cheap Sugar Means Cheap Slaves: Speech of the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Oxford, in the House of Lords, February 7th, 1848, against the Admission of Slave L ­ abour Sugar on Equal Terms with ­Free ­Labour Produce: With an Appendix Illustrative of the Impetus given to the Slave Trade by the Bill of 1846, 2nd ed. (London, 1848), appendix, 15.

Notes to Pages 169–178 

• 289

103. Philip Harling, “Sugar Wars,” in The Cultural Construction of the British World, ed. Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (Manchester, 2016), 59–76; Temperley, British Anti-­slavery, 1833–1870 (London, 1972), 137–167; Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 304–308; Huzzey, “­Free Trade, ­Free L ­ abor,” 359–379. 104. Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning (Ithaca, NY, 2012), 99–107. 6. A R i s i n g T i d e L i f t s A l l B oat s 1. Library of the Society of Friends, London, MS box 5.17, letter from SM Warner, October 17, 1927, to WF Nicholson, with a copy of a note from GM Gillett (writer’s ­mother) plus two samples of F ­ ree ­Labour Cotton material. 2. Library of the Society of Friends, London, MS box 5.17, Letter from SM Warner, October 17, 1927, to WF Nicholson. 3. Kevin Grant, Civilized Savagery (New York, 2005); Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital (Chapel Hill, NC, 2006). 4. Library Com­pany of Philadelphia, Report of the Board of Man­ag­ers of the F ­ ree Produce Association of Friends of New-­York Yearly Meeting (New York, 1853), 3–4. 5. Report of the Board of Man­ag­ers. 6. Huntington, MSS MY 418, folder 28, July 15, 1798–­May 21, 1799, December 11, 1798. 7. The National Archives, UK (hereafter cited as TNA) WO 1 / 352, Sierra Leone Office, May 8, 1807, from Z. Macaulay to Viscount Castlereagh. 8. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 2, petition from merchants at Bathurst, May 3, 1826. 9. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014), 122–125. 10. Second Report of the Committee of the African Institution (London, 1808), 6. 11. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 13, September 15, 1796. 12. Per Hernaes, “A Danish Experiment in Commercial Agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1788–93,” in Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade, and Slavery in Atlantic Africa, ed. Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt (Rochester, NY, 2013), 158–179. 13. M. Renaudot, Alger: Tableau du Royaume (Paris, 1830); Aristide Guilbert, De la colonisation du Nord de l’Afrique, nécessité d’une association nationale pour l’exploitation agricole et industrielle de l’Algérie (Paris, 1839); Adolpe Blanqui, Algérie: Rapport sur la situation économique de nos possessions dans le Nord de l’Afrique (Paris, 1840); L’Union Agricole d’Afrique, Nouveau système de colonisation de l’Algérie (Lyon, 1846). Many thanks to Mary Lewis for her help with t­ hese French sources. Jenna Nigro, “Colonial Logics: Agricultural, Commercial and Moral Experiments in the Making of French Senegal, 1763–1870” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2014), 95–162; Archives Nationale du Senegal (hereafter cited as ANS), Dakar AOF 16Q Mise en valeur, 16Q 18 Établissement du culture. 14. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbook, to John Wingave; Anti- ­Slavery Reporter, November 1852, 174; Ruth Ketring Nuermberger, The F ­ ree Produce Movement: A Quaker Protest against Slavery (Durham, NC, 1942), 76; Anna P. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement and British Anti-­Slavery Campaigns: The ­Free ­Labour Cotton Depot in Street 1853–1858” (PhD diss., University of Brighton, 2012), 102.

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  Notes to Pages 178–182

15. Colleen Kriger, “ ‘Guinea Cloth’ Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford, 2009), 106–126. 16. Vaughan Kett, “Quaker ­Women, the ­Free Produce Movement,” 102. 17. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 20, April 25, 1797. 18. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, folder 21, June 7, 1797, “Remarks on the Health, Trade, Cultivation, and Civilization of Sierra Leone.” 19. Bronwen Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013); Stefania Galli and Klas Ronnback, “Colonialism and Rural In­equality in Sierra Leone: An Egalitarian Experiment,” Eu­ro­pean Review of Economic History (2019), https://­doi​-­org​.­ezp​.­l ib​.­cam​.­ac​.­u k​/­10​.­1093​/­ereh​/­hez011. 20. Huntington Library, MSS MY 155, MY 242–254, letters between Macaulay and Dumont, June 1820–­May 1821; Lawrence Jennings, French Antislavery (Cambridge, 2005), 7–8. 21. Nigro, “Colonial Logics,” 147–148. 22. ANS, Dakar 16Q 6, Établissements de culture, 1825; 16Q 10, Pellegrin at Richardtoll. 23. Pernille Roge, “ ‘La clef de commerce’: The Changing Role of Africa in France’s Atlantic Empire cs. 1760–1797,” History of Eu­ro­pean Ideas 34, no. 4 (2008): 431–443; Nigro, “Colonial Logics,” 154. 24. Nigro, “Colonial Logics,” 155. 25. David Todd, ­Free Trade and Its Enemies in France, 1814–1851 (Cambridge, 2015). 26. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973); Gareth Austin, ­Labour, Land, and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to ­Free ­Labor in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester, NY, 2005); James Searing, “No Kings, No Lords, No Slaves,” Journal of African History 43 (2002): 407–429. 27. Everill, Abolition and Empire; Eric Burin, Slavery and the Peculiar Solution (Gainesville, FL, 2005); Nick Guyatt, Bind Us Apart (New York, 2016). 28. Everill, “ ‘The Colony has made no pro­g ress in agriculture’: Contested Perceptions of Agriculture in the Colonies of Sierra Leone & Liberia,” in Schwarz, Strickrodt, and Law, Commercial Agriculture, 180–202. 29. Everill, “ ‘Colony Has Made No Pro­g ress”; Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Monrovia, Liberia, Deeds and Rec­ords, Last ­Will and Testament, Isaac Deans, June 1854. E.g., “neither of them s­ hall sell or cause to be sold any part of the property but the property is to be kept together and inherited from heir to heir.” 30. African Repository 21 (1852); S. C. Saha, “Transferences of American Values through Agriculture to Liberia: A Review of Liberian Agriculture during the Nineteenth C ­ entury,” Journal of Negro History 72 (1987): 61. 31. Everill, Abolition and Empire, 93–94; Peyton Skipwith to John Hartwell Cocke, February 10, 1834, in Dear Master: Letters of a Slave F ­ amily, ed. Randall Miller (Athens, GA, 1990). 32. Haverford College Quaker Special Collections (hereafter cited as HCQSC), George W. Taylor letterbook, April 23, 1853.

Notes to Pages 182–185 

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33. Matthew Karp, This Vast Southern Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2016), 153. 34. Joseph Marryat, A Reply to the Arguments Contained in Vari­ous Publications, Recommending an Equalization of the Duties on East and West Indian Sugar (London, 1823). 35. Marryat, A Reply, 45. See Andrea Major, “ ‘The Slavery of East and West’: Abolitionists and ‘Unfree’ L ­ abor in India, 1820–1833,” Slavery & Abolition 31, no. 4 (2010): 501–525; Christopher M. Florio, “From Poverty to Slavery: Abolitionists, Overseers, and the Global Strug­gle for ­Labor in India,” Journal of American History 102, no. 4 (2016): 1005–1024; Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), 137–140. 36. “A Letter to William Whitmore, Pointing out some of the Erroneous Statements Contained in a Pamphlet by Joseph Marryat, Esq., MP. By the author of a pamphlet entitled ‘East and West India Sugar’ ” (Zachary Macaulay, London, 1823); Zachary Macaulay, East India Sugar, or an Inquiry Respecting the Means of Improving the Quality and Reducing the Cost of Sugar Raised by ­Free L ­ abour in the East Indies (London, 1824). 37. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, “Cropper, Benson and Co Circular on the Cultivation of Cotton” (Liverpool, 1822). 38. ART. X. 1., “Letters Addressed to William Wilberforce, M. P.,” Edinburgh Review, 1802–1929, 225. 39. East India Com­pany. Debates at the General Court of Proprietors of East-­India Stock, on the 19th and 21st March 1823 on the East-­India Sugar Trade (London, 1823), 10. Maurice J. Bric, “Debating Empire and Slavery: Ireland and British India, 1820– 1845,” Slavery & Abolition 37, no. 3 (2016): 561–577; Andrea Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India (Liverpool, 2012); Major, “ ‘The Slavery of East and West,’ ” 501–525. 40. Marryat, A Reply, 44. 41. Morning Post, October 26, 1857; Vaughan Kett, “Quaker W ­ omen, the F ­ ree Produce Movement,” 102. 42. Sven Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire,” American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (2004): 1405–1438. 43. New Times, March 28, 1825, letter from “Mercator” dated London, March 26, 1825. 44. Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 1830, “The Consumers of West India Sugar the Supporters of West India Slavery.” Richard B. Allen, “Slaves, Convicts, Abolitionists and the Global Origins of the Post-­Emancipation Indentured ­Labor System,” Slavery & Abolition 35, no. 2 (2014): 328–348. 45. Padraic Scanlan, Freedom’s Debtors (New Haven, 2017); Michael J. Turner, “The Limits of Abolition: Government, Saints and the ‘African Question,’ c. 1780–1820,” En­glish Historical Review 112, no. 446 (1997): 319–357; Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects (Chicago, 2002); Nick Draper, The Price of Emancipation (Cambridge, 2010); Legacies of British Slave-­Ownership proj­ect, https://­w ww​.­ucl​.­ac​.­uk​/ ­l bs​/­; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line (Cambridge, 2008). 46. Hilary Jones, The Metis of Senegal (Bloomington, IN, 2013), 33.

