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French Policy towards Trading with African and Brazilian Slave Merchants, 1840–1853*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Lawrence C. Jennings
Lawrence C. Jennings
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Extract

During the 1840s and early 1850s, when France was employing either the mutual right of search with Great Britain or independent naval squadrons to suppress direct French participation in the transatlantic slave trade, French governments condoned commercial relations between French traders and Brazilian or African slave dealers. As of 1840 French merchant vessels were involved in carrying goods destined for the slave trade from France or Brazil to slave stations on the African coast; at times these French freighters were even sold and transformed into Brazilian slavers on the African coast. On several occasions these actions were brought to the attention of the French foreign and colonial offices by concerned French officials in Africa or Brazil, but the governments of both the July Monarchy and the Second Republic consistently instructed their agents to employ only persuasive measures to discourage what they avowed to be indirect French participation in the slave trade. Despite their abolitionist sentiments, French statesmen like François Guizot came to the conclusion that it was impossible to prohibit French nationals from trading with slave merchants because such actions would interfere with the freedom of trade and adversely affect French maritime commerce. French merchants continued to co-operate closely with Brazilian slavers until Brazil abolished the slave trade in the early 1850s.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 515 - 528
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 For a general background to French and English anti-slave trade efforts during this period see: Martin, Gaston, Histoire de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises (Paris, 1048)Google Scholar: Deschamps, Hubert, Histoire de la traite des noirs de l'antiquité à nos jours (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar; Mathieson, William Law, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839–1865 (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; and Lloyd, Christopher, The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Existing historical literature makes few references to French involvement in this matter, although some African specialists have mentioned it briefly. See, for example. Schnapper, Bernard, La Politique et le Commerce français dans le golfe de Guinée de 1838 à 1871 (La Haye, 1961)Google Scholar; and Verger, Pierre, Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le golfe de Bénin et Bahia de todos os Santos, du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (La Haye, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Britain's attitude and policy toward this question have been touched upon, but not dealt with in any detail, in the standard works covering England's role in the suppression of the slave trade during the nineteenth century. See, for example, Mathieson, , Great Britain and the Slave TradeGoogle Scholar, Lloyd, , The Navy and the Slave TradeGoogle Scholar, and Temperley, Howard, British Antislavery, 1833–1870 (Columbia, South Carolina, 1972).Google Scholar

3 The English naval captain, Richard Madden, clearly outlined these developments in the testimony he gave before the Select Committee on the West Coast of Africa, whose report was made to the House of Commons in the summer of 1842 and published in Parliamentary Papers, 1842, vols. XI-XII (vol. XI, pp. 632–3)Google Scholar. See also: France, Archives Nationales, Section Outre-Mer (hereafter cited as FOM), Généralitiés 190 (dossier 1465), 9 Jan. 1846, Captain Gaisset of the French African squadron to Baron Mackau, Minister of the Navy and Colonies; Généralités 143 (dossier 1213), report dated 2 Apr. [1848], entitled: ‘State of the slave trade concerning Brazil’.

4 France, Archives des Affaires Etrangères (hereafter cited as FAAE), Méinoires et documents, Afrique 29, 12 Feb. 1843 French consul in Bahia to Guizot; FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), ‘State of the slave trade’. The process of purchasing slaves on the African coast was a very complex one, for procedures varied tremendously depending upon time and place. Certain generalizations can be made, though, about the procedures used by Spanish (Cuban) and Brazilian slavers in the 1830s and 1840s. When the Cuban slave trade was still very active in the 1830s, slavers out of Cuban ports often carried gold bullion or coin to Africa to pay for slaves. This gold in turn might be used by African slave dealers to purchase goods from European freighters sailing up and down the African coast. The Brazilians, for their part, paid for many of the slaves they purchased in Africa with Brazilian tobacco and rum. Nevertheless, before the late 1830s slavers from both Cuba and Brazil also transported to Africa such European items as cotton goods or arms (merchandise largely of English origin which had been brought to Havana or Rio de Janeiro on European ships) to exchange for slaves. As of the early 1840s the Cuban slave trade diminished considerably, but it appears that from this time on Brazilian slave companies were using primarily non-Brazilian ships to transfer merchandise from Brazil to the African coast.

