Bulletin ofEconomic Research 43: 1, 1991,0307-3378 $2.

00

PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-

CENTRAL AFRICA: TOWARD AN ANNUAL
SERIES, 1698-1807

David Richardson

ABSTRACT

Currently available price series for slaves during the eighteenth

century need to be treated with much caution, and it seems unlikely
that large quantities of new evidence will be unearthed. Further
progress toward the creation of more reliable price series will thus
require new methods of estimation. In this paper, a new price series
for slaves at the African coast is calculated using data relating to the
number of slaves shipped from the coast by British traders and the
value of trade goods bartered for them.

Although historians of Africa acknowledge that the possibilities for using

quantitative methods to investigate most aspects of African history are
very limited, impressive progress has been made in recent decades in
quantifying one of the more infamous aspects of African history, namely,
the trans-Atlantic traffic iq slaves. Most of the research in this area has
centred on the numbers, sex, and coastal origins of the slaves shipped from
Africa to America (Curtin, 1969; Lovejoy, 1982, 1989; Eltis, 1987;
Geggus, 1989; Richardson, 1989a, 1989b). As a result, we now have
apparently reasonably reliable data on these aspects of the trade, particu-
larly for the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, when by
all accounts the trade in slaves to America was at its height. Progress in
quantifying the slave trade has not been confined solely, however, to these
aspects of the trade, for significant amounts of data relating to slave prices
at the African coast have also been published in recent years. The first
systematic analysis of slave prices at the African coast was undertaken by
Bean (Bean, 1975). Relying solely on ‘published historical materials’ and
using ‘almost every observation on slave prices available’, he created a
series of semi-decadal prices for adult male slaves for West and West-
Central Africa that focused primarily on the period between the Stuart
Restoration in 1660 and the American Revolution in 1775. This price
series was subsequently revised slightly by Bean following the discovery of
21
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22 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
additional data (Wattenberg, 1976, p. 1174). It has also been supple-
mented by other studies of slave prices based on discoveries of new data in
original sources (Johnson, 1966; LeVeen, 1975, 1977; Curtin, 1975;
Stein, 1979; Renault, 1982; Jones, 1983; Bathily, 1986; Miller, 1986;
Postma, 1990). These have been particularly important in expanding our
knowledge of coastal prices for slaves beyond the American Revolution
and in providing more detailed information on price trends in particular
regions or localities, notably Senegambia, the Windward Coast, the Gold
Coast, and Luanda in Angola. Using currently available price series it is
thus possible to trace the general trend in slave prices at the west coast of
Africa throughout the period from 1660 to the early nineteenth century.'
Close examination of these various price series shows that most depend
on relatively small numbers of price observations. Some series are based,
in fact, on no more than a few price observations scattered unevenly over
the century, and even the more substantially documented series, such as
Bean's, tend to rely mainly on one or two price observations a year dis-
tributed unevenly through time and across trading centres on the African
coast. Moreover, the surviving price data relate to groups of slaves that
vary greatly in number and in terms of age and sex composition; weighting
observations to allow for variations in the number or character of the
slaves they cover is normally impossible. At the same time, prices are
frequently reported in African units of account, such as the bar, copper,
ounce or piece, rather than in sterling or other European currencies.*
Faced with such materials, most historians have simply presented their
evidence on prices in its original form, but some, notably Bean (1975),
have sought to adjust the raw data in order to create time-series of prices
for specific categories of slaves in European currencies. Thus, in con-
structing his price series, Bean adjusted all price observations to their adult
male equivalents by a standard formula and converted prices expressed in
African currencies into sterling by use of an appropriate exchange rate.3
As evidence on the prices of adult male slaves relative to other slaves at
the African coast is slender and the value of African currencies relative to
their European counterparts seems to have varied quite considerably over
time or even from one transaction to another: such adjustments are
naturally subject to potentially wide margins of error. Even the more
sophisticated price series of slaves in Africa, such as Bean's, need, there-
fore, to be treated with much caution.
Some of the shortcomings of existing slave price series for eighteenth-
century Africa may be alleviated by the discovery of additional data in

' A series of slave prices in Africa in the nineteenth century is also available in Eltis
( 1987).
For a discussion of the 'ounce', see Johnson ( 1966).
Details of the formula and exchange rates used by Bean are to be found in Bean ( 1975)
appendix A.
On variations in exchange rates see Johnson ( 1 966) and Richardson (1979).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 23
primary sources. It seems unlikely, however, that large quantities of new
evidence on slave prices in Africa covering the whole eighteenth century
will be unearthed, though, as Postma’s ( 1990)study reveals, it is possible to
find data relating to certain periods or areas of the coast. In the absence of
large amounts of new price materials, further progress toward the creation
of a more reliable slave price series for Africa for the eighteenth century
will require new methods of estimating slave prices at the African coast. In
this paper, I attempt to calculate such prices by using data relating to the
number of slaves shipped from the coast by British traders and the value of
the trade goods bartered for them. This method is very similar to one used
by Curtin (1975) for calculating prices of slaves in the lower Gambia in
1683-88 and 1727-41. In his case, Curtin relied on evidence in the Royal
African Company’s accounts of purchases of small numbers of slaves at
the coast and the original invoice values in England of the goods
exchanged for them. He thus produced estimates of slave prices at the
Gambia based on the ‘prime cost’ of goods in England. Here, instead of
using information from the Royal African Company’s records, I calculate
slave prices in Africa by combining evidence on the value of British
exports to Africa provided by eighteenth-century records of British
overseas trade, notably Customs 3 and 17, with recently published
estimates of the numbers of slaves shipped each year from Africa in British
vessel^.^ By this means, it is possible to extend the method adopted by
Curtin in order to estimate slave prices throughout the whole coast of West
and West-Central Africa from 1698 to 1807.
This method allows one to construct a series of slave prices at the
African coast free from the problems that surround reliance on price
observations concerning variable numbers of slaves or the conversion of
prices reported in African units of account into European currencies. At
the same time, however, it should be noted that, while the estimates of
slave prices made in this paper relate to the whole British trade, they mask
changes in both the regional origins of slaves shipped and their sexual and
age composition. In particular, certain regions such as the Bight of Biafra
proved increasingly attractive to British traders over the eighteenth
century, but also tended to supply higher proportions of women and,
perhaps, children among the slaves exported than other regions. It is likely,
therefore, that the series produced in this paper marginally distorts the
general movement in prices of a ‘standard’ slave unit over the eighteenth
century. In addition, it would be misleading to assume that data used in this
paper for calculating slave prices are wholly devoid of problems and that
price trends of slaves at the African coast derived from them are wholly

’ Customs 3 and 17 are held at the Public Record Office; a summary of the official values
of commodity exports from England to Africa each year from 170 1 to 1807 is given in
Inikori ( 1976b) appendix 1. I am grateful to the late Marion Johnson for advice and help in
using these records. The data on shipments of slaves from Africa by the British are based on
Richardson (1989a, 1989b).
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24 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
reliable. Nevertheless, it is believed that the estimates of slave prices in the
British trade produced in this paper are as solid as one can expect with the
materials currently available, and that any further adjustments to allow for
changes in the composition of slave shipments are unlikely to alter sig-
nificantly the broad patterns in slave prices revealed here.
In part I of the paper, I describe the statistics of British exports to Africa
and'of British slave shipments at the African coast in the eighteenth
century and examine their limitations. Part I1 is a discussion of the trends
in slave prices paid by British traders at the African coast revealed by
these data and compares my findings with other recent price series. Since
the trend in slave prices suggested by my series differs significantly from
that suggested by several of these other series, I seek, in part 111, to assess
the reliability of my findings by presenting additional evidence relating to
slave prices at the African coast derived from merchants' papers and other
sources. Finally, in part IV, I note briefly some of the implications of my
price series for recent research on the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave
trade.