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  Notes to Pages 185–189

47. Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the H ­ uman Species, Particularly the African, 3rd ed. (London, printed in Philadelphia, 1787), 31–32. 48. Macaulay, East India Sugar. 49. Thomas Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country (1849), reprinted in “West India Emancipation,” Commercial Review of the South and West (­later De Bow’s Review), June 1850, vol. 8 (old series), vol. 2, no. 4, n.s. (ed. J. D. De Bow, New Orleans), 529. 50. Hall, Civilising Subjects. 51. J. S. Mill (anonymous), “The Negro Question,” Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country (1850), reprinted in Littell’s Living Age, vol. 24, ed. E. D. Littell (Boston, 1850), 466. 52. David Northrup, Indentured L ­ abor in the Age of Imperialism (Cambridge, 1995); Rachel Bright, Chinese ­Labor in South Africa, 1902–10 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Sujit Sivasundaram, Islanded (Chicago, 2013); Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line; Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island (Durham, NC, 2005), 269–272; Clare Anderson, “Convicts and Coolies: Rethinking Indentured ­Labor in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Slavery & Abolition 30, no. 1 (2009): 93–109; Jonathan Connolly, “Indentured L ­ abor Migration and the Meaning of Emancipation,” Past & Pre­sent 238, no. 1 (2018): 85–119. 53. Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 249. 54. Richard Huzzey, Freedom Burning (Ithaca, NY, 2012), 180; William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the ­G reat Experiment (Oxford, 1976), 152; John Gladstone in the Legacies of British Slave-­Ownership proj­ect, https://­w ww​.­ucl​.­ac​.­u k​/­l bs​/­person​/­v iew​/­8961. 55. Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, 270; Zoe Laidlaw, “Heathens, Slaves, and Aborigines: Thomas Hodgkin’s Critique of Missions and Anti-­Slavery,” History Workshop Journal 64, no. 1 (Autumn 2007): 135. 56. Seymour Drescher, The Mighty Experiment (Oxford, 2002), 172–173; Karp, This Vast Southern Empire, 154–172; Alessandro Stanziani, “Beyond Colonialism: Servants, Wage Earners, and Indentured Mi­g rants in Rural France and on Reunion Island (c. 1750–1900),” ­Labor History 54, no. 1 (2013): 64–87; Clare Anderson, “Convicts and Coolies: Rethinking Indentured ­Labor in the Nineteenth ­Century,” Slavery & Abolition 30, no. 1 (2009): 93–94. 57. Connolly, “Indentured ­Labor Migration,” 113. 58. “Can the Slave Trade Be Suppressed?,” Economist, September 2, 1848, 993. 59. Hansard, 3rd ser., clii, col. 1232, March 3, 1859. 60. Connolly, “Indentured ­Labor Migration,” 103. 61. Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 20, 1827, “En­glish Female Philanthropy,” 126. See Clare Midgley, ­Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London, 1992), 53–55. 62. Howard Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedition to the Niger (New Haven, 1991). 63. Hall, Civilising Subjects. 64. Temperley, White Dreams, Black Africa; R. R. Madden, A Twelvemonth’s Residence in the West Indies: During the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship (Philadel-

Notes to Pages 189–191 

• 293

phia, 1835); Stanley Engerman, “Economic Change and Contract ­Labor in the British Ca­r ib­be­a n: The End of Slavery and the Adjustment to Emancipation,” Explorations in Economic History 21, no. 2 (1984): 133–150; Hall, Civilising Subjects. 65. James L. Huston, “Abolitionists, Po­l iti­cal Economists, and Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 20, no. 3 (2000): 497. 66. Beatriz Mamigonian, Africanos livros (Sao Paulo, 2017). 67. ­Kenya National Archives, AG 1 437, “Report on Slavery and ­Free ­Labor in the East Africa Protectorate,” 1903; AG / 1 / 438, “Report on Conditions of Freed Slaves,” 1915. 68. Matthew Hopper, Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire (New Haven, 2015); Maeve Ryan, “ ‘A Moral Millstone?’ British Humanitarian Governance and the Policy of Liberated African Apprenticeship, 1808–1848,” Slavery & Abolition 37, no. 2 (2016): 399–422; Padraic Scanlan, “The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-­Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815–1824,” American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1085–1113; Jonathan Hyslop, “The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself ‘White’: White Laborism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa before the First World War,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 4 (1999), 398–421; M. Kale, “Projecting Identities: Empire and Indentured L ­ abor Migration from India to Trinidad and British Guiana, 1836–1865,” in Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, ed. P. van de Veer (Philadelphia, 1995), 73–92. 69. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Princi­ple of Population (London, 1803), 105. Alison Bashford and Joyce Chaplin, The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Rereading the Princi­ple of Population (Prince­ton, 2016), 177–179. 70. Trevor Getz, Slavery and Reform in West Africa (Athens, OH, 2004), 122; Major, Slavery, Abolitionism, 5, 143–146; Michael Twaddle, “The Ending of Slavery in Buganda,” in The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (Madison, WI, 1988), 128. 71. Malthus, An Essay on the Princi­ple of Population,172–173; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book III, Chapter II. 72. Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (New York, 1857), esp. chap. 8. 73. Martin Klein, “Review Article: The Study of Slavery in Africa,” Journal of African History 19, no. 4 (1978): 599–609; Gerald McSheffrey, “Slavery, Indentured Servitude, Legitimate Trade and the Impact of Abolition in the Gold Coast, 1874–1901: A Reappraisal,” Journal of African History 24, no. 3 (1983): 349–368; Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, WI, 1977); Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2011). 74. Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897), chap. 11; Richard Burton, Wanderings in West Africa (London, 1863), 175; Frederick Cooper, “Review Article: The Prob­lem of Slavery in African Studies,” Journal of African History 20, no. 1 (1979): 103–125. 75. Rudolph T. Ware III, The Walking Qur­an (Chapel Hill, 2014) 161. 76. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 118; Candido, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World, 13.

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  Notes to Pages 191–195

77. Madden, Twelve Months Residence in the West Indies, 2:196–198; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 118–119. 78. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, box 20A, folder 25, March 8, 1798. 79. Philip Misevich, “On the frontier of ‘freedom’: Abolition and the transformation of Atlantic commerce in southern Sierra Leone, 1790s to 1860s” (PhD diss., Emory University, 2009); Robin Law, “Provisioning the Slave Trade: The Supply of Corn on the Seventeenth-­Century Gold Coast,” African Economic History, 46, 1 (2018), 1–35. 80. Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson, “Competing Markets for Male and Female Slaves: Prices in the Interior of West Africa, 1780–1850,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 28, no. 2 (1995): 261–293. 81. Martin Klein, “Slave Re­sis­tance and Slave Emancipation in Coastal Guinea,” in Miers and Roberts, The End of Slavery in Africa, 205. 82. N. A. Cox-­George, Finance and Development in West Africa: The Sierra Leone Experience (London, 1961), 165. 83. See Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery, trans. Alide Desnois (Chicago, 1991); Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977). 84. Gareth Austen, “Commercial Agriculture and the Ending of Slave-­Trading and Slavery in Africa, 1780s–1920s,” in Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt, Commercial Agriculture, 243–265; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery. 85. Jane Guyer “Wealth in P ­ eople, Wealth in ­T hings—­Introduction,” Journal of African History 36 (1995): 88. 86. Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are ­Here (Athens, OH, 2011), 83. 87. Huntington Library, MSS MY 418, journal of Zachary Macaulay, box 20, folder 22, June 3, 1797. 88. E.g., Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston, 1861). 89. Herbert J. Foster, “Partners or Captives in Commerce?: The Role of Africans in the Slave Trade,” Journal of Black Studies 6, no. 4 (1976): 421–434; Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery; Kopytoff and Miers, African Slavery; Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA, 1985). 90. Kopytoff and Miers, African Slavery, 4–5. 91. Cooper, “Review Article”; James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York, 1998). 92. See Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke, Abina and the Impor­tant Men (Oxford, 2012), for a (literal) good illustration of this. Sandra E. Greene, “Minority Voices: Abolitionism in West Africa,” Slavery & Abolition 36, no. 4 (2015): 642–661. T ­ here was similar confusion about this policy in the Sokoto Caliphate once the British had taken control at the end of the nineteenth c­ entury: Lovejoy, A Slow Death for Slavery (Cambridge, 1993), 31. 93. Richard Anderson and Christine Whyte, Fugitive Slaves of West Africa Proj­ect, https://­w ww2​.­le​.­ac​.­u k​/­departments​/­h istory​/­research​/­g rants​/­f ugitive​-­slaves​-­of​-­west​ -­africa. 94. Getz, Slavery and Reform, 82; ANS Dakar Q15, “Commerce et Companie du Senegal 26 Août 1782: Articles convenus entre M. Le Général l’Ordinatuer et les marchands de boeuf.”

Notes to Pages 195–200 

• 295

95. “Letters Addressed to William Wilberforce,” 221. 96. Reprinted in Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 20, 1827, 123–124. 97. Zachary Macaulay quoted in East India Com­pany, Debates at the General Court of Proprietors, 20. 98. Robert Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2011); Kenneth Pomeranz, The G ­ reat Divergence (Prince­ton, 2000); Peer Vries, “The California School and Beyond: How to Study the G ­ reat Divergence?,” History Compass 8, no. 7 (2010): 730–751; Jane Humphries, “The Lure of Aggregates and the Pitfalls of the Patriarchal Perspective: A Critique of the High Wage Economy Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 66, no. 3 (2013): 693–714; Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution (Cambridge, 2008); Kaoru Sugihara, “The State and the Industrious Revolution in Tokugawa Japan,” Working Paper no. 2 / 04, Global Economic History Network; Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2009). 99. Duncan Foley, Adam’s Fallacy (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 64. 100. Foley, Adam’s Fallacy, 65. 101. Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Po­liti­cal Economy (London, 1844), VI.46; Roy Ruffin, “David Ricardo’s Discovery of Comparative Advantage,” History of Po­liti­cal Economy 43, no. 4 (2002): 727–748. 102. Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 274–311. 103. Klas Rönnbäck, “The Idle and the Industrious: Eu­ro­pean Ideas about the African Work Ethic in Precolonial West Africa,” History in Africa 41 (2014): 117–145. 104. Mill, Essays on Some Unsettled Questions, IV.46. 105. New Times, March 28, 1825, 3. 106. Mathew Carey, Essays on Po­liti­cal Economy (Philadelphia, 1822), 40. 107. African Repository, 1856, 18. 108. Kehinde Olabimtan, “Church Missionary Society Proj­ects of Agricultural Improvement in Nineteenth ­Century Sierra Leone and Yorubaland,” in Law, Schwarz, and Strickrodt, Commercial Agriculture, 218. 109. The Relations and Duties of F ­ ree Colored Men in Amer­i­ca to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar, M. D. Esq., of New York City by The Rev. Alex. Crummell, B. A. (Hartford, 1861), 13. The African “textile industry thrived to the extent that exports of guinea cotton cloths to E ­ ngland occurred in the 1760s and 1770s,” Jan Hogendorn and Henry Gemery, “The Hidden Half of the Anglo-­A frican Trade in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury,” in West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of Marion Johnson, ed. Davide Henige and T. C. McCaskie (Madison, WI, 1990), 83. 110. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in ­England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002), 516, 519. 111. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL), BFBR B523 F.1. 112. JCBL BFBR B.636 F.6. 113. ING Group, London, Baring Archive HC17.60, Sierra Leone, December 31, 1839; JCBL BFBR, box 40, folder 3, New Orleans, June 26, 1826, to Brown & Ives; New Orleans, January 11, 1839, to Brown & Ives; Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy (Oxford, 2005), chap. 1; Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837 (Cambridge, 2015); Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 215.

