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Review Article
Capitalism After Slavery? The French Slave Trade
and Slavery in the Atlantic, 1500-1900*
P.C. EMMER
i) Introduction
Unfortunately, there is still no general history of European expansion in
the Atlantic. The topic has usually been split into various national compart-
ments. Recent attempts at generalisation have yielded another divide: a
historiographical barrier between the Iberian expansion which created a
South Atlantic circuit or system of trade and migration on the one hand
and on the other, the trade and migration circuits in the Middle and North
Atlantic operated by the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians. In both
systems plantation colonies as well as colonies of European settlement came
into existence.1
In spite of the similarities between the two Atlantic expansion systems
much of the older historical literature suggests that they were fundamentally
different because of the dissimilarities between the economic development
of the Iberian peninsula and of Northwestern Europe. The economies of
Spain and Portugal were hampered by so many feudal impediments that
it was impossible to develop capitalist trading and manufacturing sections.
Such islands of capitalist enterprise did exist in Britain, France, the Nether-
lands and Scandinavia, which explains why the overseas expansion of North-
western Europe was much more dynamic than that of the Iberians.2
Recent research into the economies of Spanish and Portuguese America
have queried the existing divisorio, or watershed, between the two expansion
systems in the Atlantic. It has been pointed out that there were mines and
haciendas in several regions of Spanish America which exclusively produced
for the export market and which were managed according to the same
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104 P.C. EMMER
hook or by crook, the slave trade and slavery were supposed to be the basis
of all present-day problems. The academic study of these phenomena has
largely been brought back to the locations, where they belong: to libraries,
archives and university classrooms.
The abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves have
also been newly interpreted. In earlier days the ending of the slave trade
and of slavery was seen as an adaptation to modernity. Slowly, the Europeans
and New World planters were supposed to have realised that the Atlantic
economy would only benefit when the slave trade and slavery disappeared.
The new findings on the profitability of the slave trade and of slavery made
the ending of these institutions much more difficult to explain than before.
The need for slave labour in the New World might have shifted from one
region to another, but the demand at large did not decline. Similarly, the
ending of slavery did not reduce but, rather, did increase the labour costs
of the plantations in most areas. The traditional historical interpretation
was turned upside down; the continuation of the slave trade and slavery
no longer looked economically irrational, but their destruction did.
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106 P.C. EMMER
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108 P.C. EMMER
trade than did the Atlantic trades of the U.K. and the Netherlands.18
Perhaps the most interesting part of Daget's survey is the last section -
about a third of the book - which is devoted to the abolition of the slave
trade. In this domain the author shows his special expertise, since he has
made an extensive study of the French illegal slave trade and prepared a
voluminous these d'etat on this subject as well as a Repertoire of all illegal
French slave voyages.19 This part of the book shows that there existed a
striking contrast between the formal abolition of the slave trade in France
and in the U.K. In the latter country the slave trade had been abolished
as of March 1, 1808 after a lengthy debate lasting for several decades in
which a large section of the population voiced their opinion on the matter.
In France, on the other hand, the decision to stop the trade was taken as
a political move by Napoleon, by the same person who had reinstituted
slavery in the French Antilles in 1802 in an attempt to recapture the loyalty
of the planters there. The abolition of the French slave trade in 1815 again
was a political trick of Napoleon and a desperate attempt to obtain British
support during his last 100 days as an emperor. The subsequent Bourbon
monarchy could not go back on this issue, but only as late as 1831 did the
French government agree to a mutual right of search by the respective
navies of France and Great-Britain of those vessels which could be suspected
of trading in slaves.
Daget clearly shows how difficult it was for the French to stamp out the
illegal slave trade. The trade yielded profits of more than 50 percent. By
using the documentation of his own Repertoire Daget is able to point out
that the destination of most illegal French slavers was not the French
Antilles, but Cuba. Imagine what would have happened in case the British
government had been as lax as the French in suppressing the slave trade.