The price series of slaves at the African coast produced in this paper
derives essentially from a comparison of the estimated numbers of slaves
shipped from the African coast each year from 1698 to 1807 by British
traders with the annual value of British exports to Africa over the same
period. Direct evidence on British slave shipments in Africa in the
eighteenth century is, unfortunately, scarce, and the figures used in this
paper are therefore estimates of annual British slave exports that I have
compiled on the basis of evidence regarding annual clearances of ships
from British ports in Africa and average loadings of slaves per ship in
Africa between 1698 and 1807. Details of these estimates of annual
British slave shipments in Africa and the various sources upon which they
depend are to be found in a recently published paper (Richardson, 1989b).
The figures used in this paper are a slightly amended version of these
estimates." It would be misleading to pretend that the figures on annual
clearances of British ships to Africa are comprehensive and that the
estimates of average loadings of slaves per ship in Africa are wholly
reliable. The figures of annual British slave shipments in Africa used in this
paper are, nevertheless, based on a thorough investigation of available
shipping records and the largest quantity of eighteenth-century data
The amendments arise from the discovery that a large proportion of the British ships
bound for Africa for slaves in 1713-30 cleared out from Britain for Madeira rather than
Africa. This necessitates a revision of the estimates of slave shipments given in Richardson
(1989b).
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PRICES O F SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 25
regarding slave shipments so far uncovered. Future research may lead to
further refinement of our estimates of British slave shipments between
1698 and 1807, but the figures used in this paper are almost certainly the
most reliable estimate of British slave exports from West and West-Central
Africa in this period currently available.’
My primary source of data on British exports to Africa is British
customs records, notably Customs 3 and 17. Held at the Public Record
Office, these records are well known and have been widely used by
historians to investigate British overseas trade in the eighteenth century.
From them it is possible to obtain detailed information on the total values
of exports from Britain to Africa for each year, except 1705 and 1712,
between 1698 and 1807. The figures given distinguish between domes-
tically and foreign produced goods as well as London’s trade and that of
the outports. Though some attempt was made by customs officials to
adjust the prices of goods they recorded in accordance with market prices,
the values attached to the great majority of exports reported in these
customs accounts are ‘official’ values based mainly on prices prevailing
around 1700.8
Using the data on exports to Africa found in these records as an in-
dicator of the value of goods exchanged by the British for slaves in Africa
presents a number of problems. Several questions about these export data
need to be addressed. First, how reliable are customs accounts as a record
of exports to Africa from British ports? Second, to what extent did British
slave traders obtain trade goods for Africa at ports outside Britain? Third,
what proportion of the goods exported to Africa was actually used to buy
slaves? And, finally, to what extent did the official values attached to goods
in customs accounts accord with their market prices?
Since much of Britain’s trade in the eighteenth century was subject to
high duties, customs accounts have often been seen to provide a highly
imperfect record of British overseas trade in this period. There is little
doubt that, in some respects, such a view is well justified, for smuggling of
certain goods such as tea and tobacco was evidently rife during much of
the century (Cole, 1958; Nash, 1982). Criticism of customs records has,
however, been directed mainly toward their accounting of imports rather
than exports, and is, therefore, largely irrelevant in the current context. On
the specific question of exports to Africa, there are nevertheless indica-
tions that the customs accounts may have slightly understated exports to

’A critique of my estimates of British shipments of slaves, which acknowledges their

general reliability, is to be found in Lovejoy ( 1 989).
“or a discussion of these official values see Clark ( 1 938). Schumpeter (1960)and Davis
(1979). The view that the vast majority of English exports to Africa in this period was
priced in official values has been questioned by Eltis ( 1 989),who claims that ‘[albout 44 per
cent of exports were given current values’ (p. 209). This statement appears to rest on a
misreading of the classification of certain goods ‘at value’ in the customs records. Scrutiny of
the values attached to these goods indicates that, with very few exceptions, they were priced
at official or constant prices not current prices.
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26 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

the African coast from British ports in certain years in the eighteenth
century (Woodward, 1973). At the same time, it is evident that ships
leaving British ports for Africa occasionally supplemented their cargoes by
illicitly taking in additional goods at the Channel Islands or the Isle of
Many Perhaps most seriously of all, however, it seems that substantial
numbers of British slave ships between 1713 and 1730 cleared out for
Madeira rather than Africa. As a result, their exports of goods were
recorded, for customs purposes, as destined for Madeira, not Africa. The
scale of the shipment of trade goods to Africa through Madeira is impos-
sible to measure exactly, but it seems that in certain years more than half of
exports from Britain to Africa may have followed this route and that over
the whole period from 1713 to 1730 about 20 per cent of British exports
to Africa reached the coast via Madeira.’” In using customs statistics to
calculate slave prices at the African coast, I have adjusted the official
figures on British exports to Africa in 1713-30 to allow for shipment of
goods through Madeira. I have made no allowance, however, for goods
which may have been obtained illicitly at, say, the Channel Islands or the
Isle of Man.’
Another, and perhaps more serious, deficiency in customs records for
my purpose lies in the fact that they exclude British shipments of trade
goods to Africa from ports outside Britain. According to some early
eighteenth-century writers, supplies of trade goods for Africa were often
cheaper at European continental ports than in Britain. This was particu-
larly the case at Dutch ports, where, it was suggested, trade goods were as

For trade at the Isle of Man, see University of Keele Archives, Letter and Bill Book of
William Davenport 1748-61, 26 July 1753, William Davenport & Co. to Samuel
Sacheverall; 20 August 1754, William Davenport & Co. to Isaac Hyde. For trade at Guernsey
in the Channel Islands, see Public Record Office, C 107/10, 1792(?),R. P. Le Marchant to
James Rogers. In each case the goods to be supplied were Dutch.
“’An assessment of the trade to Africa via Madeira in 1713-30 was made by taking the
average annual level of English exports to Madeira in 1707-11 and 1731-39, as given in
Customs 3, and deducting this from the annual exports to Madeira in 1713-30. Exports to
Madeira from England averaged €15,425 a year in 1707-11 and €15,232 a year in
1730-39. For the purpose of estimating English exports to Africa through Madeira each
year between 1713 and 1730, therefore, I assumed that some €15,000 of exports a year
were normally retained in Madeira, and that goods entered out from England to Madeira in
excess of this figure eventually found their way to Africa.
‘ I Eltis and Jennings (1988) have recently drawn attention to the possibility that customs
accounts largely failed to record exports of arms from England to Africa in the eighteenth
century, despite the fact that merchants’ papers show that large quantities of guns were
shipped to the coast. Information gleaned from the Port Books of Bristol indicates, however,
that firearms were normally classed as ‘wrought iron’ at the time of export; this becomes
apparent in wartime when the export of arms required a licence. In recording exports of
guns to Africa in wartime, the Bristol Port Books reported both the numbers of guns
shipped by individual vessels and their weight as ‘wrought iron’. Furthermore, goods other
than arms classed as wrought iron were specifically noted as being ‘not arms’ (Public Record
Office, E190/1220/2). Since Customs 3 and 17 both record large amounts of wrought iron
as being exported each year from England to Africa, there is no need, therefore, to adjust
the data given in customs accounts to allow for the export of guns to the coast.
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PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 27
much as 30 per cent cheaper than at British ports in the early eighteenth
century.'* The reliability of these claims is difficult to judge, but there is
clear evidence that some British merchants directed their African-bound
vessels to Dutch ports in order to acquire supplies of trade goods for the
coast. Thus, for instance, in the 1720s Humphry Morice of London,
recently described by Rawley (1989) as the 'foremost London slave
merchant of his time', seems to have obtained, wholly or in part, at least
five cargoes of African trade goods in Holland. Similarly, in the following
decade, Thomas Hall, also of London, dispatched several of his ships to
Holland where they loaded quantities of trade goods before sailing to
Africa (Gill, 1961). In both instances,.the amount of goods bought seems
to have been substantial. According to Rawley 's figures, the average value
of five cargoes known to have been exported from Holland by Morice's
ships was over 27,000 guilders or some &770,compared to an average
value of cargoes loaded in London of just over E3,000. Evidence relating
to voyages fitted out by Thomas Hall suggests that up to a quarter of the
trade goods sent to Africa in his ships in the 1730s was brought directly
from suppliers in Holland.
It is clear that Morice and Hall's shipments of trade goods directly to
Africa from Holland were not isolated instances of such practices;
examples of similar shipments of trade goods for Africa by other British
merchants at continental ports are to be found at other times during the
eighteenth century.13 British customs accounts obviously understate,
therefore, the total quantity of trade goods shipped to Africa by British
merchants in this period. The problem is to assess the scale of shipments
of goods from ports outside Britain. Inikori (1976a)has argued, largely on
the basis of Hall's accounts, that substantial proportions of the goods
bartered for slaves by British traders were shipped directly to the African
coast from continental ports. From the limited evidence currently
available, it is difficult to make a detailed assessment of this argument, but
some doubts about its validity are raised by the fact that Bristol and
Liverpool's share of Britain's trade to Africa grew rapidly in the early
eighteenth century while the share of London, the port closest to the conti-
nent, declined, particularly from the 1720s (Richardson, 1989b). More-
over, inspection of British customs accounts shows that during the first half
of the century up to 60 per cent of the goods exported from British ports
to Africa consisted of re-exported foreign goods (Richardson, 1979).East
India textiles constituted the largest single category of such goods, but they