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  Notes to Pages 200–208

114. JCBL BFBR, box 41, folder 1, Salem, June 29, 1835, to Robert. 115. Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 296. 116. Macaulay, East India Sugar. 117. East India Com­pany, Debates at the General Court of Proprietors, 19–20. 118. Bentinck, The Sugar Question, 24. 119. Suzanne Schwarz, “Commerce, Civilization and Chris­t ian­ity,” in Liverpool and Transatlantic Antislavery, ed. David Richardson, Suzanne Schwarz, and Anthony Tibbles (Liverpool, 2007), 252–276; Andrew Porter, “ ‘Commerce and Chris­t ian­ity’: The Rise and Fall of a Nineteenth-­Century Missionary Slogan,” Historical Journal 28, no. 3 (1985): 608–609; Rönnbäck, “The Idle and the Industrious.” 7. C o n s u m e r N a t i o n a l i s m i n B l a c k a n d W h i t e 1. Sven Beckert, “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War,” American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (2004): 1405–1438; Louis Billington, “British Humanitarians and American Cotton, 1840–1860,” Journal of American Studies 11, no. 3 (1977): 313–334. 2. Brian Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union (Baltimore, 2009), 100–145; Robin Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago, 2008). 3. T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution (Oxford, 2004), 195–234; Cathy D. Matson and Peter S. Onuf, A Union of Interests: Po­liti­cal and Economic Thought in Revolutionary Amer­i­ca (Lawrence, KS, 1990), 20, 28; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun (New York, 2001). 4. Matson and Onuf, A Union of Interests, 17, 27; Schoen, Fragile Fabric of Union, 106; Joanna Cohen, Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-­ Century Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia, 2017), 15–16. 5. Mathew Carey, Essays on Po­liti­cal Economy (Philadelphia, 1822), 54; Schoen, Fragile Fabric of Union, 106, 120; Andrew Shankman, “Capitalism, Slavery, and the New Epoch,” in Slavery’s Capitalism, ed. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia, 2016), 252–256; Bronwen Everill, Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Basingstoke, 2013), chap. 7. 6. Gambia National Archives, CSO 1 / 1, e.g., Macarthy to Bathurst, June 29, 1815; July 12, 1815; June 21, 1817. 7. Derived from the ­table compiled from The National Archives, United Kingdom (hereafter cited as TNA), CO 90 / 8–90 / 25, in George E. Brooks, “Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the Commercialization of Peanuts in West Africa, 1830–1870,” Journal of African History 16, no. 1 (1975): 34. 8. Brooks, “Peanuts and Colonialism,” 37. 9. Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP), Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter to Lucretia Mott from Mary W Magill, January 13, 1839. 10. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, letter from Benjamin Clendenda of the Union ­Free Produce Association to Lewis Gunn, Philadelphia, April 1839. 11. HSP, Fifth Annual Report of the American F ­ ree Produce Assoc., 1843, 4–5.

Notes to Pages 209–214 

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12. Haverford College Quaker Special Collections (hereafter cited as HCQSC), ­Free Produce Society of Friends, “At an Adjourned Meeting of the Board of Man­ag­ers Held at No 231 High Street 10th Month 4th 1845.” 13. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection 490, Miscellaneous Series V, reel 31, Ams 231, 244, 245, 841, 842, box 11b, folder 9. 14. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, letter to Gideon C. Smith, Pawtucket, RI, July 27, 1852. 15. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, letter to Taylor from Garrett & Bro., June 28, 1854. 16. Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 3, 1829. 17. Ruth Nuemberger, ­Free Produce Movement (Durham, NC, 1942), 62. 18. Juliet E. K. Walker, A History of Black Business in Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009), 156–157; “Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored ­People, Troy, NY, 1847,” minutes, 22–24; Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause (New Haven, 2016), 373. 19. Julie Winch, Philadelphia’s Black Elite (Philadelphia, 1988), 102. 20. Peter Thompson, “David Walker’s Nationalism—­a nd Thomas Jefferson’s,” Journal of the Early Republic 37, no. 1 (2017): 47–80. 21. Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce (Ithaca, NY, 2016), 131–132. 22. HSP, Banneker Institute, Leon Gardiner collection of American Negro Historical Society Rec­ords, Jacob C White Jr. handwritten speech, December 30, 1952, “The Inconsistency of Colored ­People Using Slave Produce.” 23. Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten (Oxford, 2002), 95; Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s F ­ ree Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 149. 24. Register of Traders of the Colored ­People in the City of Philadelphia and Districts (Philadelphia, 1838). Desilver’s Philadelphia Directory, 1835–1836, lists Raymond Coster, soap and candle manufacture, 45 Lombard; James Forten and Sons, sail manufacture, 95 S whs dh 92 Lomb; Philip Powers, shipping master, 166 S 5th street; William West, clothier, ­under 120 S 2nd dwelling ­house M ­ iddle al. 25. Juliet E. K. Walker, “Race, Slavery, and ­Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship before the Civil War,” Business History Review 60, no. 3 (1986): 372. 26. Walker, “Race, Slavery, and ­Free Enterprise,” 375. 27. Martin R. Delany, North Star, March 16, 1849, 2, and April 20, 1849, 2; Robert S. Levine, ed., Martin R. Delany: A Documentary Reader (Chapel Hill, NC, 2003). 28. Genius of Universal Emancipation, August 11, 1827. 29. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, vol. 1, November 17, 1852, to Stephen A. Benson; Library Com­pany of Philadelphia, George W. Taylor Trade Card and Bill for John McAllister, Jr., 1862; Ruth Ketring Nuermberger, The ­Free Produce Movement: A Quaker Protest against Slavery (Durham, NC, 1942), 80; HSP, Papers of William Parker Foulke, correspondence regarding exploration and colonization of African territory west of Liberia (1853). 30. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, vol. 1, November 17, 1852, to Stephen A. Benson. 31. Nick Guyatt, Bind Us Apart (New York, 2016).

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  Notes to Pages 214–217

32. British and Foreign State Papers, vol. 16 (1828–1829), 1031, 1034, 1827–1828; Theresa A. Singleton, “Slavery and Spatial Dialectics on Cuban Coffee Plantations,” World Archaeology, 33, no.1 (2001): 100. See also William Gervase Clarence-­Smith and Steven Topik, eds., The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca, 1500–1989 (Cambridge, 2003). 33. Robert K. Lacerte, “The Evolution of Land and L ­ abor in the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1820,” The Amer­i­cas 34, no. 4 (1978): 458–459. 34. American State Papers, Senate, 16th Congress, 1st Session, Commerce and Navigation, 2:380. 35. Based on export figures quoted in “Communications Received at the Foreign Office on the Subject of Foreign and Domestic Trade, Agriculture, Population, Industry, Legislation, and Civilisation of Hayti, 1826–1828,” British and Foreign State Papers, XVI, 683. The highest export year, 1824, saw state revenues of nearly $500,000 on just u­ nder 45 million pounds of coffee exported. 36. Lacerte, “Evolution of Land and L ­ abor,” 458. In 1825 the United States imported $1,958,921 into Haiti, on 374 vessels, or about half a million more than the next-­ highest trading partner, Britain. “­A fter the Haitian government imposed taxes on all commercial interactions with countries that refused to acknowledge them, the US position began to border on the absurd. “It is our interest to acknowledge Haitian in­de­pen­dence, ­because  .  .  . ​we actually pay one hundred and one thousand dollars per annum, rather than acknowledge her to be—­what she is without our acknowl­edgment—an in­de­pen­dent power” (Colored American, February 2, 1839). Leslie Alexander, “ ‘The Black Republic’: The Influence of the Haitian Revolution on Northern Black Po­l iti­cal Consciousness, 1816–1862,” in Haitian History: New Perspectives, ed. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (New York, 2013), 66. 37. Haitian Emigration Society, Address of the Board of Man­ag­ers of the Haitian Emigration Society of Coloured ­People, to the Emigrants Intending to Sail to the Island of Hayti, in the Brig De Witt Clinton (New York, 1824), 3, as cited in Leslie Alexander, African or American? (Illinois, 2008), 43. 38. Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 3, 1829, “To the American Convention &c. By The Committee appointed at the last Convention to procure information of the cultivation of Sugar, Cotton, &c by f­ ree ­labor &c.” 39. Anna Richardson, “­T here Is Death in the Pot!” (London, 1850), http://­digital​.­l ibrary​ .­cornell​.­edu​/­cgi​/­t​/­text​/­text​-­idx​?­c ​= ­mayantislavery;idno​=­16855204; Julie Holcomb, “­T here Is Death in the Pot: W ­ omen, Consumption, and F ­ ree Produce in the Transatlantic World, 1791–1848,” (PhD diss., University of Texas, Arlington, 2010), 214–215. 40. JCBL BFBR B637 F.5, Brigantine Richard (1821–1822), “Invoice of the Merchandize shipped by Daniel D Dailey onboard the Brigantine Richard himself master at Princess Island in Africa and consigned to Messrs Brown & Ives of Providence.” 41. William E. Allen, “Sugar and Coffee: A History of Settler Agriculture in Nineteenth-­ Century Liberia” (PhD diss., Florida International University, 2002), 167. 42. Genius of Universal Emancipation, January 3, 1829, 95. 43. Mathew Carey, The African Repository, November 1, 1828, 20.

Notes to Pages 217–224 

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44. James Brewer Stewart, “The Emergence of Racial Modernity and the Rise of the White North, 1790–1840,” Journal of the Early Republic 18, no. 2 (1998): 181–217. 45. D. Elwood Dunn, Amos J. Beyan, and Carl Patrick Burrowes, eds., Historical Dictionary of Liberia (Lanham, MD, 2000), 38. 46. African Repository, vol. 41, May 1865, 155. 47. Genius of Universal Emancipation, March 15, 1828, 69. 48. Genius of Universal Emancipation, May 3, 1828, “News from Liberia,” 102. 49. William E. Allen, “Rethinking the History of Settler Agriculture in Nineteenth-­ Century Liberia,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 37, no. 3 (2004): 441–442; Lisa Lindsay, Atlantic Bonds (Chapel Hill, NC, 2016), 95–96. 50. American Colonization Society Annual Report, 1861, 21. See Allen, “Sugar and Coffee,” 130. 51. Allen, “Sugar and Coffee,” 130–133. 52. HCQSC George W. Taylor letterbooks, April 23, 1853, Edina ­Grand Bassa County, Thomas Moore. 53. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbooks, vol. 2, January 19, 1864, to James Hall. 54. Library Com­pany of Philadelphia, George W. Taylor bills. 55. Allen, “Sugar and Coffee,” 146. 56. Everill, Abolition and Empire. 57. Tommie Shelby, “Two Conceptions of Black Nationalism: Martin Delany on the Meaning of Black Po­l iti­cal Solidarity,” Po­liti­cal Theory 31, no. 5 (2003): 668. 58. Library of the Society of Friends, London, MS box 11.3, 1–3, Burritt to John Ecroyd (via his ­brother, Benjamin Ecroyd), January 21, 1854. See Julie Holcomb, Moral Commerce, for more on this plan. 59. Gail Bederman, “Revisiting Nashoba: Slavery, Utopia, and Frances Wright in Amer ­i­ca, 1818–1826,” American Literary History 17, no. 3 (2005): 451. 60. “A Circular Addressed to Agriculturalists, Manufacturers, Mechanics, &c. On the Subject of Mexican Colonization; with a General Statement Respecting Lundy’s Grant, in the State of Tamaulipas: Accompanied by a Geo­g raph­i­cal Description, &c. Of That In­ter­est­ing Portion of the Mexican Republic” (Philadelphia: J. Richards, 1835). 61. HCQSC, George W. Taylor letterbook, December 16, 1852, Joseph Cox. 62. Eric Foner, ­Free Soil, F ­ ree ­Labor, ­Free Men, new ed. (Oxford, 1995), xxiii. 63. “Texas,” Workingman’s Advocate, April 27, 1844, 2; Jonathan H. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of ­Free Soil, 1824–1854 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2005). 64. Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery. 65. James Henry Hammond, “Speech on the Admission of Kansas,” U. S. Senate, March 4, 1858, in Se­lections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond, of South Carolina (New York, 1866), 317–22. 66. Genius of Universal Emancipation, December 22, 1827, 197. 67. Foner, ­Free Soil, 11–17. 68. The Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston, 1840), 4:19. Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Po­liti­cal Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (Raleigh, NC, 2000), 266–269. 69. Foner, ­Free Soil, 16.