No doubt, many more millions of slaves would have been transported to
the Caribbean and Brazil.20
Daget does not answer all the questions on the illegal slave trade. His
Repertoire has not yet been fully used in order to establish whether the
mortality of the slaves and of the crew aboard illegal slavers decreased or
increased over time. The author mentions that a growing number of slave
ships originated in the West Indies. Who provided the capital for these
ships? What happened to the barter-trade in Africa? Did the illegal slavers
use a similar assortment of goods as the legal slavers had done or were
other products or indeed money used in order to obtain slaves?
We need other scholars to answer these questions since Daget died in
May 1992 soon after he took up his appointment at the University of Lille
to one of the few chairs in African history in France. It will not be easy to
replace him. Daget not only did extensive and original research in the slave
trade history of his own country, but was also aware of the new findings in
the historiography of the British, Portuguese, Dutch and Danish slave trades.
In fact, in 1985 Daget organised a large international symposium on the
history of the slave trade in Nantes. More than 130 scholars of 21 nationali-
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REVIEW ARTICLE 109
ties participated and the subsequent publication of the Actes in two volumes
consisting of 76 contributions and 1300 pages. It is impossible to summarize
the contents of all these contributions. The reader will recognize the majo-
rity of the English language scholars in these volumes such as Curtin, Miller,
Drescher, Solow, Richardson and so on. However, in addition there are
several detailed studies on the French slave trade by authors who were
hitherto unknown to me. Daget used several of these contributions in order
to write his monograph on La traite des noirs and every student of the slave
trade is well advised to check these rich volumes especially for those aspects
of the slave trade which have not been covered by the English-language
scholarly world.21
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110 P.C. EMMER
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112 P.C. EMMER
out why the black republic was especially attractive to these migrants. Also,
the payment of compensation money in the French colonies was handled
differently in comparison with the British and Dutch Caribbean; the former
slave owners in the French Antilles only received 5 percent of the amount
of compensation in cash, the remainder was paid in government bonds.
Thirdly, the author mentions the rapid success of schooling for the ex-
slaves, while civil servants and missionaries in the Dutch and British Carib-
bean usually complained that education seemed to be of peripheral interest
to the freedmen and that usually the children of the ex-slaves had only a
small chance of finishing school because of the constant migrations of their
parents.
In spite of Fallope's extensive coverage of the transition from slavery to
freedom there are several remaining questions. The first one concerns the
alternatives for freedmen to plantation work. How much land was available?
Did most freedmen opt for a mix of activities such as small-scale subsistence
farming for women and children, and part-time work on the plantations
for the men? The drastic increase in the theft of food suggests that the
development of subsistence agriculture left much to be desired. Secondly,
the author does not mention that large numbers of freedmen cultivated
sugar cane on dieir own plots. In theory, the usines centrales should have
made this possible, but in actual practice there might have been too many
difficulties to imitate the post-slavery share cropping in the cotton sector
of the U.S. South.24 Last, but not least, the author makes no mention of
the constant threat of the cheap slave-grown sugar from Brazil and Cuba
on the French consumer markets. The West Indian planters suffered se-
riously from this competition both in Britain and the Netherlands. Of
course, it is possible to argue that the rapid growth of the beet sugar
industry in France constituted a similar threat to the planters on the French
Antilles. In reality, however, beet sugar constituted much less of a risk,
since the French planters were able to influence the French legislature and
to obtain a system of taxation which favoured sugar from the French West
Indies above French beet sugar and non-French sugar. This occurred during
the 1840's when the planters in the British empire lost the protection of
their sugar on the British home market.
The last section of the book deals with the years between 1870 and 1910.
It is difficult to evaluate the data on the political, social and economic
development of Guadeloupe in this time since there are virtually no compa-
rative studies of the British and Dutch Caribbean colonies during this
period. In view of that, it seems best to point to the unique items in the
history of the French Antilles after 1870. First of all, it should be stressed
that the Third Republic introduced a general franchise at the same time
as in metropolitan France. However, no political revolution took place and
the political power on Guadeloupe remained firmly in the hands of the
white and coloured politicians. The majority of the black electorate did
not go to the polls. Nevertheless, about one third of the total population
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REVIEW ARTICLE 113
went to school and all the state schools were free which constituted another
achievement of the Third Republic.