' ? O n the competitiveness of Dutch goods see Public Record Office, CO 388/12, K52;
CO 388/30, V75.
South Carolina Historical Society, Letterbook of John Guerard, 25 August 1753, John
Guerard to William Jolliff University of Keele Archives, Accounts and papers, 25 August
1764, William Davenport & Co. to Joseph Caton, master of Sisters; Public Record Office, C
107/7, part 1, 21 March 1792, Ostend, John Kirkpatrick & Co. to James Rogers;
Hogendorn and Johnson ( I 986).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
28 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
also included Swedish iron, German linens, Italian beads, and Dutch fire-
arms, hardware and liquor. Such evidence tends to confirm the competi-
tiveness of continental suppliers of trade goods for Africa at this time and
helps to explain why, when such goods were unavailable at home, British
merchants sometimes directed their vessels toward Dutch or other contin-
ental ports before they sailed finally to Africa. Perhaps what it also sug-
gests is that sufficient supplies of Dutch and other foreign goods were
normally available in Britain to enable the great majority of British mer-
chants to complete the lading of their African-bound vessels with trade
goods without having to divert them to continental ports. In my calcula-
tions, therefore, I have assumed that British shipments of trade goods from
continental ports to Africa were exceptional, and that, adjusted to account
for trade via Madeira, British customs records are a reliable indicator of
the general trend in shipment of trade goods to Africa by British mer-
chants in the eighteenth century. Since it is clear that some purchases of
trade goods at continental ports took place, this assumption will tend to
lower to some extent my estimate of slave prices at the African coast.
The trade goods that British merchants shipped to Africa were bartered
not only for slaves but also for a range of other African products. These
included ivory (or ‘elephant’s teeth), wax, gum, Guinea grains, dyestuffs
(notably camwood and redwood), and gold. It is evident that the level of
trade in these African products varied between individual trading centres
at the coast as well as over time (Bean, 1974; Curtin, 1975). Nevertheless,
the trade in such goods was sufficiently large throughout the eighteenth
century to permit some British ships each year to engage in bilateral or
‘produce’ voyages to the coast.14 British customs accounts record imports
directly from Africa in such ships. At the same time, masters of slave ships
were normally advised to purchase some quantity of African products.
Accounts of merchants as well as official sources reveal that very few slave
ships returned home without some African produce.I5 In order to estimate
slave prices at the coast, therefore, it is necessary to adjust the value of
British exports of trade goods to Africa to allow for purchases of these
products.
According to some studies, about 5 per cent of British shipping tonnage
in the African trade was employed in the produce trade during the second
half of the eighteenth century, whether bilaterally or via America (Anstey,
1975; Inikori, 1976a; Drescher, 1977). It may seem appropriate therefore
simply to discount the value of British exports to Africa by 5 per cent to
allow for those goods used to purchase African produce in the eighteenth

I4For evidence on bilateral voyages to Africa before 1745, see hchardson (1986,
1987b);for 1789-95, see Public Record Office, T 64/286.
I5Figures compiled by the late Marion Johnson from Customs 3 and 17 show that
imports into England from Africa via the New World were often equivalent to a third or
more of the value of total English imports of African goods. I am grateful to Marion
Johnson for supplying this information.
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PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 29
century. However, Gemery, Hogendorn and Johnson ( 1990) have shown
on the basis of customs accounts that the percentage of non-slave to slave
exports from Africa in British ships varied from as low as 3 per cent in the
1770s to as high as 16 to 21 per cent in the 1720s and averaged probably
over 10 per cent over the eighteenth century as a whole. Their figure for
the 1720s may be exaggerated since, as noted earlier, significant amounts
of British exports to Africa at this time were officially entered out for
Madeira, but, in general, the proportions of non-slave to slave exports
from Africa in British ships seem to have been higher in the first half of the
eighteenth century than in the second. To construct a price series for
slaves, therefore, we need to take account of the varying levels of trade in
produce by British merchants at the African coast over the course of the
eighteenth century.
Customs accounts suggest that most African produce reached Britain
directly from Africa rather than on slave ships returning from America.
Consequently, the simplest method of calculating the value of the goods
British merchants bartered for slaves is to deduct the annual values of
British imports from Africa given in customs records from the cor-
responding values of British exports to the African coast. Since some Afri-
can goods reached Britain via America, this procedure will tend to bias
upward the estimates of slave prices at the coast, but this may be counter-
balanced by the under-recording of British exports to Africa noted earlier.
A more serious problem, arguably, may arise from discounting exports to
Africa by the whole value of imports from the coast, for exports are nor-
mally valued f.0.b. and imports c.i.f. Evidence on transport and distribution
costs for African produce is sparse, but there are indications that British
exports were usually marked up by as much as 100 per cent at the coast in
order to cover their cost of transport from Britain.I6Thus one should per-
haps discount the value of British imports from Africa by some 50 per
cent to allow for such costs. Close examination of the records shows, how-
ever, that eighteenth-century British customs officials adopted the rather
unusual practice of pricing imports f.o.b., not c.i.f. (Davis, 1979). The
values placed by these officials on African goods reaching Britain no
doubt differed from their actual purchase price abroad, but, in the absence
of a price series for African produce, it seems not unreasonable when
attempting to estimate the value of British exports bartered for slaves sim-

"' Information on mark-ups, relating mainly to the nineteenth century, is in Eltis ( 1 989).
For evidence relating to the eighteenth century, see Public Record Office, CO 267/6, ff.
195-6, where it was reported in September 1752 that €600 in goods at prime cost in
England were worth €1400 in trade at the Gold Coast, a mark-up of 133 pre cent. For other
eighteenth-century evidence on mark-ups, see Bristol Central Library, Southwell papers,
Vol. 8, 12 September 1744, Richard Henvill to Board of Trade; Public Record Office, CO
388/43, Bb 85, 14 September 1744, Richard Henvill to Board of Trade; Public Record
Office, BT 6/3, ff. 58-9, Advances to Governor Mill, 1774; Considerations (1763, p. 45);
Curtin (1975,pp. 174,255).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
30 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
ply to deduct the recorded value of British imports from Africa from the
value of total British exports to the region."
The figures on eighteenth-century British exports to Africa given in
customs accounts are very largely based on official values rather than the
market price of goods. As noted earlier, those official values generally
remained unchanged over long periods and essentially reflected prices
prevailing in 1696-1700. Recorded in constant prices, the statistics given
in customs accounts thus indicate trends in the volume rather than the
value of British exports to Africa in the eighteenth century. This has
certain advantages, for it allows one to estimate the 'real' price for slaves in
Africa in terms of the bundles of goods bartered for them. This in turn
permits one to calculate trends in the gross barter terms of trade at the
coast and to begin, perhaps, to assess the distribution of the gains from the
trade in slaves between African and British merchants.'* For British
merchants trying to gauge more narrowly the financial profitability of
slaving, however, what also mattered was the current cost or price of slaves
at the coast. This obviously depended to a large extent on the general state
of supply and demand for slaves in Africa, but current prices for slaves at
the coast, as some British merchants recogni~ed,'~ could be influenced by
traders' skills in bargaining over the composition of the bundle of goods
bartered for slaves and by changes in the prime cost in Britain of the trade
goods exchanged. It is important, therefore, to try to estimate not only the
'real' but also the current price of slaves at the African coast. To do this, we
need to deflate the official values of British exports to Africa given in
customs accounts by an appropriate price index.
For converting official prices of exports to Africa to current prices, a
price index relating specifically to trade goods shipped to Africa is
naturally to be preferred. Such an index is, as yet, unavailable. However,
there is an index of prices of consumer goods (excluding cereals) in Britain
in the eighteenth century constructed by Schumpeter (1938).The general
trend in prices of consumer goods in Britain revealed by this index is clear.
Over the first three decades of the century prices tended to drift down-
ward, and by the 1730s were as much as 20 per cent lower than at the start
of the century. Thereafter prices stabilized and then began to rise slowly
through to the 1780s. A sharp acceleration in prices then occurred in the
1790s, followed by a pronounced deceleration in the rate of increase of
prices in the 1800s. Despite this final slowing down in price increases,

" In calculating the value of goods exchanged for slaves, I simply reduced the value of
exports to Africa each year by the value of imports directly from Africa in the same year. No
allowance is made for the fact that some of the ships left Britain in one year and returned a
year or more later.
Estimates of movements in the terms of trade at the African coast are to be found in
Curtin (1975), Eltis and Jennings (1988), Eltis (1989), and Gemery, Hogendorn and
Johnson (1990).
"Public Record Office, C 107/5, 23 February 1790, William Roper to James Rogers; C
107/13,20 June 1786, Thomas Walker to James Rogers.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 31
prices of consumer goods in Britain were, according to Schumpeter’s
index, some 40 per cent higher by 1807 than in the late 1780s and some
50 per cent higher than a century earlier.
A perusal of Schumpeter’s sources shows that the basket of goods upon
which she based her index contained, unfortunately, few of the com-
modities normally exported to Africa in this period.20Her index may thus
be an unreliable guide to trends in British prices of such trade goods. Some
assessment of the reliability of Schumpeter’s index is possible, however, by
comparing it with the scattered evidence of prices of trade goods for
Africa that has survived and with more recent studies of prices of manu-
factures or industrial goods in Britain in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries2’ Unlike Schumpeter’s index, the latter tend to
include items such as linens and cottons that figured prominently in British
exports to Africa by the end of the eighteenth century. From the price data
available, the trends in British prices of trade goods for Africa through to
the 1780s appear to have been mixed. Prices of goods such as brassware
and Swedish bar iron, for instance, seem to have risen steadily if not
dramatically over this period, while prices of gunpowder and copper
kettles and pans apparently remained relatively stable.22At the same time,
the prices of some popular varieties of East Indian textiles, notably
romalls, Guinea stuffs and chelloes seemingly fell quite sharply over the
first half of the century but then began to recover during the following
quarter century.23To decipher the general trend in prices of trade goods