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70. HCQSC, ­Free Produce Society of Friends, “At an adjourned meeting of the Board of Man­ag­ers held at No 231 High Street 10th month 4th 1845.” 71. Constitution of the ­Free Produce Society of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: D. S. Neal, 1827). Also appears in Genius of Universal Emancipation, April 26, 1828. 72. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection, 490, Miscellaneous Series V, reel 31, Ams 231, 244, 245, 841, 842, box 11b, folder 9 and folder 13 copy. 73. HSP, Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers Collection, 490, Miscellaneous Series V, reel 31, Ams 231, 244, 245, 841, 842, box 11b, folder 13, letter from Esther Nixon, May 1, 1840. 74. HCQSC, ­Free Produce Society of Friends, “At an adjourned meeting of the Board of Man­ag­ers held at No 231 High Street 10th month 4th 1845.” 75. Jean-­Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Po­liti­cal Economy (Philadelphia, 1850; first pub.​ 1803). 76. Genius of Universal Emancipation, August 1830. 77. National Historian, published in St. Clairsville, Ohio, by Horton Jefferson Howard; Genius of Universal Emancipation, February 23, 1828, 46. 78. Ibid. 79. Reprinted in the Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 18, 1828, 36. 80. Genius of Universal Emancipation, October 18, 1828, 38. 81. HCQSC, ­Free Produce Society of Friends, meeting, January 3, 1846. 82. HCQSC, Taylor ­Family Papers, 1233, from Nathan Thomas, November 20, 1845. 83. George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South (Richmond, VA,1854); George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or Slaves without Masters (Richmond, VA, 1857); Marcus Cunliffe, Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery: The Anglo-­American Context, 1830–1860 (Athens, GA, 1979), 32–68; Wilfred Carsel, “The Slaveholder’s Indictment of Northern Wage Slavery,” Journal of Southern History 6, no. 4 (1940): 504–520; Joseph Persky, “Wage Slavery,” History of Po­liti­cal Economy 30, no. 4 (1998): 627–651; Foner, ­Free Soil, xvii. 84. Foner, ­Free Soil, xvii; Carol Faulkner, “The Root of the Evil: ­Free Produce and Radical Antislavery, 1820–1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 3 (2007): 377–405. 85. Amy Dru Stanley, “Wages, Sin, and Slavery: Some Thoughts on ­Free ­Will and Commodity Relations,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2 (2004): 286; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York, 1991). 86. For a good summary, see Ian McGuire, “ ‘Who ­A in’t a Slave?’: Moby Dick and the Ideology of F ­ ree ­Labor,” Journal of American Studies 2 (2003): 287–290; David Lambert and Alan Lester, “Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy,” Pro­g ress in ­Human Geography 28, no. 320 (2004): 336; Howard Temperley, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past & Pre­sent 75 (1977): 94–118; Jonathan Glickstein, Concepts of F ­ ree ­Labor in Antebellum Amer­i­ca (New Haven, 1991), 3. 87. Jonathan A. Glickstein, “Pressures from Below: Pauperism, Chattel Slavery, and the Ideological Construction of F ­ ree Market ­Labor Incentives in Antebellum Amer­i­ca,” Radical History Review 69 (1997): 118. 88. Carsel, “Slaveholders’ Indictment.” 89. “Modern Philanthropy and Negro Slavery,” DeBow’s Review 16 (1854): 270.

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90. David Todd, ­Free Trade and Its Enemies in France, 1814–1851 (Cambridge, 2015), 175–176. 91. Cunliffe, Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery, 66–67; Henry Carey, The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign (Philadelphia, 1853). 92. Cunliffe, Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery; Jonathan A. Glickstein, American Exceptionalism, American Anxiety (Charlottesville, 2002). 93. McGuire, “ ‘Who A ­ in’t a Slave?,’ ” 293. 94. François Richard, “Hesitant Geographies of Power,” Journal of Social Archaeology 13, no. 1 (2012): 65. 95. James F. Searing, “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal (Portsmouth, NH, 2002), 223–225; George E. Brooks, “Peanuts and Colonialism: Consequences of the Commercialization of Peanuts in West Africa, 1830–70,” Journal of African History 16 (1975): 29–54; Samba Traoré, “Les Indigenes paysans entre maisons de commerce et administration colonial: Practiques et institutions de credit au Sénégal (1840–1940)” (PhD diss., Montpellier 1, 2001). 96. Barry, Senegambia, 170. 97. Benedetta Rossi, From Slavery to Aid (Cambridge, 2015), 16. 98. Michael Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad (Cambridge, 1992), 130–132. 99. Parliamentary Papers, 1865, V (412), 431, Governor D’Arcy to Edward Cardwell, August 22, 1864. 100. Cheikh Anta Babou, Le Jihad de l’âme: Ahmadou Bamba et la foundation de la Mouridiyya au Sénégal (Paris, 2011). 101. David Robinson and Jean-­Louis Triaud, eds., Le Temps des Marabouts: Itinéraires et stratégies islamiques en Afrique (Paris, 2012). The phrase “agrarian colonization” is Donal Cruise O’Brien’s in his Saints and Politicians (Cambridge, 2010), 67. 102. Catherine Boone, Po­liti­cal Topographies of the African State (Cambridge, 2003), 53; Paul Pélissier, Les Paysans du Sénégal (Saint-­Yrieix-­la-­Perche, 1966), 334; Bernard Moitt, “Slavery and Emancipation in Senegal’s Peanut Basin: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 1 (1989): 44–47. 103. ANS, Dakar 2G 4, 49, report of 4 July 1904, as cited in David Robinson, “Beyond Re­sis­t ance and Collaboration: Amadu Bamba and the Murids of Senegal,” Journal of Religion in Africa 21, no. 2 (1991): 165. 104. Lisa Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage ­Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria (Portsmouth, NH, 2003), 31. 105. Jacob Gibson to John H. Latrobe and William McKenney, August 31, 1833, and George R. Ellis McDonogh to John McDonogh, April 14, 1844, as cited in Bronwen Everill, “ ‘The Colony Has Made No Pro­g ress in Agriculture’: Contested Perceptions of Agriculture in the Colonies of Sierra Leone & Liberia,” in Schwarz, Strickrodt, and Law, Commercial Agriculture, 195. 106. TNA CO 267 / 295, Governor Kennedy to Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, September 14, 1868. 107. James Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant (New Haven, 1976); Ruma Chopra, Almost Home (New Haven, 2018); Polly Hill, Studies in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge,

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  Notes to Pages 235–240

1970); Frederick Cooper, “Peasants, Cap­i­t al­ists and Historians: A Review Article,” Journal of Southern African Studies 7, no. 2 (1981): 284–314; Catherine Coquery-­ Vidrovitch, “Research on an African Mode of Production,” Critique of Anthropology 2, nos. 4 / 5 (1975): 48; Johnhenry Gonzalez, Maroon Nation (New Haven, 2019); Caree Banton, More Auspicious Shores (Cambridge, 2019), 14. 108. Frederick Cooper, “Peasants, Cap­i­t al­ists and Historians,” Journal of Southern African Studies 7, no. 2 (1981): 289; Catherine Coquery-­Vidrovitch, “Research on an African Mode of Production,” 42. 109. Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York, 2014), 289–290. 110. Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian Page, Colonization a­ fter Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia, MO, 2011); Beverly Tomek and Matthew Hetrick, eds., New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization (Gainesville, 2017). 111. See the lit­er­a­ture on settler colonialism, including Margaret Jacobs, “Parallel of Intersecting Tracks? The History of the US West and Comparative Settler Colonialism,” Settler Colonial Studies 4, no. 2 (2014): 155–161; Guyatt, Bind Us Apart; Brandon Mills, “ ‘The United States of Africa’: Liberian In­de­pen­dence and the Contested Meaning of a Black Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 1 (2014): 79–107; Zoe Laidlaw and Alan Lester, eds., Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism: Land Holding, Loss, and Survival in an Interconnected World (Basingstoke, 2015); A. G. Hopkins, American Empire (Prince­ton, 2017); James Belich, Replenishing the Earth (Oxford, 2009); Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism (Oxford, 1983). 112. Kristin Hoganson, Consumer’s Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2007). 113. “Slavery and Po­l iti­cal Economy,” DeBow’s Review 1, no. 4 (1856): 331. Epilogu e: Globa l Soci a l R esponsibili t y 1. The National Archives, United Kingdom, CO 271 / 2, Sierra Leone Royal Gazette, June 29, 1822. 2. Huntington Library, MSS MY 369, August 16–­September 7, 1830, Henry William Macaulay to ZM. 3. John Car­ter Brown Library (hereafter cited as JCBL), Prices Current collection. 4. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.3, Boston, March 9, 1818, William Allston to Brown & Ives. 5. JCBL BFBR B.37 F.3, Boston, June 2, 1818, William Allston to Brown & Ives. 6. Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth C ­ entury (Cambridge, 1997), 154. 7. David Eltis and Lawrence Jennings, “Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-­Colonial Era,” American Historical Review 93, no. 4 (1988): 936–959. 8. Gareth Austin, “Cash Crops and Freedom: Export Agriculture and the Decline of Slavery in West Africa,” International Review of Social History 54, no. 1 (2009): 3. 9. JCBL BFBR B42 F.16, Baring ­Brothers, Baring Archive HC17.60, Sierra Leone, December 31, 1839.