5 These developments are discussed by Lloyd, , The Navy and the Slave Trade (pp. 94–7)Google Scholar, and Mathieson, , Great Britain and the Slave Trade (pp. 60–1).Google Scholar

6 FAAE, Afrique 28, 20 Feb. 1842, Bouët to Minister of the Navy.

7 FAAE, Afrique 28, 20 Feb. 1842, Bouët to Minister of the Navy. There appeared to be a common belief among French officials that Britain was more involved than France in providing goods for African slave stations. In a sense this was true, for England produced much of the cloth, arms, and gunpowder that was used eventually to purchase slaves. French diplomats in Brazil insisted that there were companies in Manchester which produced slave goods exclusively, and that eighteen of the twenty British firms operating in Rio de Janeiro were engaged in importing English merchandise for sale to Brazilian slavers and re-exportation to Africa. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that British merchants were much more circumspect than their French counterparts in the role they played in this trade. It was difficult to implicate British manufacturers or exporters in involvement in the slave trade when they simply appeared to be selling merchandise to Brazilians in Brazil or Spaniards in Cuba. Despite Bouët's assertion, it seems that relatively few British ships brought goods directly from England to known African slave depots. Instead, British exporters often sent goods to British enclaves on the African coast for re-exportation to slave stations in non-British vessels; or they employed other flag carriers, such as those of the Hanseatic cities, to carry merchandise from England to the slave coast. Moreover, from the correspondence of French diplomats in Brazil it appears that very few British freighters, if any, were engaged in transporting merchandise from Brazil to Africa, as French ships were; and it seems that no British shippers or sea captains co-operated closely with Brazilian slavers by leasing them British ships (FAAE, Afrique 31, 28 Feb. 1848, French minister in Brazil to Guizot; FOM, Généralités 143 [1213], ‘State of the slave trade’; 12 Nov. 1848, French minister in Brazil to French foreign minister). As a whole, British commercial involvement in the slave trade seems to have been extremely guarded and indirect when compared to the role played by French commercial interests.

8 FOM, Généralités 190 (1465), 24 Oct. 1842, Duperré, Minister of the Navy, to Guizot. For a discussion of the activities of Régis frères on the African coast see the books by Schnapper, , La Politique et le Commerce françaisGoogle Scholar, and Masson, Paul, Marseille et la colonisation française: essai d'histoire coloniale (Marseille, 1906).Google Scholar

9 See my article, ‘France, Great Britain, and the Repression of the Slave Trade, 1841–1845’, French Historical Studies (forthcoming, 1977).Google Scholar

10 FAAE, Afrique 28, 17 June 1842, Duperré to Guizot. Under the July Monarchy and the Second Republic all non-diplomatic matters touching upon slavery and the slave trade fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies.

11 FAAE, Afrique 28, 31 Oct. 1842, Guizot to Duperré.Google Scholar

12 FAAE, Afrique 28, 31 Oct. 1842, Guizot to Duperré.Google Scholar

13 Ibid.

14 For information on the statistical fluctuations of the slave trade in the nineteenth century see Curtin, Philip D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wisconsin, 1969).Google Scholar

15 FAAE, Afrique 29, 12 Feb. 1843, de Vallat to Guizot.Google Scholar

16 FAAE, Afrique 30, 20 Aug. 1845, Saint-Georges to Guizot.Google Scholar

17 FOM, Généralitiés 190 (1465), 10 Oct. 1845, Avrial frères to Mackau.

18 Ibid.; FAAE, Afrique 30, 20 Aug. 1845, Saint-Georges to GuizotGoogle Scholar; Afrique 29, 12 Feb. 1843, de Vallat to Guizot.

19 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), ‘State of the slave trade’.