“‘Schumpeter’s index (1938) was based on four categories of goods: animal products,
beverages and condiments, candles and coal, and clothing. Among the goods included in
these categories, only Irish linen was a significant trade good in Africa, though beef, butter,
cheese and beer were taken out to Africa as provisions.
Information on the prices of trade goods for Africa may be found in Bristol Central
Library, Hobhouse papers and Southwell papers; Bristol Museum, Logbook of Africa;
Bristol Record Office, Accounts of Molly and Swift; Liverpool Museum, Accounts of John
Knight and William Davenport; Liverpool Record Office, Leyland papers and Tuohy
papers; Cohen Library, University of Liverpool, Dumbell papers and Peet papers;
University of Keele Archives, Accounts of William Davenport; Public Record Office, BT
6/7, John Tarleton’s account of Liverpool exports to Africa in 1787; Public Record Office,
C 107/1-15, Rogers papers; Curtin (1975), supplementary evidence; Donnan (1930-5,11,
pp. 244, 274, 362, 383); Posthumus ( 1 943); Chaudhuri ( 1 978); and Davis (1979). Indices
of industrial prices in Britain are to be found in Hueckel(1985)and OBrien (1985).
”Thus the price of Swedish bar iron rose from 1 ls.9d. per cwt around 1700 to 16s. to
19s. per cwt in the 1720s and 1730s and to 19s. to 25s. per cwt in the 1780s. Similarly the
price of brassware rose from 85s. per cwt to 148s. per cwt over the same period. By
contrast, the price of gunpowder tended to fluctuate between 65s. and 80s. per cwt during
this period, while the price of copper kettles and pans fluctuated between 140s. and 170s.
per cwt.
23Theprice of a piece of Indian romall fell from 28s. around 1700 to 10s. to 15s. in the
1720s and 1730s, but then rose to 15s. to 17s.6d. by the 1770s and 1780s. Over the same
years, the price of a piece of Guinea stuffs fell from 10s. to around 3s. before recovering to
4s. to 6s., while the price of a piece of chelloe fell from 17s. to below 15s. before rising to
19s. or more. These changes in prices were typical of a wide range of East Indian fabrics,
but there were some exceptions such as bafts, which tended to rise steadily in price between
1700 and the 1780s. On the general trends in prices of East Indian fabrics, particularly
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32 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
for Africa is therefore difficult, but on the whole it appears that
Schumpeter’s index of consumer durables provides a not unreasonable
indicator of movements in such prices over the first 80 years of the
century. This is confirmed to some extent by a detailed report to the Board
of Trade of one prominent Liverpool merchant, John Tarleton, which
suggested that in 1787 the market prices of the goods exported from
Britain to Africa were, on average, some 12 per cent higher than the offi-
cial value of exports, the latter being based on 1696-1700 prices.24Signifi-
cantly, Schumpeter’s index of prices of British consumer goods in 1787
was some 11 per cent higher than in 1700.
Although Schumpeter’s index appears, on available evidence, to be
fairly reliable as a indicator of price trends in Britain of trade goods for
Africa through to the late 1780s, its reliability thereafter is more ques-
tionable. There is evidence, it is true, that the prices of some of the goods
exported to Africa from Britain rose sharply between the 1780s and the
early 1800s. For instance, prices of iron goods shipped to Africa were, in
1800-5, over 70 per cent higher than the official values of such goods
(Inikori, 1976b). Iron goods constituted, however, only a small part of
British exports to Africa (Richardson, 1979), and scattered information
gleaned from merchants’ papers indicates that the price of many of the
other goods shipped to Africa from Britain rose much more slowly from
the late 1780s onward. This was particularly true of certain types of East
Indian fabrics, gunpowder and hardware,*’ and was no doubt also the case
with domestically produced textiles. It is quite possible, therefore, that
during the two decades before 1807 the price of British exports to Africa
in general rose less than the 40 per cent registered by Schumpeter’s index
or the 43 per cent registered by O’Brien’s series of prices of industrial
goods in England (1985). By precisely how much less is difficult to
calculate, but the recent study by Davis (1979) suggests that the market
price of British exports to Africa in 1804-6 was no more than 22 per cent
higher than the official value of such goods based mainly on 1700 prices,
while the index of prices of British industrial goods compiled by Hueckel
(1985) shows a rise of no more than 15 per cent between 1790 and 1807.
This latter series is particularly significant, for it includes some important
classes of exports to Africa such as linen and cotton textiles which tended
to rise much less sharply in price than most other groups of consumer or
industrial goods in Britain after 1790. To convert official values of British

those from western India and Bengal, the main sources of fabrics for the African slave trade,
see Chaudhuri (1978).
24 Public Record Office, BT 6/3.
lS1n 1802-5 the price of romalls varied from 11s. to 19s. per piece; Guinea stuffs from
3s.9d. to 8s.4d. per piece; and gunpowder from 75s. to 110s. per cwt. At the same time the
price of copper kettles and pans was about 215s. per cwt. The prices of these goods were all
higher than in 1787, but in some cases, notably romalls and Guinea stuffs, they were still
well below their official values.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 33
exports to Africa into current or market values, therefore, I have relied on
Hueckel’s index of industrial prices in the period from 1790 to 1807. For
earlier years, I simply relied on Schumpeter’s index for British consumer
goods.
Annual figures on the official values of the goods exported by British
merchants to Africa between 1698 and 1807 to buy slaves are presented
in the Appendix, together with estimates of the current market values of
such goods and my own estimates of the numbers of slaves carried each
year from Africa in British ships. These data allow one, in turn, to produce
estimates of the average price of slaves in both constant and current values
to British traders at the African coast each year between 1698 and 1807.
Both of these price series are reported in the Appendix. In view of the
weaknesses in both the basic export figures and my estimates of slave
shipments, one should not place too much reliance on the annual varia-
tions in prices of slaves shown by these series. The main aim of the series
is, in fact, to highlight the trends in coastal prices of slaves, and, with this in
mind, both series of annual prices have been smoothed by using five-year
moving averages. These ‘smoothed’ series, together with a similar series on
British slave exports, are set out in the Appendix. I now turn my attention
to a review of my series and their implications for other recent African
slave price series.

The price series presented in the Appendix show that there was a sub-
stantial rise in the price of slaves at the African coast over the course of the
eighteenth century. It appears in fact that between 1698 and 1807 the
price of an average slave in Africa rose from about E5 to &23-&29in real
terms and from $5 to &29-&35in money terms. Averaging about 1.4 to 1.8
per cent per annum, this substantial rise in prices of slaves at the coast was,
however, far from steady. On the contrary, closer inspection of the data
shows that in both money and real terms slave prices generally fluctuated
between &4and &6during the first four decades of the century, rose gently
to about &7over the next two decades, and then doubled between the early
1760s and the War of American Independence. The outbreak of war
triggered a modest fall in prices in 1776-80, but renewed upward pressure
on prices seems to have become apparent during the 1780s, and after a
brief easing of prices again in the early 1790s, culminated in a second
major surge in prices in 1795 to 1807. The latter saw the average price
paid for slaves by British traders at the African coast rise from E l 5 4 1 6
per slave to &29-&35per slave. Overall, therefore, most of the rise in
prices of slaves encountered by eighteenth-century British traders in
Africa occurred, according to my figures, during the final half century of
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BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

+x+ v v

2
1695 1705 1715 1725 1735 1745 1755 1765 1775 1785 1795 1805
Years
- Richardson + Bean 0 Curtin A Miller X Johnson V LeVeen
(lower Gambia)

Fig. 1. Slave prices, 1699-1807

British slaving and was particularly concentrated in 1760-75 and

1795-1807. During the rest of the century prices remained fairly steady
or, at most, changed only modestly.
How do these movements in prices compare with those suggested by
other recent studies on the slave trade? Several series of coastal prices of
slaves calculated in sterling have been published recently and are graphed,
together with my own smoothed current price series, in Figure 1. In
addition, several price series of slaves in other units of account have
appeared; these are summarized in Table 1. It should be noted that, of
these other series, only Bean’s relates to the price of slaves at prime cost
throughout the coast and is thus most directly comparable to mine.26All
the rest either relate to specific trading centres at the African coast,
including the Curtin prime cost series for the lower Gambia in 1727-41,
or embody some element of additional costs such as factorage and

*‘It should also be noted that Bean’s series relates to adult males, whereas mine is
concerned with the average price of all slaves shipped per year from Africa by the British.
According to Bean (1975, p. 133),prices of adult males were some 118.6 per cent of ‘large-
lot average prices in Africa’. Thus the level of prices reported in his series should be higher
than mine. The prices reported in Postma’s (1990) series, as indicated later, appear to be
very similar to mine, but Postma does not specify how his series was computed.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES O F SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 35
1ABLE 1
Slave Prices at the African Coast 1695-1808, Non-sterling Units of Account