Notes to Pages 240–244 

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10. Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change, chap. 7; Adam Jones, From Slaves to Palm Kernels: A History of the Galinhas Country (West Africa), 1730–1890 (Wiesbaden, 1983); Martin Klein, “Slaves, Gum, and Peanuts: Adaptation to the End of the Slave Trade in Senegal, 1817–44,” William and Mary Quarterly 66, no. 4 (2009): 895–914; Robin Law, ed., From Slave Trade to “Legitimate” Commerce (Cambridge, 1995); Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of An African City (Bloomington, IN, 2004); A. G. Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973). 11. Gareth Austin, ­Labour, Land, and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to ­Free L ­ abor in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester, NY, 2005). 12. Kevin Grant, A Civilised Savagery: Britain and the New Slaveries in Africa, 1884–1926 (New York, 2005); Robert Burroughs, Travel Writing and Atrocities (New York, 2011); Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (London, 1998); Dean Pavlakis, British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1896–1913 (Surrey, 2015); Jeremy David Rowan, “Imagining Corporate Culture: The Industrial Paternalism of William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight, 1888–1925” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2003), 231–236; Reuben Loffman and Benoit Henriet, “ ‘We Are Left with Barely Anything’: Colonial Rule, De­pen­dency, and the Lever B ­ rothers in the Belgian Congo, 1911–1960,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 1 (2020): 71–100. 13. Rowan, “Imagining Corporate Culture,” 235. 14. David J. Jeremy, “The Enlightened Paternalist in Action: William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight before 1914,” Business History 33, no. 1 (1991): 58–81. 15. Catherine Higgs, Choco­late Islands (Athens, OH, 2012). 16. Frank Trentmann, “Before ‘Fair Trade’: Empire, ­Free Trade, and the Moral Economy of Food in the Modern World,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007): 1079–1102; John Connolly and Deirdre Shaw, “Identifying Fair Trade in Consumption Choice,” Journal of Strategic Marketing 14, no. 4 (2006): 353–368; Michele Micheletti, “The Moral Force of Consumption and Capitalism: Anti-­slavery and Anti-­sweatshop,” in Citizenship and Consumption, ed. K. Soper and F. Trentmann (London, 2007); Terry Newholm, Sandra Newholm, and Deirdre Shaw, “A History for Consumption Ethics,” Business History (2014). 17. Suzanne Schwarz, “A Just and Honourable Commerce: Abolitionist Experimentation in Sierra Leone in the Late Eigh­teenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” African Economic History 45, no. 1 (2017): 1–45.

Acknowl­edgments

Although this is a single-­author book, and I take full responsibility for its contents, an incredible group of individuals and institutions have made the research and writing of this book pos­si­ble. Without the help of my husband, my parents, my parents-­in-­law, countless babysitters, after-­ school programs, and generous funding support from the Leverhulme Trust, which facilitated multiple short archival trips and the time to focus on research, I would be nowhere near completing this book with three small ­children. Thank you so much Cheryl and Richard Everill, Rich Everill and Melissa Yanefski, Marguerite and David Gorrie, Katie and Jonny Woods, and Paul and Caroline Gorrie for all of your baby­sitting since 2013. Thanks to Jennie Witton, Emily Blanch, Catherine Fullerton, Emily Manktelow, Lucas Bastin and Catherine Loy, Katya Higham-­Stoianova, Emily Fedouloff, May Harrison, Kristjana Caka, Laura Channing, Eli Rubies, Ada Rubies, Hannah Parlett, Aria Walker, Becca Lanham, Catherine Evans, Elena Duffy, Lucy Maitland-­Cullen, Julia Twarog and Philip Davidson, Lauryn Anderson, Mariah Donnelly, Ruchi and Raghav Chopra, Martha Radbourne, Jade Pallister, Izzy Branch, Issy Bruce, Evan Adair, Olivia Bisbee, and Evelyn Strope, who all gave of their time so generously to babysit at vari­ous points. Jen Laksh,

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Acknowl­edgments

thank you for being my shore-­buddy on Fridays in the Philly summers of 2014 and 2017, for visiting me at the Huntington and the JCB, and, along with Adrienne Choma, keeping me sane. To Bryony, Harriet, and Felicity, thank you for being good sports about my work travel. This proj­ect has been with me as long as you have, and so it w ­ ill be somewhat bittersweet for me to move on from h­ ere. Thank you for sharing your young lives with this proj­ect. And of course, to Jonnie, partner in my harebrained schemes: thank you for commuting, for taking unpaid leave, for moving to dif­fer­ent cities and continents for me. You are the audience and inspiration for this book, and I hope it lives up to expectations ­after a de­cade of hearing about it. Beyond this immediate community, I’d like to acknowledge the vari­ous academic institutions and funding bodies that generously supported this work. Early research was supported by Warwick University. The Leverhulme Trust and King’s College London awarded me a three-­year Early ­Career Fellowship, which r­ eally made the bulk of this research pos­si­ble. I cannot emphasize enough how wonderful the Leverhulme Trust was. Fellowships from the Huntington Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania / Library Com­pany of Philadelphia, and the John Car­ter Brown Library ­were invaluable for this proj­ect, and provided wonderful scholarly communities. Sarah Heim, Krystal Appiah, and Connie King at the Historical Society / Library Com­pany; Kim Nusco at the JCB; and Allee Monheim at the Huntington w ­ ere all exceptionally helpful. Julie Holcomb gave me ­great tips for the Haverford archives. The McNeil Center for Early American Studies gave me space to write the first draft in 2017, and I would like to especially thank Dan Richter, Barbara Natello, and Amy Baxter for their help getting me set up. The History Faculty at Cambridge and Gonville & Caius College have provided countless opportunities to pre­sent and workshop drafts, as well as funding to finish off my archival work and travel around presenting it at as many conferences as pos­si­ble. I was also lucky enough to have the assistance of Buba Saho in the Gambia. Nyanaro, Jaretta, Denbe Sanneh at NCAC Archives; Hassoum Ceesay, National Museum; and Baba Ceesay, National Center for Arts and Culture, w ­ ere all enormously helpful for research in the Gambia. Abu Koroma continues to be a resource in and of himself in the Sierra Leone

Acknowl­edgments 

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Archives at Fourah Bay College. Yamar Diagne was a crucial interlocutor in Senegal. Many thanks also go to the staff at the Archives Nationale du Senegal, including Fatima Fall. I’ve moved institutions several times since the research on this began, so ­there are plenty of colleagues to thank for their support over the years. My Warwick colleagues, especially Anne Gerritsen, Daniel Branch, and Maxine Berg; Toby Green, Richard Drayton, and Adam Sutcliffe, who supported my Leverhulme application at King’s College London; Alice Taylor, who is just awesome; Gareth Austin and the African and Global Economic History Group at Cambridge; the American and World History groups at Cambridge; the Cambridge Center of African Studies; Melissa Calaresu, Sujit Sivasundaram, and Peter Mandler at Caius, and Emma Hunter for being such a tough act to follow. And a special thank you to my students at ­these universities, for regularly putting up with my absent-­minded-­professor routine. Throughout the proj­ect, I’ve had amazing exchanges and conversations with many colleagues. I owe debts to Lisa Lindsay and Christopher Brown; Roquinaldo Ferreira; the World History Seminar at the Institute for Historical Research; Paul Lovejoy and the Harriet Tubman Institute at York University; the “Moralizing Capitalism” conference in Berlin; the Economic History Society; the African Studies Association of the UK; the African Economic History network; the history faculty seminars at Manchester and Oxford; the Center for Con­temporary African History at Durham University; the Institute of Advanced Study at Toulouse, where discussions helped me to reshape some of the early chapters; the McNeil Center for Early American Studies conferences in 2016 and 2018; the Weatherhead Initiative for Global History’s conference in Saint-­Louis, Senegal, where I honed some of the final ele­ments in discussions over ­bottles of Flag. I had such fun with the WMQ-­EMSI Age of Revolutions group, who made a big impact on Chapter 1. Many thanks to all ­those who have read—­anonymously or other­wise—­commented on, and listened to drafts. And to Kathleen McDermott, my editor, who has been so calm, efficient, and knowledgeable in her management of this book since 2016, that I have felt at least someone has a reassuring sense of perspective about it all. Padraic Scanlan and Catherine Evans; Richard Anderson; Myles Ali; Christine Whyte; Richard Huzzey; Jody Benjamin; Emily Manktelow;

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Acknowl­edgments

Ben Bankhurst; Laura Channing, Evelyn Strope, and Mary Ononokpono; Joel Hebert; Whitney Martinko; Mary Lewis; Emma Hart; Jo Cohen; Tehila Sasson; Suzanne Schwarz: you have all read drafts, answered email queries, listened to me complain, invited me to talks, been on numerous panels with me (listening to the same chapters again and again!), and been excellent com­pany over the past seven years. I hope my next proj­ect ­will let us keep finding excuses to go to conferences together!

Index

Abeokuta, 19 (map), 77, 178, 184, 199 Aborigines Protection Society, 187 abstention, 5, 19, 44–53, 85, 87, 207. See also boycott Addow, 62 African Institution, 62, 116, 141–151, 177, 179 agriculture, 218; African, 32, 155, 192, 232–235, 240; American, 220–229; and civilization, 63, 72, 179–180, 186, 244; and education, 188–189; French, 231; in India, 200; and legitimate commerce, 142–147; in Liberia, 181, 218; and nationalism, 14; plantation, 10, 177, 197; versus manufacturing, 16. See also cash crops; cotton; groundnuts; sugar alcohol: banned / boycotted, 48–50, 52, 54–56, 59, 67, 75, 156; in Senegambia trade, 27–30, 34–35 (fig), 39, 48; in Sierra Leone trade, 1–3, 8, 70, 147, 153; and the slave trade, 29–30, 34–35, 42, 48–50, 54, 55, 74, 77–79. See also rum al-­Din, Nasr, 30, 45, 60, 61, 62 Allen, William, 148, 152 American Colonization Society, 143, 158, 182, 216–220 American F ­ ree Produce Association, 5, 82; and cotton production, 176, 207–209, 224–226; and free-­produce labelling, 94–95, 107; and free-­produce stores, 96–98, 123 ammunition, 28, 35, 70–75, 78, 128, 150–151

Anti-­Corn Law League, 159 archaeology, 29–33, 38, 71, 101, 131, 232 Ardra, Kingdom of, 152 Asma’u, Nana, 16, 43, 61, 102, 108 Atlantic Taste, 27, 30 Aussenac, Rosalie, 130

bafts, 29, 145. See also cloth; guinées Bamba, Amadou, 233 Banjul. See Bathurst Bassa Cove, 91, 217 Bathurst, 19 (map), 133, 151, 155, 207 Bello, Muhammadu, 58 Benezet, Anthony, 120 Benson, Martin: and fraud, 1–3, 103, 158; and market information, 120–121, 157; and slave traders, 105, 119; and trade with Sierra Leone, 23, 44–45, 67, 72, 117 Benson, Stephen, 91–92, 123–124, 182, 199, 214–218 Bethel AME Church, 210, 212 Bight of Benin, 74, 77, 110 Bight of Biafra, 34, 110 bill of exchange, 100, 102, 105, 110, 115–119, 137 Blackstone Manufacturing, 84, 200 Bordeaux, 46, 132, 154 boycott, 5, 20, 244; of guns, 73, 74; to return fugitive slaves, 195, 243; of the slave trade, 27, 44–47, 243; of slave-­ produced goods, 47–55, 57, 65, 87, 160, 165. See also abstention