The author feels that these two aspects made the majority of the popula-
tion of Guadeloupe more politically aware than elsewhere in the region.
There were many strikes and around 1900 the socialist party received about
fifty percent of all votes. At first sight, however, it seems possible to argue
that the development of labour relations on Guadeloupe did not really
differ from those elsewhere in the region in spite of the early general
franchise and the relatively high participation in education. In Guyana,
Jamaica and Trinidad there also were strikes in those years and the arrival
of indentured labourers also should have had a similar impact on the
labour relations in these areas. I hasten to add that the numbers of Asian
immigrants in Jamaica and Guadeloupe remained much smaller than those
in Guyana and Trinidad and that the answer as to why this was so needs
further research, since Fallope's book provides little information on this
issue which goes beyond the studies on Indian immigration to the French
Antilles by Singaravelou.25
iv) Conclusion
Was there such a thing as capitalist slavery in the French Antilles? Or do
the slavery systems of the U.S. South and of the British Caribbean constitute
a counterpoint? Daget's book ascertains that at least the French slave trade
fits the new orthodoxy in pointing out that this trade was profitable until
its abolition and that it was stopped because of a political decision to do
so. The tables in Fallope's study also confirm the new interpretation that
the slavery system on Guadeloupe was profitable to the very end and that
it was not abolished because of internal economic and social difficulties,
but- again - because of a political decision taken by parliament in metropo-
litan France. As mentioned, this conclusion can only be drawn in case the
reader is prepared to separate Fallope's data from her conclusions. A similar
separation is required when using a recent monograph on the sugar industry
on Martinique by Dale Tomich. Tomich - as well as Fallope - provide the
reader with plenty of arguments to defuse their thesis of the inflexible
system of slavery and, instead, to support the contention that slavery was
alive and kicking in both islands until the very end.
The new literature on slavery in the French Antilles indicates two things
at the same time. First the books by Faloppe and Tomich show how difficult
it is for scholars to accept the new interpretation that slavery was a viable
economic institution, and that the changes in the economies of both the
metropolis and the plantation colonies themselves did not alter that econo-
mic viability. On other issues, however, the new books clearly follow the
international historiography on the slave trade and on slavery. This indicates
that differences in historical interpretation have little chance of remaining
unchallenged for long. In view of that it is not difficult to predict that the
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114 P.C. EMMER
French Antilles cannot hold out as the last heaven for those who see the
'peculiar institution' as impediment to economic growth and technical
progress. Only two decades ago the interpretation of the economic viability
of slavery in the U.S. South differed widely and at present very few historians
subscribe to the notion that the slave economy of the U.S. South was
economically backward. The same holds true for much of the recent litera-
ture regarding the last decades of slavery in the British, Dutch and Spanish
Caribbean.26 Why should the French Antilles have been different?
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REVIEW ARTICLE 115
Notes
* My sincere thanks to Seymour Drescher, who commented upon an earlier version of this
review article.
1 P.C. Emmer, 'The Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic', Itinerario, XV/1 (1991) 21-29.
2 P.C. Emmer, 'The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic System', in: Barbara L.
Solow ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge 1991) 76-81.
3 Peggy K. Liss, Atlantic Empires; The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713-1826 (Baltimore/
London 1983) 48-74.
4 Thomas A. Brady,'The Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400-1700: A European Counterpoint',
in: James D. Tracy ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires; State Power and World
Trade, 1350-1750 (Cambridge 1991) 117-160.
5 Seymour Drescher, Econocide; British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh 1977) 4, 5
and 166, 167.
6 Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract; The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
(New York 1989) 393-406.
7 Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade; A Census (Wisconsin 1969).
8 Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century; An Old Regime Business
(Wisconsin 1979) xviii and G. Debien, I*es esclaves aux Antilles francaises, XVIIe - XVIIIe
slide (Basse-Terre/Fort-de-France 1974).
9 Joseph C. Miller, Slavery: A Comparative Teaching Bibliography (Boston 1977) and subsequent
supplements in Slavery and Abolition.