Senegumbia Sierra Leone Gold Coast Tripoli

bars per ‘piece ship bars per trade ouncesper sequins per
Years d’lnde’ adult male adult male sla ve
~~~~ ~

1695 8-12
1714 16 4
1715 15
1716-17 17
1718 18
1721 4-4.5
1723-24 60
1725 8-10
1728 6.5
1732 23-25
1733 50
1735 24-30
1743 60
1744 7
1748 60-70 7
1750 80
1753 8-8.5 20
1754 30 105-120
1755 80
1757-58 33-43 70
1762 8
1763 60-70
1766 9 40
1771 120
1772 10-11
1774 10
1776 13
1777 8-9
1779 7.5
1783 60
1784 50
1785 70-80
1786 36
1788 145-170
1789 13-14
1790 155-170
1791 12.1
1792 160
1796 100-130
1798 62
1802 13
1807 137
1808 140
Note: where sources give a price covering more than one year I have attributed the price
to the middle year of the run of years. Sierra Leone includes the Windward Coast.
Sources: Senegambia, Bathily (1986); Sierra Leone, Jones (1983); Gold Coast, Johnson
( 1 966);Tripoli, Renault (1982).
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36 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

transport in their calculation of slave prices.27Strictly speaking, therefore,

when considering levels of prices at the coast, my series should only be
compared to that of Bean and, perhaps, that of Curtin for the lower
Gambia. However, as our main concern here is with the general trend in
coastal prices of slaves, comparisons between my prime cost series and
series calculated in other ways may still be instructive, particularly since no
evidence has been found to suggest that factorage and other costs changed
radically over the eighteenth century.28
An examination of the data presented in Figure 1 and Table 1 suggests
that most other series of slave prices in Africa tend to corroborate the
general trends in slave prices revealed by my series. In particular, they all
suggest that slave prices at the African coast rose substantially over the
eighteenth century and that most of the rise in prices took place from the
1740s onward. At the same time, closer examination of the data shows
that, with the exception of Bathily’s series (1986) for Senegambia and
Renault’s ( 1982) for Tripoli, the overall increase in African slave prices
over the eighteenth century indicated by other series was noticeably less
than that suggested by my own. Thus, whereas my figures suggest that
slave prices rose fivefold or more over the century, most other recent
series suggest prices probably rose no more than threefold. This reflects in
part the fact that, with the notable exception of Curtin’s prime cost series
of prices of slaves in the lower Gambia in 1727-41, slave prices were,
according to other recent series, including Bean’s prime cost series, sig-
nificantly higher on average in the early part of the century than my series
indicates. It is also clear, however, that the substantial surge in slave prices
in Africa in 1795-1807 shown by my series is not reflected in other price
series. On the contrary, most of the series that extend beyond 1783
indicate that slave prices at the coast were fairly stable or, in certain cases,
even fell during the closing years of the British slave trade.29 Whether
expressed in current or constant prices, my series diverges radically, there-
fore, from most of the existing series in terms of both the level of coastal
prices of slaves in the first half of the eighteenth century and the general
direction of change in slave prices during the period after the War of
American Independence.
Given the imperfections of the data underlying my various price series,
it would be premature to accept the revised picture of slave prices in

27 LeVeen (1977)suggests that inclusion of factorage charges raises his estimates of slave
prices by some 20 per cent above their prime cost equivalents, while Curtin (1975) claims
that bulking and handling charges inflated the prices reported in most of his series by 33 to
60 per cent.
As Eltis (1989)states, evidence relating to transaction and other costs surrounding the
purchase of slaves is confusing, but there was no significant fall in the cost of transporting
slaves from Africa to America in the eighteenth century (Richardson, 1987a).
’’ Citing the unpublished thesis of La Torre (1978),Lovejoy ( 1 983) notes that the price of
adult males at the Gold Coast fell from E45 in May 1789 to €32.4 in I803 and to €25.2 in
1807. These estimates of prices are at odds with those given in Johnson (1966).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 37
eighteenth-century Africa they reveal without further supporting evidence.
Close scrutiny of existing studies of the slave trade reveals some support
for the more revisionist aspects of my price series. My estimates of slave
prices in the 1730s, for instance, are, as noted earlier, consistent with
Curtin’s calculation of the price of slaves at prime cost in the lower
Gambia in 1727-41 (Curtin, 1975). Derived essentially by the same
method that I adopt, Curtin’s estimate of slave prices in this area is some
40-60 per cent lower than Bean’s for West Africa in this period and, in
addition to corroborating my price estimates, raises major doubts about
the reliability of Bean’s figures as a prime-cost series of slave prices.”’
Similarly, the rise in slave prices in 1759-75 indicated by my figures i p
consistent with the findings of both Jones (1983) and Johnson (1966) on
prices at Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast between 1762 and 1775, while
the decline in prices in 1776-80 is mirrored by movements in slave prices
at the Gold Coast in these years (Metcalf, 1987). Finally, my figures on
coastal prices of slaves from 1780 onward are close to the decennial
estimates of slave prices in Africa that underlie the studies by Anstey
(1974, 1975) of the profitability of the British slave trade during its final
years. My figures suggest in fact that average slave prices per decade rose
from $16.4 per slave in 1781-90 to $31.3 per slave in 1801-7, while
Anstey’s work implies that prices rose from E16.4 per slave to g32.6 per
slave.31
Although existing studies of the trade offer some support for my
estimate of coastal prices of slaves, for a more detailed assessment of my
series we need to look at other sources of evidence. For this purpose, three
types of evidence will be used. These are, first, contemporary reports of
slave prices in sterling at the coast; second, information on the prime cost
of the trade goods carried by ships and the numbers of slaves they were
intended to buy; and, third, the trend in prices of slaves in America. As a
means of testing my series of slave prices in Africa, each of these sources
poses problems, but collectively they do provide a reasonable assessment
of their reliability.

I11

Accounts and reports of coastal purchases of slaves probably provide the

most reliable method of determining slave prices in Africa during the
eighteenth century. As other historians have found, however, precise
information about slave prices in sterling at the coast is patchy and

”’For further doubts regarding the reliability of Bean’s series see Eltis (1989).
” To derive average prices of slaves at the African coast from Anstey (1975), I assumed
Anstey’s own estimates of slave mortality in the Atlantic crossing and that the trade goods
used to buy slaves at the coast constituted two-thirds of his estimated total voyage outlays.
The latter assumption is based on Richardson (1976).
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38 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
unevenly distributed among the individual trading centres in West and
West-Central Africa. Most of the surviving information on slave prices
seems to relate in fact to the Gambia and the Gold Coast (Bean, 1975),
regions where the British had established forts and factories, rather than to
the Bight of Biafra and Angola, where British traders bought most of their
slaves in the eighteenth century (Richardson, 1989b). The unevenness in
the distribution of price material would be of limited importance, of
course, if prices of slaves varied only marginally from one region to
another. Unfortunately, it seems that this was not the case. Contemporary
reports indicate that slave prices varied quite considerably between
regions and that the regions for which most evidence has survived tended
to be those with higher than average prices of slaves. Thus, in 1787,
Sydenham Teaste of Bristol reported to the Board of Trade that the
average price of slaves between Cape La Hou and Anamaboe on the Gold
Coast was about &18to &21but that prices at Old Calabar in the Bight of
Biafra were &12 to &14 per slave and at Cameroon and Cape Lopez
further south were only &8to &12 per slave.32 Teaste’s claims are cor-
roborated by evidence on the outfitting costs of ships. A survey of Bristol’s
trade to Africa in 1749, for instance, shows that the average level of invest-
ment in trade goods for Africa undertaken by the port’s merchants ranged
from E20 per slave in the case of ships bound for the Windward and Gold
Coast to &14per slave in the case of ships bound for the Bight of Biafra
and Angola.33As we shall see later, this particular survey almost certainly
exaggerates the overall level of Bristol investment in the African trade at
this time, but in confirming that inter-regional variations in slave prices at
the African coast were both substantial and persistent, it reminds one of
the need to be cautious in estimating average prices of slaves throughout
the coast from price data relating to specific parts of it.
Reports of African slave prices in sterling are sparse during the first half
of the eighteenth century, but are rather more abundant for certain years
after 1748, notably 1749-62 and 1788-92. For the first of these periods,
there is an unsigned document relating to the purchase of slaves at the
coast by 18 Liverpool ships.34The prices paid for slaves by the masters of
these ships ranged from &6to 18 and averaged about & 11. The average
price paid for slaves by these ships was, therefore, at least 40 per cent