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Boyer, Jean-­Pierre, 215, 236 Brakna, 154 brand: of abolition, 80–98, 169; of free-­produce coffee, 214–216; of guns, 71, 100–107; innovations in, 24, 175, 242; Lever, 240, 241 bribe, 76, 82, 153 Brown, Benson & Ives: and African demand, 67, 117, 120–121; po­l iti­cal connections, 17; and Sierra Leone trade, 1–4 Brown & Ives, 118; and market information in African trade, 83, 118–123; run-in with Macaulay & Babington, 124–127; and supply chains, 200; supplying John Tilley, 105; supplying Sierra Leone, 67, 72; and tariffs, 157–160, 216 Bullom, 25, 27 Bundu, 31, 33 Burton, Richard, 77

Cadbury, 238, 244 Calabar. See Old Calabar Camwood: exports of, 68, 145, 218; price of, 104, 105, 118, 121–123, 126, 127, 128, 129; and tariffs, 157 capital: access to, 11, 39, 110–111, 115, 117, 226, 235; and f­ ree ­labor, 161–162, 188, 205, 214, 224, 235; invested in Senegambia, 131–132, 136–137; invested in Sierra Leone, 66, 148, 179; investments, 69, 140; and slavery, 14, 95, 163, 191, 227; social, 139 capitalism: consumer, 4, 13, 53, 241; and humanitarianism, 12, 14, 18, 26, 175, 203, 244; industrial, 11, 22, 23, 84; and liberalism, 13, 44, 113, 229; and slavery, 7, 15, 21, 112 Carew, Betsey, 148 Carew, Thomas, 118–119 Carey, Mathew, 207, 216–217 cash: in trade, 38, 108, 110, 114, 118, 127, 138, 155; in wages, 68. See also currency; money cash crops, 15, 179, 234, 236–237. See also cotton; groundnuts; palm oil; rice; sugar cassava, 92, 124, 143, 158

 Index ceddo, 30, 45 Chandler, Elizabeth Margaret, 16, 92 Chris­t ian­ity, 20, 27, 43–44, 50, 58, 61, 113, 188, 241. See also Quakers Church Missionary Society, 178 Clarkson, Thomas, 16; and Wedgwood, 85, 89; and legitimate commerce, 120, 143; and Sierra Leone, 69, 116; on the slave trade, 61, 165, 185; and Zachary Macaulay, 117, 141, 150, 162 Clegg, Thomas, 178, 202 cloth: as an African trade good, 1, 8, 19, 28–29, 35, 37, 42, 53, 59, 70, 73, 100, 101, 128, 132, 145, 156; African-­produced, 55–56, 113, 199; production of free-­ produce, 92–93, 98, 173–174, 178, 199–202, 208–210 coffee, African-­g rown, 67, 142, 143, 177, 179–180, 199; consumption of, 28, 38, 39; free-­produce, 164, 181–182, 204, 213–221, 236; slave-­labor produced, 9, 51, 176 collateral, 109–113, 134–139, 163 Colored ­Free Produce Society, 5, 97, 210, 226 commodification, 13, 26–27, 42–45, 53–55, 79 commodity: consumption of, 10, 12, 26–28, 41–44; currency, 34–35, 40, 45, 55–60, 68, 70, 79, 100, 109; identifying an ethical, 20, 58–59, 76, 81, 192; markets, 132, 138–139; production, 7, 8, 22, 51, 136, 155, 168, 180, 186, 197–203, 234; relations, 54; trade, 115–116, 125, 129, 138, 143, 179, 195; and trust, 100, 102, 109–110, 116, 120, 129, 131, 138–139 compensation, 168, 187 competition: between empires, 76, 177, 233; between free-­and slave-­produce, 160–161, 164–165, 169, 225, 242; and mono­poly, 38, 57, 164–165, 168; ­labor, 186–187, 230; in palm oil production, 240; from slave traders, 2, 103, 105–106, 129, 143 Congo, 240–241 Congos. See Liberated Africans consumer responsibility: and the abstention campaign, 51–54; for slavery,

Index  5, 51–54, 64; within the global economy, 19, 44; minimizing government responsibility, 75; for positive purchasing, 204, 210, 211 consumer revolution, 38; and American protectionism, 206; and Atlantic taste, 30; and consumption bundling, 28; and industrial growth, 235; and the luxury debate, 41, 234; shaping po­l iti­cal protest, 9, 12, 47; and shared Atlantic experience, 6, 18–19, 26–33, 38–40, 53; and slave-­based finance, 111 consumer value: demonstrating the efficiency of f­ ree l­ abor, 164–167; and the protection of the consumer, 13, 231; and reforming global commerce, 12, 175; versus ­labor value, 14, 23; of West African trade, 67 consumption, 28–30, 35, 36, 38–40, 49 (fig), 92, 120; bundle, 28; competitive, 34, 37; con­spic­u­ous, 81, 89, 95; deleterious effect of, 75, 77–78; and po­l iti­cal power, 45, 47, 48, 53, 213; stimulating production, 68–69, 143–145, 175, 180, 195–198 corruption, 76, 102, 152, 243 cotton: African production of, 35, 120, 142–143, 176–180, 184, 191, 199–200, 230, 240; East India, 101, 164, 198–199, 201; ­f ree–­labor, 93–95, 96, 98, 173–174; manufacturing, 84, 207–210, 93–94; slave-­produced, 81, 83, 91, 93, 166; and white farmers, 204, 221–229, 235–236. See also cloth credit, 12–13, 34, 45, 58–59, 84, 92; in legitimate commerce, 125–127; and morality, 109–115; overextension of, 134–138; as protection against fraud, 101; in Sierra Leone, 115–120, 127–129, 133; in Senegambia, 129–134. See also debt crisis of adaptation, 8–9, 10 Cropper, James, 141, 161–172, 183, 185, 202 Cuffe, Paul, 122, 148, 158 currency, 68, 79, 99, 100–101, 105–107, 110; commodity, 34, 40, 55, 57–60, 68, 70, 100

• 311 customary payments. See customs customs, 10, 13, 75, 168, 171; African, 73, 151–157; American, 157–160, 200; British, 72, 90, 142, 151, 163–165, 169, 196; French, 230–231. See also tariffs

Dahomey, 19 (map), 77 Damel of Kajoor, 48, 78, 195 dan Fodio, Uthman, 37, 43, 58, 61, 156 debt: commercial, 115–116, 119–120, 124, 126–127, 129–134, 148, 154, 239; and de­pen­dency, 44, 109, 113, 139, 163–164, 180; and enslavement, 32, 34, 111–113, 115, 138, 194; morality of, 109–115, 136. See also credit Delany, Martin, 213 demand, 5, 8–11, 18, 46; consumer, 27–34, 39, 41, 48, 60, 71, 75, 79, 89, 102; for fake goods, 101; and legitimate commerce, 64–67; and mono­poly, 161; supply and demand, 42, 51–52, 82, 186–188, 211, 241, 243 Dickason, Thomas, 118–119, 126 Dombasle, Mathieu de, 230 domestic slavery, 111, 190–203, 229–230, 237 doux commerce, 11, 56 Duties. See tariffs

East India Sugar, 49, 81, 87–88, 90, 95, 160–167, 185 Education, 186, 188–190, 241 Efik, 57, 111, 136 Egypt, 174, 184, 197, 202 externalities, 12, 24, 75, 168, 244

fables, 130–131 Falconbridge, Anna Maria, 28, 68, 69, 102, 148 Fatta, 36–37 forgery, 80, 84, 101 Forster & Smith, 130, 133–134, 148, 150 Forten, James, 212 fraud, 80–84, 90, 95–106, 153, 154, 159, 226, 243

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­f ree ­labor, 3, 5, 9–10, 13, 16, 167–171, 211; in Amer­ic­ a, 220–229; cotton, 173–174, 176–181, 207–210; defining, 193–194, 201–202; East India goods and, 81, 159, 199; efficiency of, 157, 167–171, 195–198, 205; in Liberia, 181–182, 216–220; sugar, 91, 160–167. See also ­f ree produce; indenture; Philadelphia F ­ ree ­Labor Ware­house; wage slavery ­f ree produce, 5–6, 9, 18, 74–75, 244; from Africa, 123–124, 158; cotton, 173–174, 176–181, 207–210; higher prices for, 90–93, 106, 114–115, 243; from Haiti, 215; from Liberia, 181–182, 216–220; prob­lems sourcing, 93–95, 183–185, 198–200, 208–210, 220–229, 235; stores, 17, 90–98; sugar, 91, 160–167. See also American F ­ ree Produce Association; Colored ­Free Produce Society; free l­ abor; Philadelphia ­Free Produce Society ­f ree soil, 220–236 Freetown, 1, 19 (map), 65–71; Anna Maria Falconbridge in, 102; and fugitive slaves, 194; legitimate commerce in, 155, 179, 234; Macaulay & Babington’s operations in, 108, 117, 129, 132–135, 239; rice trade in, 143–147, 191. See also Sierra Leone ­f ree trade, 206; and African tariffs, 153–154; and Anglo-­A merican rivalry, 159–160, 205, 231; and l­ abor value, 13, 14, 200–201, 242; and mono­poly, 140, 142, 145; sugar, 168–171. See also tariffs Fula, 32, 36, 37, 61, 66, 156 Futa Jallon, 19 (map); and Freetown’s trade, 66; and the gun trade, 70; migration from, 192, 206, 232; and tariffs, 152, 155–156 Futa Toro, 19 (map); and the abolition of the slave trade, 16, 43, 45–46, 191; boycott of rum, 45, 48; debt relations in, 113; jihad of, 36, 37, 64; and legitimate commerce, 65; and Umar Tal, 156; and weapon imports, 73

Gabbidon, Stephen, 135 Gajaaga, 152, 155

 Index Galam. See Gajaaga Gambia: arms trade to, 61–62, 70, 73, 76; commercial agriculture in, 177, 235; credit, 109, 131–134, 136–137; exports from, 149, 207; fugitives to, 194, 233; imports into, 34, 35, 118; tariffs in, 153, 155–156. See also Senegambia Gambia River, 19 (map), 31, 83, 148, 149, 233 Garrison, William Lloyd, 89, 90, 94, 159, 182 Genius of Universal Emancipation, 16; and British abolition, 164, 185, 188, 195; and colonization, 213, 217–218, 221–222, 226; and free-­produce arguments, 52, 82, 92–94, 97, 210, 226; George W. Taylor and, 17, 90 Ghana. See Gold Coast Gillet, G. M., 173, 202 Gladstone, John, 165–166, 183, 184, 187 Gold Coast: agriculture in, 177, 235; commission ­house system, 117; commodity currency, 59–60, 73, 110; response to abolition, 65; slave exports from, 34 Gorée, 19 (map); American trade at, 72, 118–119; and commercial power, 67; and enslaved ­labor, 180, 193; signares in, 29 groundnuts: and American tariffs, 207; demand for, 9, 123; peasant agriculture, 155, 180, 232–233, 240; in Senegambia, 131–132, 134, 155, 180, 191; in Sierra Leone, 77, 192; and slavery, 191–192, 232 Guinea, 66, 71, 112, 192 Guinea-­Bissau, 70 guinées, 29, 73, 100, 132, 156 gum, 46, 58–59, 67–68, 132, 149, 152–156, 180 gun: African uses for, 73; banned, 46, 76–79; as immoral goods, 74–79; -­slave cycle, 35–36, 55–56, 70–76; as trade goods, 8, 28, 31, 34, 42, 104