10 A.G. Hopkins, 'Clio-Antics: A Horoscope for African Economic History', in: Christopher
Fyfe ed., African Studies since 1945; A Tribute to Basil Davidson (London, 1976) 35.
11 Hubert Deschamps, Jean Mettas, 1941-1975, Revue francaise d'histoire d'outre-mer, LXII
(1975) 5, 6.
12 Jean Mettas, Repertoire des expeditions negrieres francaises au XVIIIe siecle, Serge Daget ed., I,
Nantes (Paris 1978) and Jean Mettas, Repertoire des expeditions negrieres francaises au XVIIIe
siecle, Serge and Michele Daget eds., II, Ports autres que Nantes (Paris 1984).
13 Stein, The French Slave Trade and James A. Rawley, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (New
York 1981).
14 Francois Renault and Serge Daget, Les traites negrieres en Afrique (Paris 1985).
15 David Geggus, 'Sex Ratio, Age and Ethnicity in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Data from
French Shipping and Plantation Records, Journal of African History, 30 (1989) 23-44 and
David Richardson, 'Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa, 1700-1810: New
Estimates of Volume and Distribution', Journal of African History 30 (1989) 1-22.
16 David Eltis and Laurence C.Jennings, 'Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic
World in the Pre-colonial Era', American Historical Review 93/'4 (1988) 936-959.
17 On the calculations of sea-board mortality: Ralph Shlomowitz andjohn McDonald, 'Morta-
lity of Indian Labour on Ocean Voyages', Studies in History, 6, 1 n.s. (1960) 37, 38.
18 P.K. O'Brien, 'European Economic Development; The Contribution of the Periphery',
Economic History Review, 2nd series, XXXVI/1 (Feb. 1982) 4 and P.K, O'Brien and S.L.
Engerman, 'Exports and the Growth of the British Economy from the Glorious Revolution
to the Peace of Amiens', and Patrick Villiers, 'The Slave and Colonial Trade in France
before the Revolution' in Solow ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, 187, 211,
213. Niels Steensgaard, 'The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade of
England and the Dutch Republic before 1750' and Paul Butel, 'France, the Antilles, and
Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Renewals of Foreign Trade', in
James D. Tracy ed., The Rise of Merchant Empires; Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern
World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge 1990), 147-151, 163.
19 Serge Daget, Repertoire des expeditions negrieres francaises a la traite illegale, 1814-1850 (Nantes
1985).
20 David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York 1987)
11.
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116 P.C. EMMER
21 Serge Daget ed., De la traite a I'esclavage; Actes du colloque internationalsur la traite des Noirs,
Nantes 1985,1 (V-XV11I siecles), II (du XVIIIeme au XlXeme siecle) (Nantes/Paris 1988).
22 Jacques Cauna, Au temps des isles a sucre; Histoire d'uneplantation de Saint-Domingue au XVIII
siecle (Paris 1987) and Arlette Gautier, Les Soeurs de Solitude. Condition feminine dans I'escla-
vage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe siecle (Paris 1985).
23 Dale W. Tomich, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar; Martinique and the World Economy, 1830-
1848 (Baltimore/London 1990).
24 The colonial legislature of Guadeloupe did propose an emancipation scheme in which
sharecropping was one of the elements. Seymour Drescher, 'British Way, French Way:
Opinion Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation', American
Historical Review, 96/3 (June 1991), 727, 728.
25 Singaravelou, 'Les Indiens de la Guadeloupe; etude de geographie humaine' (Bordeaux,
1987); Singaravelou, Us Indiens dans la Caraibe, (3 vols.; Paris 1987).
26 For a discussion of the economic viability of slavery see: Robert William Fogel, Without
Consent or Contract; The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York 1989); J.R. Ward, British
West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834; The Process of Amelioration (Oxford 1988); Manuel Moreno
Fraginals, Frank Moya Pons and Stanley L. Engerman eds., Between Slavery and Free Labor;
The Spanish Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore/London 1985) and
Alex van Stipriaan, Surinaams Contrast; Roofbouw en overleven in een Caraibische plantage-
kolonie, 1750-1863 (Leiden 1993).
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