higher than the &6to &8 per slave indicated by my price series for this
period. Closer inspection of the data shows, however, that, among the 18
ships in this sample, one third traded at the Gold Coast and paid over &14
for each slave bought, while the rest traded elsewhere and paid only about

”Parliamentary papers, 1789, XXVI (646a), Report on the African trade, part IV,
account no. 25.
33 Public Record Office, CO 388/45, Dd4. As with the estimates of slave prices based on
Anstey (1975) noted above (footnote 31), my figures assume that trade goods constituted
two-thirds of Bristol merchants’investment in the slave trade in 1749.
34 John Rylands University of Manchester Library, Eng. Ms. 5 17.
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PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 39
&9 per slave. Confirming that the Gold Coast was a relatively high-cost
supplier of slaves, the pattern of slave purchases by these 18 ships almost
certainly tends to give a misleading impression of the average price for
slaves in Africa at this time, for recent research (Richardson, 1989a) has
shown that only about 10 per cent of the slaves exported by Liverpool
ships from Africa in the 1750s came from the Gold Coast. Adjusting the
accounts of these ships to allow for the over-representation of Gold Coast
trade reduces the average price per slave suggested by them to E9.5. This
figure is still some 20 per cent or more higher than that revealed by my
own price series, but given the margins of error that must inevitably
surround the construction of such a series may perhaps be regarded as
broadly consistent with its findings for this particular period.
Reports of slave prices in 1788-92 are to be found in the cor-
respondence of a major Bristol slave merchant, James Rogers.35Relating
mainly to the area around Sierra Leone, these suggest that prices of slaves
varied from &17 to &22during this period. The lower end of this price
range was very similar to the average price of slaves for this stretch of coast
reported by Sydenham Teaste in 178736 and may thus provide some
confirmation of the reliability of Teaste’s general views on prices. How
representative prices at Sierra Leone were of slave prices throughout the
west coast of Africa is uncertain, but Teaste’s report suggests that they
were toward the middle of the price range at that time. The information
that Rogers received about slave prices in 1788-92 was perhaps reason-
ably close, therefore, to the average price of slaves throughout the coast
around 1790. Interpreted in this way, these prices are almost identical to
the average current prices of slaves in Africa in 1788-92 suggested by my
price series.
While contemporary reports of slave prices in 1749-62 and 1788-92
are reasonably consistent with my series, information of this sort is, as yet,
very limited for the periods before 1750 and after 1795 when the levels
and trends of prices indicated by my series seem to diverge most sharply
from those suggested by Bean, LeVeen and other recent studies. To gauge
the reliability of my series in these periods we may begin by turning to
evidence on the average investment by merchants in trade goods in Britain
and the numbers of slaves such goods were expected to buy. Merchants’
accounts, trade surveys and official records have yielded data relating to
outlays of trade goods per slave for various years and periods between
1708 and 1806. These data are presented in Table 2. Doubts exist about
the reliability of some of the sources used in constructing this table. This is
particularly the case with the 1749 survey of Bristol trade which seems to
exaggerate the average fitting out costs of the port’s African ships at this
time by 25-33 per cent (Richardson, 1991)and thus probably leads to an

Public Record Office, C 107/6,8, 10, 12, 14,

.Is
“See footnate 32.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
40 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
TABLE 2
British Investments in Trade Goods per Slave, I708 to 1806

Year(.) Goods per slave (L) Source

1708-9 4.4 Based on 10 per cent duties on exports to

Africa, PRO CO 388/12, K53.
1710-11 5.5 Based on 10 per cent duties on exports to
Africa, PRO CO 388/13, L87; 15, M148.
1714 7.1 Donnan (1930-35), 11, pp. 179-82, accounts
of Norman Gully.
1725 5.5 Bristol Central Library, Hobhouse papers,
accounts of Dispatch.
c. 1730 4.9 Bristol Central Library, Hobhouse papers,
scheme for purchasing 250 slaves at Bonny.
1730s 6.0 Hughes (1952-65), 11, pp. 45-7, scheme for
four voyages to Angola; cf. voyages to Gold
Coast, S8.0 per slave.
1745 4.9 Bristol Central Library, Southwell papers,
abstract of a cargo for Bonny. I assumed a
loading of 2.5 slaves per ton.
1749 10.5 Based on PRO CO 388/45, Dd 4, survey of
Bristol’s trade to Africa.
1748-56(1) 9.0 Liverpool Record Office, Tarleton papers,
accounts of Thomas Tarleton.
1758-76(1) 9.8(a) Liverpool Museum, accounts of the Eadith
11.0(b) and Chesterfield; University of Keele
I 1.7(c) Archives, Davenport Trading Accounts. (a)
refers to voyages to Old Calabar; (b)to
voyages to the Windward Coast; and (c)to
voyages to the Cameroons.
17S9-73( 1) 10.4 Liverpool Record Office, Tomlinson-Knight
accounts.
1765-74( 1) 11.1 Liverpool Record Office, Tuohy papers.
1782-83 12.2 Harold Cohen Library, University of
Liverpool, Dumbell papers, accounts of
Harlequin’s voyage to the Gold Coast.
1787 17.6 PRO BT 6/7, John Tarleton’s report of the
state of trade to Africa.
1788 17.9 House of Commons, accounts and papers,
XXIV (1789),632, evidence of Thomas
Matthews.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST A N D WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 41
TABLE 2 - contd

Year(s) Goods per slave (L) Source

1790(2) 19.1 House of Commons, accounts and papers,

XXIX (1790),698, Robert Norris' account
of the vessels employed by Liverpool
merchants in the African trade.
1790-93 18.0 PRO C 107/1-15,papers of James Rogers.
1795(2) 11.6 Harold Cohen Library,University of
Liverpool, Dumbell papers, accounts of the
Spitjire's voyage to the Congo.
1797-98(2) 16.2 Harold Cohen Library, University of
Liverpool,Dumbell and Peet papers,
accounts of two voyages to Bonny by
Earl of Liverpool.
1802-6(2) 20.6 Liverpool Record Office,Thomas Leyland
accounts, four voyages to Bonny.

Note:
( 1 ) The slave carrying capacities of ships are based on PRO BT 6/3, list of Liverpool
ships trading to Africa.
(2) Estimates of the slaves to be purchased were based o n the legal carrying capacities of
ships as determined by laws passed in 1788 and 1799.

inflated estimate of slave prices at the African coast. In several other

instances, however, the figures almost certainly tend to understate prices
since the method of calculation assumes that all the trade goods shipped to
Africa were expended in purchasing slaves and that ships achieved their
expected complements of slaves.37
Despite these problems, the general trends in cargo outlays per slave
revealed by Table 2 are clear. Outlays varied mainly between E4.4 and
€6.0 per slave over the first half of the century, rose to over €1 1 per slave
by the early 1770s, and then rose still further during the final two decades
of the trade, reaching almost €21 per slave on the voyages fitted out by
Thomas Leyland & Co. of Liverpool for Bonny in the Bight of Biafra in
1802-6. From these data, therefore, it appears that after remaining
relatively stable during the first half of the century, outlays per slave rose

"Some 2-3 per cent of exports to Africa from Britain were used to purchase slave
provisions at the African coast (Richardson, 1987a). While many ships probably failed to
achieve their anticipated loading of slaves, it appears that some of those listed in Table 2
exceeded theirs. This was the case, for instance, with the Harlequin in 1782-83, which
delivered 497 slaves to Jamaica or 47 more than its owners had expected it to load in
Africa. The average price per slave paid by the master of the vessel was thus probably less
than E 1 1 .
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
42 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
fairly persistently throughout the final half century of the British trade and
on the eve of the abolition of the trade were some four to five times higher
than a century earlier. The pattern and overall rate of increase in cargo
outlays per slave revealed by the data in Table 2 is thus very similar to the
trends in slave prices indicated by my price series.
One final test of these series may be attempted by comparing them with
evidence on trends in slave prices at those markets in British America to
which British merchants delivered their slaves in the eighteenth century.
Since the slave trade was a competitive industry, the prices of newly-
imported slaves in British America should broadly have mirrored those on
the African coast, particularly when, as in the eighteenth century, the cost
of transporting slaves across the Atlantic does not appear to have changed
substantially (Richardson, 1987a). Although surviving evidence is rather
slender for certain periods of the eighteenth century, information about
prices of newly-imported slaves in the British colonies in America is, on
the whole, more abundant than that for slave prices in Africa and has
allowed several historians, notably Anstey (1975), Bean (1975) and
LeVeen (1977), to construct series of slave prices on a decadal or semi-
decade1 basis for eighteenth-century British America. Indices of their price
series are plotted, together with an index of my own slave price series for
Africa, in Figure 2. They suggest that prices of newly-imported slaves in
British America tended to remain fairly stable during the first four decades
of the eighteenth century but then began to climb somewhat unsteadily
from the late 1730s or early 1740s through to the 1790s. These move-
ments in American prices of slaves closely paralleled, as further inspection