Haiti, 116, 141; abolition in, 16; as a free-­produce source, 176, 186; coffee, 214–215, 236; migration, 206, 221; revolution, 6–7, 36, 149

Index  Hammond, James Henry, 223 Henderson’s China Ware­house, 87 Heyrick, Elizabeth, 16, 50, 51, 82, 165, 187 Hicks, Elias, 50 Hicksite, 97 Hunt, Nathan Jr., 94, 225, 226

import, 67, 117, 126–127, 132, 133, 135, 152; tariffs, 91, 158, 163, 200, 216, 239 indenture, 149, 180, 185–188, 198, 236–237 Industrial Revolution, 7, 14, 76 industriousness, 28, 136, 201, 233 industry: African, 28, 62, 63, 75, 136; protection of national, 14, 47, 195, 228, 231 inflation, 34, 132 Islam, 2, 29; and morality in commerce, 43, 48, 58, 110, 113; and revolution, 12, 32, 33, 36–37, 45, 64; and slavery, 43, 45, 61, 191. See also jihad Isles de Los, 118, 119, 125, 126 Ivory, 68, 70, 83, 99, 104, 122–124, 126, 157, 158, 239

Jamaica Hamic Trade Association, 210 jihad, 2, 26, 33, 36–37; in Futa Toro, 46; of Nasr al-­Din, 30; of Umar Tal, 76, 78, 156, 232; of Uthman dan Fodio, 43, 61 Jordan, Binah, 68–69

Kaabu, 19 (map), 155–156, 232 Kabre, 113 Kane, ‘Abd al’Qadir, 43, 45–46, 48, 61, 78 Kent, Elizabeth, 123 King Naimbana, 28 King Tom, 129–130 Koinadugu Plateau, 70–71

labels: East India sugar basin, 87; free-­produce cotton, 173, 188, 226; innovations in, 106–107, 244; Liberia, 216; Sierra Leone Com­pany, 99; as a supply chain solution, 80–81, 85, 93–95

• 313 ­labor, 4–5, 10–16; and consumption, 195–198; de­pen­dency, 41, 44, 230–236, 238; enslaved, 7, 16, 18, 31, 178, 180; global disparities, 198–203, 240–241; market for, 31, 43, 112, 133; “stolen”, 50–51; training, 188–190, 237; value, 20–21, 22–23, 175–176, 183–185; wage, 8, 229, 233. See also ­f ree ­labor; indenture; slavery; wage slavery ­labor theory of value, 196–197 Lagos, 19 (map), 74, 77, 117, 137, 199 Lamiral, Dominique, 37 land: and colonial expansion, 66, 78–79, 144, 153, 176–180; migration to new, 22, 155, 181, 205–206, 214–216, 221–224, 232–236. See also land-­labor ratio; territory land-­labor ratio, 22, 30, 180–181, 186–192, 203, 235 landlord-­stranger, 57, 66, 137 legitimate commerce, 3, 8–9, 11, 197, 237, 243–244; agriculture, 142, 177, 191–192; arguments for, 64–70, 75, 120, 138, 169, 171, 201–203; colonial experiments in, 18; credit facilitation of, 109, 114, 129–134, 136; crisis of adaptation, 13, 129–135, 153–155, 232; and ethical concerns, 56, 58–59, 73, 76–77; in Liberia, 181–183, 218–220; role in the Atlantic economy, 17; in Sierra Leone, 55–56, 64–70, 75–76, 99–106; tariffs on, 157–160, 165, 207; trade in, 71, 76, 118, 120–124, 148–149. See also cash crops; cotton; groundnuts; gum; palm oil; sugar Leigh, William, 119, 125–126 Lever ­Brothers, 238–242 liberalism, 13, 15, 41, 84, 112–114, 187–188, 234 Liberated African Department, 143, 146–147, 151, 239 Liberated Africans, 116; apprenticeship of, 185, 189–190; in Liberia, 182; in trade, 119, 135 Liberia, 15; coffee, 199, 204, 213–214, 236; commercial agriculture in, 143, 181–182, 233–234; free-­produce from, 91–92, 123–124, 216–220

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Lincoln, Abraham, 235 Liverpool, cotton manufacturing in, 200, 228; James Cropper and, 161, 163, 165, 166; trade to Sierra Leone, 135; West African trade from, 34, 119; and the Zong, 42 Livingstone, David, 184 Loans. See credit; debt Longstreth, Morris, 226 Lundy, Benjamin: and black entrepreneurs, 213; editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, 16; and free-­cotton supplies, 94, 97; and f­ ree soil experiments, 221–228; and Liberian colonization, 218. See also Genius of Universal Emancipation luxury, 26, 27–28, 65, 114, 202; debate, 38–44, 47, 50–51, 234; and the “geegaw myth”, 74

Macaulay, Henry, 108, 134, 147 Macaulay, Kenneth: agent for Macaulay & Babington, 117, 126, 143, 146–147, 152; and collapse of Macaulay & Babington, 128–129, 148; death, 134, 148; and the Liberated African Department, 146–147, 151; on the Sierra Leone Council, 152 Macaulay, Selina, 3, 81, 128 Macaulay, Zachary: approach to credit, 128–130; banking, 116–117, 141; as chairman of the African Institution, 62, 116, 141–143, 148, 150–151; engagement with African leaders, 25, 48, 62, 65, 75, 99, 104, 129–130, 191; and East India sugar, 160–167, 183–185, 196; evangelicalism, 26; and forgery, 80, 84, 100–103, 106; and Freeport, 66, 177; and French antislavery, 179–180; and fugitive slaves, 99, 194; outlining his vision of ethical commerce, 17, 160–167, 169, 177, 179, 183–184, 225; reliance on abolitionist networks, 127–129, 141–143, 147–148, 171; and rice, 144–146; and Sierra Leone trade, 68, 69, 80, 99, 104–105, 117, 153–154; and slave traders, 55, 70, 75, 80, 99, 102–103, 192–193; support for African revolutions, 37; using Sierra Leone

 Index experience in business, 3, 144, 171–172; and Thorpe’s accusations, 140–141, 150–152; trading with Benson, 1–3. See also Macaulay & Babington; Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany Macaulay & Babington: collapse of, 129, 134–135; and credit, 108, 126, 127–129; establishment of, 116–117; mono­poly, 140, 142, 147–148; and palm oil, 239 mahogany, 120, 148–149 Malthus, Thomas, 63, 190 Manchester: cotton goods, 145, 176, 178, 200, 209; free-­produce depot in, 96 manufacturing, African, 197; American, 206, 210; East Indian, 161–163; ­f ree produce, 90–98, 207–210, 223–224; ­shaped by demand, 71; versus agriculture, 16, 198–202 market: capital, 132; colonial, 178, 195; commodity, 125–127, 132–136, 143, 150–154; consumer, 56, 60, 62, 67, 83, 140, 195–198, 237; defense of, 10, 16, 168; distortion, 171–172, 225; for free-­produce goods, 9, 22, 95, 165, 208, 217–219, 224–225; information, 120–124, 138, 157–159, 200, 218; international, 20, 23, 29, 119, 138; ­labor, 188, 197, 199; morality, 24, 26, 36, 80, 175; segmentation, 38, 71, 72, 74, 88, 242; as a solution to the prob­lem of slavery, 11, 15, 49–50, 52, 96, 109, 187; thinking, 12, 13, 26–27, 43, 113 marketing, 85, 87, 96, 103, 215, 242, 244 Marseille, 132, 154 Marx, Karl, 112 Maurel et Prom, 154 Mauritius, 163, 185 mea­sure­ment, 59, 83 migration. See Futa Jallon; ­labor; land; Liberia; Haiti; peasant farmer; yeoman Mill, John Stuart, 179, 186, 189, 197, 235 millenarian, 220 Miller, Daniel, 97 millet, 31, 33, 46, 156 Molo, Alfa, 156 money: and fraud, 83, 101; investment, 58–59, 68, 108, 110, 113, 115, 141, 150, 163; and market thinking, 40; and

Index  morality, 35, 55, 58, 100, 113; and the Sierra Leone Com­pany Store, 68, 115; and wealth, 110. See also cash; currency mono­poly, African trade, 57, 60, 109, 133, 154; and consumer value, 11, 165, 224; Macaulay & Babington and, 140, 142, 152; West India, 160–161, 170–172, 225 monopsony, 109, 134, 142, 164–165, 172, 180 Monrovia, 19 (map), 91, 181, 218 moral community, 32, 54, 57, 58, 109 Moria, 19 (map), 32, 36–37, 153 mortgage, 111–112, 191 Mourides, 233 Mudsill theory, 223

Napoleonic wars: decline in camwood demand a­ fter, 122; exchange of French and British colonies a­ fter, 133, 143, 178; re­introduction of trading restrictions ­a fter, 118, 207 Nashoba, 221 National Negro Convention, 210 Neiser, Jan, 119 Niger (country), 232 Niger (river), 19 (map), 33, 109, 156, 188, 240 Nigeria: commercial agriculture in, 178, 202, 223, 240; credit in, 112; imitation Wedgwood design found in, 101; Oyo state in, 57; trade along the coast of, 77; wage l­ abor in, 233. See also Old Calabar; Sokoto Caliphate nonimportation agreement, 46–47, 206–207 North Carolina, 93, 94, 97, 225–228

Ohio, 96–97, 210, 226–227 Old Calabar, 19 (map), 58, 73, 74, 120, 131; and the Efik, 57, 111, 136 Ouidah, 19 (map), 28, 120, 240

palm oil, 238–241, 243–244; and the crisis of adaptation, 9, 155; demand in Rhode Island, 121–123, 126, 157–159; Liberian, 218; in Nigeria, 74, 131; Sierra Leone exports of, 67, 121, 152; tariffs on, 155, 157–159