20 FOM, Généralités 190 (1465), 11 Nov. 1845, Mackau to Guizot.

21 FAAE, Afrique 30, 26 Nov. 1845, Guizot to Saint-Georges.Google Scholar

22 ibid., Correspondence politique, Brésil 28, 1 Mar. 1848, Butenval to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

23 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 6 Mar. 1848, Caunay, consul chancellor in Rio de Janeiro, to Guizot.

24 ibid., 21 Oct. 1849, Bouët to Minister of the Navy.

25 ibid., 12 Nov. 1848, Butenval to Jules Bastide, Minister of Foreign Affairs; 18 July 1849, Captain of the ‘Panthère’ to Bouët.

26 ibid., Sénégal IV 42b, 12 Oct. 1849, Régis to Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. For a discussion of French economic conditions at this time see Labrousse, Ernest, ed., Aspects de la crise et de la dépression de l'économie française au milieu du XIXe siècle, 1846–1851 (La Roche-sur-Yon, 1956)Google Scholar, and Dautry, Jean, ‘Crise et dépression de l'économie française de 1846 à 1851’, La Pensée, LXXII (1957), 127–32.Google Scholar

27 FAAE, Afrique 31, 8 June 1849, Saint-Georges to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

28 ibid., 28 Feb. 1848, Butenval to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

29 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), early 1849 ‘Observation on different points on the African coast’, by Captain Gabet.

30 FAAE, Afrique 31, 8 June 1849, Saint-Georges to Minister of Foreign Affairs.Google Scholar

31 For a discussion of the French abolition of slavery in 1848, see: Martin, Gaston, L'abolition de l'esclavage, 27 avril 1848 (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar; Tersen, Emile, ‘La Commission d'abolition de l'esclavage, 4mars-21 juillet 1848’, Actes du Congrès historique du Centenaire de la Révolution de 1848 (Paris, 1948), pp. 295–301Google Scholar; Tersen, Emile, ‘Réflexions sur l'abolition de l'esclavage’, 1848, et les Révolutions du XIXe siècle, no. 183, juillet 1949, pp. 10–20Google Scholar; and Jennings, Lawrence C., ‘L'abolition de l'esclavage par la IIe République et ses effets en Louisiane, 1848–1858’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, lvi (1969), 375–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 2 June 1848 Minister of the Navy to Commander of the station of Réunion and Madagascar.

33 Op. cit., ‘State of the slave trade.’

34 ibid., 23 Sept. 1848, Verninac de Saint-Maur to Bastide.

35 ibid., 3 Mar. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to Commander of the African Station.

36 FAAE, Afrique 31, 18 Aug. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to Odilon Barrot, Minister of Justice; 13 Sept. 1849, Barrot to Destutt de Tracy; 15 Oct. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

37 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 27 Mar. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to Commander of the African station.

38 FAAE, Afrique 31, 18 Aug. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to de Tocqueville.

39 ibid., 15 Oct. 1849, Destutt de Tracy to de Tocqueville.

40 The economic difficulties in France had another detrimental effect upon the Second Republic's pursual of an active anti-slave trade policy. The decline in revenue caused by the depressed economy obliged the government to reduce greatly the size of its African squadron, a development much deplored by Bouët and other officials dedicated to the eradication of the slave trade.

41 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 21 Feb. 1850, Bouët to Admiral Desfossés, Minister of the Navy.

42 FAAE, Afrique 31, 8 June 1849, Saint-Georges to Minister of Foreign Affairs.

43 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 31 Dec. 1849, Desfossés to Bouët; 18 May 1850 Desfossés to Captain Pénaud, new commander of the African station.

44 FAAE, Afrique 32, 23 May 1850, ‘Commission on the slave trade, Note on the indirect participation of the French flag in the slave trade’.

45 FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 12 Dec. 1851, Ducos to Commander of the African station.

46 ibid. For a discussion of the waning of the Brazilian slave trade see Bethel, Leslie, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade; Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869 (Cambridge, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 FAAE, Afrique 33, 19 July 1853,Google Scholar British ambassador in Paris to French Minister of Foreign Affairs; FOM, Généralités 143 (1213), 23 Aug. 1853, Commander of the African station to Minister of the Navy.