of Figure 2 reveals, the trend in average prices of slaves at the African
coast over the same period indicated by my price series. Price trends in
British America provide, therefore, important support for the reliability of
my African price series through to the early 1790s. The available series for
America are, however, less in agreement about the trend in slave prices in
British America in the 1790s and 1800s. LeVeen’s series suggests that
prices of slaves in British America remained relatively stable in this period
while Anstey’s series suggests that, as with my African series, prices
climbed strongly between the mid-1790s and the abolition of British
slaving in 1807. As available evidence on slave prices in America after
1793 is limited,3x it is difficult to resolve the dispute over trends in
American slave prices after 1790 inherent in Anstey’s and LeVeen’s
series. But the latest research shows that a significant rise in slave prices in
the British Caribbean occurred in 1798-1800 and probably pushed the
average price of newly-imported African slaves in these colonies to levels
even higher than those suggested by Anstey for 1800-7 (Ward, 1988).
Contrary to LeVeen’s series, the price of slaves in British America seems,
therefore, to have increased quite markedly during the final decade of the

”On the sparseness of price data after 1793, see Anstey ( 1974).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
340
320 -
300 -
280 -
260 -
240 -
220 -
200 -
180 -
160 -
140 - 0 0

120 -
100 -
80 - + 0 +

60 -
40 -
20 I
1695 1705 1715 1725 1735 1745 1755 1765 1775 1785 1795 1805

-Richardson + Bean Years 0 Leveen a Anstey

Fig. 2. Indices of slave prices, 1699-1805.

British trans-Atlantic slave trade. This, in turn, tends to mirror the

movement in my African slave price series which, as Figure 2 reveals,
exhibited a substantial rise between 1795 and 1807.

IV

Some historians have claimed that creating any time series of data relating
to African history, particularly for the pre-colonial period, is beset with
almost insuperable problems (Henige, 1986). Nevertheless, by using
primarily European documentary evidence, it has been possible to make
major advances in charting changes in the level of slave exports from
Africa to America during the eighteenth century. Progress has been made,
too, in establishing trends in slave prices at the coast, but, by comparison
with the figures on slave exports, the evidence relating to prices has been
less abundant and more problematical. Some of the resulting price series
have been, therefore, of doubtful reliability. This paper has sought to
improve our understanding of slave prices at the African coast by using
evidence on the value of British exports of trade goods to Africa and of
slave shipments at the coast in order to create a series of African slave
prices at prime cost between 1698 and 1807. This series suggests that
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
44 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
prices of slaves tended to remain fairly stable over most of the first half of
the eighteenth century, but then to rise quite steeply during the last 50
years of British slaving, with most of this rise in prices occurring during the
15 years before the American Revolution and during the decade immedi-
ately preceding the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807. Overall
both the rate and pattern of increase in slave prices at the African coast
during the eighteenth century indicated by my series differs significantly
from that suggested by most earlier studies of African slave prices in this
period. Strong support for the general reliability of this series is provided,
nevertheless, by various other sources.
Since the British were responsible for shipping almost half the slaves
exported from Africa to America in the eighteenth century (Richardson,
1989a),the prices that British traders paid for slaves in Africa have usually
been assumed to be indicative of movements in prices of slaves generally
at the African coast in these years. Some caution perhaps needs to be
exercised in making this assumption, for the coastal distribution of British
trade in Africa differed from that of other groups (Richardson, 1989a)and
there is evidence, as noted earlier, of regional variations in levels of slave
prices. The indications are, however, that the trends in slave prices in each
of the African slave-supplying regions were broadly similar and that the
traders of other nations also encountered substantial rises in prices of
slaves at the African coast over the eighteenth century.3yIt seems reason-
able to assume, therefore, that British traders’ experiences of price changes
for slaves in Africa were fairly typical of the trade as a whole.
The slave trade unquestionably dominated relations between Europe
and Africa in the eighteenth century but its impact upon the historical
development of West and West-Central Africa remains an issue of
substantial debate among historians. Recent literature on Africa in this
period has, as Manning ( 1983)has shown, been influenced by two visions
of African history, both of which assume ‘an African dynamism’ but differ
sharply in the importance they attach to ‘external forces of change’. One,
labelled by Manning ‘emergent Africa’, tends to regard external factors ‘as
boundary conditions for a situation in which the major forces for change
were domestic’, while the other, labelled ‘Afrique engagee’, places con-
siderably more weight upon external factors such as the slave trade in
shaping African history in the eighteenth century and beyond. Proponents

3y Data supplied by Stein (1979, p. 141) regarding the French slave trade show that slave
prices at the coast rose by 250 per cent between 1738-44 and the 1780s. This was only a
slightly greater increase in prices than that suggested by my figures for the British trade.
Information recently published by Postma ( 1 990) dso shows that the cost of slaves to Dutch
traders at the coast rose by some 2-300 per cent between the 1740s and 1770s. Moreover,
if one assumes an exchange rate of 12 guilders to the f sterling, as Postma (1990, p. 262)
slggests, then the actual prices that Postma reports the Dutch paid for slaves between 1700
and 1790 were very similar to my series for the British trade. Precisely how Postma
estimated slave prices is, however, unclear.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 45
of the former view include Fage (1975, 1978, 1989), Curtin (1975) and,
most recently, Eltis (1987);advocates of the latter include Inikori (1982),
Rodney (1970,1981),Lovejoy (1983,1989),and Manning himself (1982,
1983).
Seen in conjunction with estimates of the volume of the slave trade,
trends in slave prices at the African coast as depicted by the price series of
Bean and LeVeen have been central to much of the recent discussion of
the slave trade and its impact on Africa in the eighteenth century. Milch
attention has centred on the supply responsiveness of Africans to external
demand for slaves (Bean, 1975; Curtin, 1975; Gemery and Hogendorn,
1974, 1977; LeVeen, 1975; Manning, 1982, 1983; Lovejoy, 1983; Eltis,
1987),but there have also been studies of the financial costs and benefits
to West Africa of its participation in the Atlantic slave trade (Gemery and
Hogendorn, 1979), the terms of trade at the African coast (Curtin, 1975;
Eltis and Jennings, 1988; Gemery, Hogendorn and Johnson, 1990), and
the ratio of earnings from slave exports to total incomes in Africa (Eltis,
1987, 1989; Eltis and Jennings, 1988).With regard to the issue of African
responses to external demand, analysis of export and price data has led
most historians to conclude that Africa tended to exhibit a high degree of
supply responsiveness to changes in American demand for slaves in the
eighteenth century. This, it is assumed, reflected, among various things,
improvements in the market mechanisms surrounding the trade in Africa,
and the capacity of societies within West and West-Central Africa to satisfy
slave exports through natural population growth. Investigation of the same
export and price data encouraged Manning to claim, however, that ‘at
the opening of the eighteenth century, the limits on the ability of Africans
to provide slaves cheaply had been reached, and prices rose dramatically’
(Manning, 1983). Based initially on a simple comparison of the available
data on slave exports and prices, Manning’s reservations about the
capacity of African societies to sustain low-cost exports of slaves were
endorsed to some extent by the claim of Gemery and Hogendorn (1979),
based on a cost-benefit analysis of the trade, that the economic benefits to
West Africa and its participation in the trans-Atlantic traffic in slaves in the
eighteenth century were at best ‘fairly minimal’. They were further
supported by Manning’s own (1987) subsequent studies of the demo-
graphic consequences of the slave trade for Africa, which indicated that
slave exports caused a significant fall in population in much of West Africa,
particularly in the century after 1750, and by the suggestion of Gemery,
Hogendorn and Johnson ( 1990),founded on their discovery that the gross
barter terms of trade at the African coast moved strongly in favour of
Africa, that ‘the cost of slave acquisition in Africa continued to rise’ in the
eighteenth century. Recent research based on quantitative data relating to
slave exports and prices, therefore, has tended to accentuate rather than
resolve the debate over the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on
Africa.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
46 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

The validity of recent interpretations of the slave trade depends heavily,

of course, upon the reliability of the price and export data that underpin
them. The various price series of slaves presented in this paper raise major