• 315 panyarring, 62, 113, 115 Park, Mungo, 63, 190 pawn, 111, 113, 136, 138 peanuts. See groundnuts peasant farmer, 221–236 Pellegrin, 130, 180 Pennock, Abraham, 224 Philadelphia ­Free ­Labor Ware­house, 90, 204 Philadelphia ­Free Produce Society, 5, 90, 92, 209, 224 Pierce, James, 97, 210 Pierce, John, 99 plantation: African, 62, 191, 193, 197; coffee, 213–220; East Indian, 162–163; enslaved-­labor, 11, 44, 171, 184–186; free-­labor, 120, 142–145, 149, 176–182, 220–221; indentured-­labor, 186–188; ­owners, 42, 169; palm oil, 241 Port Sunlight, 238–239 Postlethwayt, Malachy, 60, 120 price: in demonstrating efficiency of ­f ree ­labor and legitimate commerce, 12–13, 106, 115, 134, 157, 161, 164–165, 208–209, 216, 240; fixing, 129–130, 132–134, 138; incentivizing fraud, 80–81, 82–83, 95, 98, 99–100, 158; information, 23, 45, 68–69, 120–124, 126–129, 145–146; and the ­labor theory of value, 196–197; and mono­poly, 140, 152, 167–169, 201; premiums, 90–93, 104–106, 214, 243; in shaping market thinking, 40; of slaves, 9, 33–35, 46, 48, 57, 60, 191 prizes, 142–143, 178 profit, 168–172, 242; in East India sugar, 163–164, 230; in ­f ree ­labor, 103, 221, 223, 225; in legitimate commerce, 3, 12, 67, 91, 129, 134, 142, 216; and mono­poly, 13, 47, 150, 153; and questions about ethical business practices, 23, 32, 58, 77, 91, 95, 103, 105, 142–146; and self-­interest, 11, 51, 230; in Sierra Leone’s businesses, 68–69, 177 protectionism, 13–14, 160, 199 Providence, Rhode Island: and antislavery, 42, 117; and Brown & Ives, 1, 67; rum, 29, 45; and tariff information, 123, 239 Purvis, Robert, 210–211

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Quakers: A. L. Benedict, 97; arguments against “stolen ­labor,” 62, 98, 159; Benjamin Lundy, 16; Cadbury’s, 244; critique of slavery, 5, 6, 12, 26, 50; Daniel Miller, 97; Edward Gurney, 178; Elias Hicks, 50–51; George W. Taylor, 11, 90, 178; James Cropper, 161; Joseph Sturge, 170; Lydia White, 97, 114; Moses Brown, 42, 200; Nathan Hunt Jr., 94; networks in sourcing f­ ree cotton, 95–97, 173–174, 209, 220, 224–228 quality: of African imports, 30, 74, 103–104, 131, 154; and consumer protection, 83–84, 101, 106, 109–110; of free-­produce goods, 93, 95, 98, 106, 121, 208, 212, 227–228; moral, 57, 59

Recaptives. See Liberated Africans Republican party, 222, 235 reputation, 80, 83, 84–85, 97, 99–105 reversal of fortune thesis, 22 revolution, 37, 45–48, 61, 244. See also consumer revolution; Haiti; Industrial Revolution; jihad Ricardo, David: and East India Sugar, 160, 184, 196; ­labor value, 197, 201; and the slave trade’s impact on African economies, 63, 190 rice: East India, 161, 165, 181, 200; legitimate commerce in, 1, 67–68, 99, 128–129, 142–147, 154–155, 170–172, 218; production for the slave trade, 2, 32, 36, 62, 191; tariffs on, 152 Richardson, Anna, 215 Roger, Baron, 130, 143, 179–180 rum: African demand for, 1–3, 28–29, 35, 67, 122, 147; American consumption, 39; boycotted, 45, 48–50, 54, 55; East India, 164. See also alcohol

Saint-­Louis, 19 (map); commercial power, 31, 130, 180, 195; enslaved ­labor in, 180, 195; French government of, 76; rum imports into, 48; signares of, 29; slave trade from, 46 Sally, 42

 Index Say, Jean-­Baptiste, 226 Segou, 33 Senegal, 19 (map); colonial expansion in, 154; consumption patterns, 30–31, 67, 72, 101, 200; credit and debt, 109–112, 130–132; emancipation in, 168, 194–195; exports, 33, 59; jihads in, 37, 45–48, 61–62, 76, 78; legitimate commerce from, 18, 58–59, 154, 232–233; Mourides in, 233; plantations in, 143, 149, 178–180, 230; signares of, 29; slave trade from, 61 Senegambia, 15; consumption patterns, 29, 71, 74; credit and debt, 130–132; po­l iti­cal power in, 29–30; exports from, 58–59, 121, 132; famines in, 33; opposition to the slave trade in, 33–35, 45–46; slave trade from, 34, 45; slavery in, 32, 60, 63 Serer, 31, 232 settlement patterns, 32–33 Sharp, Granville, 42, 143, 150 Sierra Leone, 24, 65–67; apprenticeship in, 185, 189–190; Com­pany, 1–4, 45, 55, 65–67, 79, 144–145, 153; Com­pany Store, 68–69, 99–106; consumers, 28, 32, 67, 68–69, 71–72, 74–75, 80–81, 154, 200; credit in, 108, 112, 115–120, 128–130; exports, 133–134, 145–147, 215, 239; Gazette, 83, 128, 131, 135, 146, 147, 154; legitimate commerce, 55–56, 144, 177–179; Macaulay & Babington in, 128, 135, 140–141, 145–148, 152; manufacturing, 28; slave trade from, 34, 36, 65, 112 signares, 29 Siin, 29, 31, 232 slave power conspiracy, 222, 225 slavery: in Africa, 21, 32–33, 144, 152, 181–182, 190–195, 208, 232, 237; arguments about consumer responsibility for, 5, 9–10, 44, 48, 51–52, 64, 74–75, 82, 187; and capitalism, 7, 14, 188; efficiency of, 145, 161, 169, 216, 223–227; and enslaved ­labor produce, 20, 82, 91–96, 98, 161, 166, 168, 169, 181, 200, 209; and protectionism, 140, 142–143, 171, 201, 205. See also ­labor; wage slavery slave trade, 1, 7–8; abolished, 16; abolitionists and, 4, 16, 18; boycotts of, 46–47, 243; and commodification, 41–43,

Index  53–54, 79, 243; continuation of, 17, 64–65, 118, 119–120; and the crisis of adaptation, 8–9, 10, 13; and debt, 111–113, 138; effect on consumption, 75, 175, 195–198; and global commerce, 10, 19, 26–33, 48–49, 57–60, 74; ideas for ending, 4–5, 8, 15, 49–51, 65–66, 151; opposition to in Africa, 12, 33–38, 43–44, 45–46, 48, 55, 64, 149; in Senegambia, 46, 118; in Sierra Leone, 2, 75, 80, 99, 102–103, 105–106, 135, 144; and tariffs, 152–157, 171; and war, 56–57, 60–64, 70–73, 76–78, 151, 190 Slave Trade Act, 117 Smith, Adam: on consumer’s effect on demand, 4, 51; on externalities, 12, 27, 51; and imitation goods, 101; on the inefficiency of enslaved l­ abor, 171, 226; and the ­labor theory of value, 196; on mono­poly, 13, 140; on the national economy, 56; on self-­interest, 52; on war’s effect on consumption, 62–63, 137 soap, 238–242 Société coloniale philanthropique, 149–150 Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 86, 100, 120 Society of Friends. See Quakers Sokoto Caliphate, 19 (map); and liberty, 37; and Nana Asma’u, 102, 108; and slavery, 43, 61; and Umar Tal, 156 squills, 124–127, 158 State of war, 56, 60–64, 79, 175, 190 Stephen, James, 162, 167 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 220–221 Sturge, Joseph, 96, 170, 173, 227 subsidy, 168, 171 sugar: abstention from, 5, 9–10, 49–54, 85–88; African production of, 143, 176–181, 218, 230–231; consumption of, 19, 28, 38–39, 42, 48, 49 (figure), 67; f­ ree ­labor, 96, 167–168, 172, 174, 186, 187–188, 200, 221; ­f ree trade, 160, 205, 225; East India, 81, 160–169, 181, 183–185; maple, 91; refining, 212; tariffs on, 169, 186, 196; West India, 83, 90–91, 172, 187. See also Sugar Duties Act; Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany Sugar Duties Act, 168

• 317 supply and demand, 11, 18, 115; and consumer responsibility, 42, 52, 82, 211, 241; and l­ abor conditions, 185–186; and “market thinking”, 27, 52 supply chain: and consumer responsibility, 51–53, 78, 82, 89, 96, 198–199; and ethical supply, 18, 80, 106, 174–175, 203, 210, 212, 243, 245; global, 20, 21, 48, 81, 85; and nationalism, 95, 204, 242; and slavery, 10, 54, 94, 183–185, 187; weak, 97, 115 Susu, 36–37, 48, 55, 66, 99

tariffs: African, 29, 151–157, 78; American, 125, 157–160, 200, 206; British, 151, 163–171; debates about, 13, 163–171; and ­f ree trade, 11, 23, 142; French, 230–231; and mono­poly, 47, 75; and profitability, 90, 127, 164 Taylor, George W., 17; and American cotton, 209–210, 223, 228, 236; and arguments for consumer activism, 90, 114–115; and the ­Free Soil movement, 222; and Liberian trade, 91, 123–124, 181–182, 213–219; operation of the Philadelphia ­Free ­Labor Ware­house, 91–92, 204; and tariffs, 158 tea, 10, 28, 38–39, 42, 46, 69–70, 87, 128 Temne, 28, 32, 36, 66, 129 territory, 66, 76, 154–155, 236. See also land Texas Question, 221–222 Thorpe, Robert, 140, 150–151, 165 Tilley, John, 72, 105–106, 119 timber, 135, 149 tobacco: banned, 156; and enslaved ­labor, 51; ethical value of, 24; ­f ree ­labor, 210, 221, 226–227; pipes, 28, 31, 39; as a trade good, 1–3, 35, 59, 67, 72, 118–119, 145 Trarza, 58, 59, 154, 195 Tropical Free-­Sugar Com­pany, 160–167, 170 trust. See commodity: currency; credit; reputation

Umar Tal, Al Hajj, 76, 78, 156, 232 usury, 58, 59, 109, 110, 113, 136

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318 

value, 112, 194; of African exports, 199, 200, 207, 215, 240; consumer, 12–14, 43, 67, 93, 164–165, 175, 231; cost, 105, 110, 120, 132; devaluation, 104; ethical, 4, 56, 59, 85, 87, 93, 109, 241; of ­free l­ abor, 13, 21–22, 165, 167–168, 179, 196–197, 205–206, 210, 214, 227; of imports into Africa, 35, 60; of land, 234; method of valuing, 121–123; po­liti­cal, 29, 47, 79, 84–85, 88–89, 98, 100; of rice, 142, 146; of tariffs, 154, 157–159; use, 100, 111

wage: and comparative advantage, 196–197; after emancipation, 168, 180, 186–187; and consumption, 175, 196, 201; global disparities of, 183, 196–198; labour in Africa, 65, 68–69, 233, 241 wage slavery, 22, 194, 222–223, 229–232, 234, 238–239

 Index wealth in p ­ eople, 192 Wedgwood, 85–86, 93, 100, 101 West India Sugar. See sugar Whipper, William, 97, 210–211 White, Jr., Jacob, 211 White, Lydia, 97 Wilberforce, Samuel, 169 Wilberforce, William, 85, 116, 117, 129, 134, 150, 162 witchcraft, 32, 36

Yangekori, 36–37 yeoman, 221–236. See also peasant farmer Yorubaland, 233 Young, Captain Gideon, 118–119, 123–126, 157–158

Zong, 42