doubts, however, about the reliability of the price series of Bean (1975)
and LeVeen (1977), the two most widely used by recent historians. In
particular, they suggest that, during the first 60 years of the century at least,
prices of slaves at prime cost at the African coast were both lower and
more stable than Bean's series indicated. If correct, this finding has
important implications for the conclusions of several of the specific studies
of the slave trade mentioned above and, as a result, for the debate over the
impact of the trade upon West and West-Central Africa.
With respect to the implications of my price series for recent studies of
the eighteenth-century slave trade, three points deserve to be noted. First,
in relying upon the figures on slave prices produced by Bean and LeVeen
in order to estimate the income that Africans derived from selling slaves to
eighteenth-century European traders, Gemery and Hogendorri ( 1979)
tended to overstate the income that Africans derive from selling slaves in
the eighteenth century. Ceteris paribus, this reinforces their scepticism
about whether West Africa benefited economically from producing and
exporting slaves and suggests that their conclusion that, at best, the
economic returns to the region from participation in the trans-Atlantic
trade in slaves were marginal may be optimistic. This is not to say,
however, that those individuals or groups who captured slaves in Africa
and sold them to Europeans failed to profit financially from such
activities!O
Second, despite the probably harmful net economic and social external-
ities associated with the trade and the fact that exports of slaves from
Africa to America rose from under 40,000 a year around 1700 to 60,000
a year by the 1730s (Richardson, 1989a), the prime cost of slaves in both
nominal and real terms tended to remain, according to my price estimates,
relatively stable during the first half of the eighteenth century. Contrary to
the claim of Manning (lS)f33),therefore, the ability of Africans to supply
slaves to America at low cost does not seem to have diminished sig-
nificantly during the early eighteenth century. Nor, given the stability in
real prices of slaves, is there much sign of a substantial shift in the terms of
trade at the African coast in favour of Africans before the mid-eighteenth
century. Overall, therefore, the evidence suggests that, while African
suppliers in certain regions, such as the Bight of Benin, may have faced
mounting problems in responding to external demand for slaves (Manning,
1982),West and West-Central Africa as a whole seems to have been able
to sustain its position at a low-cost supplier of slaves to the Atlantic
economy throughout the first half of the eighteenth century!'

4"Gernery and Hogendorn (1979) also state that their estimates exclude 'the massive
intangible costs of the trade' as well as 'its social costs'.
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST A N D WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 47
Third, sustained exports of slaves from Africa to America at levels well
above 60,000 a year, as happened more or less consistently from the early
1760s onward (Richardson, 1989a), appear to have been associated with
sharp increases in slave prices at the coast and, on the evidence of real
prices for slaves, with substantial movements in the terms of trade in
favour of Africa. Rises in slave prices and improvements in Africans’ terms
of trade were especially evident in the 1760s and the early 1770s and
again in the decade before 1807. The trends in slave prices and terms of
trade in the latter period are particularly interesting, for they coincided
with a modest easing in the annual level of slave exports from Africa
compared to the previous decade (Richardson, 1989a), and suggest that a
significant shift to the left in the export slave supply curve of West and
West-Central Africa may have occurred at this time. On the evidence of
my price data, therefore, the export of over 60,000 slaves a year through-
out the half century before 1807 seems to have placed major and possibly
unsustainable strains on the slave supply systems of West and West-
Central Africa and thus eroded the traditional position of these regions as
low-cost suppliers of slave labour to American plantations.
Further research on the determinants of trends in slave prices at the
African coast in the eighteenth century revealed by the time-series data
presented in this paper needs to be done. A preliminary survey of these
data, together with recently published figures on slave exports from Africa
to America (Richardson, 1989a), would seem to indicate, nevertheless,
that in terms of the impact of the slave trade on Africa, the mid-eighteenth
century may have been a critical watershed in African history. Prior to
1750, slave exports grew and almost certainly imposed significant
economic and social costs upon those African groups subject to slave
raiding. Despite this, the scale of slave exports from Africa to America at
this time seems to have been sustainable at fairly constant cost by West and
West-Central Africa as a whole. In this sense, although economic and
social conditions in some societies near the coast may have been heavily
influenced by the export slave trade at this time, domestic factors seem to
have continued to hold sway over external forces in shaping the general
history of these regions in the first half of the eighteenth century. Trends in
slave prices and terms of trade suggest, however, that further increases in
slave exports after 1750 made disproportionately large claims on the
human and other resources of West and West-Central Africa. Indeed,
assuming that coastal prices of slaves broadly reflected the use of African
inputs in the production and marketing of them, the traffic in slaves to
America must have been one of the most dynamic influences on the
economies of these regions in the second half of the eighteenth century.
For advocates of ‘Afrique engagee’, the period before 1750 seems, on the

4 ’ On Africa’s position as a low-cost supplier of slaves in the late seventeenth century, see
Gemery and Hogendorn ( 1977).
 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
48 BULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
evidence of my slave price series, to be rather unpromising territory; the
period after 1750 is, however, a different story.

University of Hull

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 14678586, 1991, 1, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8586.1991.tb00484.x by University Of Glasgow, Wiley Online Library on [04/11/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST AND WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 49
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PRICES OF SLAVES IN WEST A N D WEST-CENTRAL AFRICA 51
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 APPENDIX wl
t3
Estimates of Prices for Slaves in Africa 1699 to 1807

1699 14.5 78.1 107 83.5 5.4 88.5 5.8 95.1

1700 21.1 129.2 100 129.2 6.1 100.0 6.1 100.0
1701 27.0 18.9 112.9 99 111.8 4.2 68.9 4.1 67.2 5.1 5.1
1702 18.2 18.5 64.3 102 65.6 3.5 57.4 3.6 59.0 5.2 5.0
1703 13.9 16.4 86.6 95 82.3 6.2 101.6 5.9 96.7 5 .O 4.8 F
1704 12.3 13.2 72.3 88 63.7 5.9 96.7 5.2 85.2 5.1 4.8 2
1705 10.7 12.1 56.4 100 56.4 5.3 86.9 5.3 86.9 5.7 5.3 2
1706 10.8 10.6 49.4 90 44.4 4.6 75.4 4.1 67.2 5.9 5.4 g
1707 12.6 10.2 82.7 89 73.7 6.6 108.2 5.8 95.1 5.8 5.5 m
1708 6.7 10.2 48.3 94 45.4 7.2 118.0 6.8 111.5 5.8 5.8 8
1709 10.4 10.0 54.3 104 56.5 5.2 85.2 5.4 88.5 6.0 6.1 3
1710 10.5 9.6 54.6 131 71.5 5.2 85.2 6.8 111.5 5.2 5.4
1711 9.9 13.9 56.4 98 55.3 5.7 93.4 5.6 91.8 5.0 5.2 3
1712 10.4 16.9 26.7 95 25.4 2.6 42.6 2.4 39.3 4.7 4.9 g
1713 28.3 20.7 173.5 95 164.7 6.1 100.0 5.8 95.1 4.1 4.0
1714 25.4 24.7 102.9 99 101.9 4.1 67.2 4.0 65.6 4.0 3.9 g
1715 29.3 27.7 64.4 96 61.9 2.2 36.1 2.1 34.4 4.8 4.6 o
1716 30.3 28.5 155.7 97 151.1 5.1 83.6 5.0 82.0 4.3 4.1 z
1717 25.4 28.8 159.7 94 150.2 6.3 103.3 5.9 96.7 4.4 4.2
1718 32.3 27.9 119.0 99 117.8 3.7 60.7 3.6 59.0 5.0 4.9
1719 26.5 26.8 124.8 96 119.8 4.7 77.0 4.5 73.8 5.1 4.9
1720 25.2 26.9 131.4 100 131.4 5.2 85.2 5.2 85.2 5.4 5.1
1721 24.6 25.7 138.5 96 132.9 5.6 91.8 5.4 88.5 5.8 5.5
1722 26.1 26.2 197.6 91 179.8 7.6 124.6 6.9 113.1 6.3 5.9
1723 26.2 29.9 159.8 89 142.3 6.1 100.0 5.4 88.5 6.5 6.0

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 1724 29.0 29.2 201.5 93 187.4 6.9 113.1 6.5 106.6 6.6 6.1
1725 43.7 28.1 269.2 97 261.2 6.2 101.6 6.0 98.4 6.2 5.7
1726 20.8 27.9 128.5 92 118.3 6.2 101.6 5.7 93.4 6.4 6.0
1727 20.7 27.9 115.8 92 106.6 5.6 91.8 5.2 85.2 6.5
1728 25.4 25.5 183.5 94 172.4 7.2 118.0 6.8 111.5 6.7
1729 28.8 26.5 216.5 91 196.9 7.5 123.0 6.8 111.5 6.9 6.2
::; 8g
1730 31.8 27.8 229.5 86 197.3 7.2 118.0 6.2 101.6 6.9 6.2
1731 26.0 26.7 176.8 90 159.2 6.8 111.5 6.1 100.0 6.2 5.4 $
1732 27.2 25.1 153.4 87 133.6 5.6 91.8 4.9 80.3 5.2 4.6 F
1733 19.6 22.9 70.8 87 61.6 3.6 59.0 3.1 50.8 4.7 4.1 2
1734 20.7 23.5 60.3 84 50.6 2.9 47.5 2.4 39.3 4.3 3.7
1735 21.1 24.1 97.0 81 78.5 4.6 75.4 3.7 60.7 4.4 3.7 9
1736 29.0 26.6 139.5 89 124.1 4.8 78.7 4.3 70.5 5.0 4.2
1737 29.9 27.8 178.3 85 151.5 6.0 98.4 5.1 83.6 5.7 4.8 2
1738 32.1 27.2 214.4 85 182.3 6.7 109.8 5.7 93.4 5.3 4.6 >
1739 26.8 24.9 172.7 85 146.7 6.4 104.9 5.5 90.2 5.4 4.7 3
1740 18.3 22.6 47.8 95 45.4 2.6 42.6 2.5 41.0 5.2 4.7 <
1741 17.4 20.6 88.9 97 86.2 5.1 83.6 5.0 82.0 5.5 5.0
1742 18.5 18.2 95.1 91 86.6 5.1 83.6 4.7 77.0 5.4 4.8
1743 22.2 16.8 186.8 86 160.6 8.4 137.7 7.2 118.0 5.9 5.3
2m
1744 14.7 16.6 81.2 87 70.7 5.5 90.2 4.8 78.7 6.O 5.4 p
1745 11.2 16.7 60.4 94 56.7 5.4 88.5 5.1 83.6 6.9 6.3
1746 16.2 17.7 92.2 89 82.1 5.7 93.4 5.1 83.6 6.8 6.3 r
1747 19.2 20.0 184.8 95 175.6 9.6 157.4 9.1 149.2 7.2 6.6
1748 27.4 21.8 216.1 93 20 1.o 7.9 129.5 7.3 119.7 7.4 6.7
1749 25.8 23.3 185.6 91 168.8 7.2 118.0 6.5 106.6 7.6 6.9 9
1750 20.4 24.7 131.8 85 112.0 6.5 106.6 5.5 90.2 7.3 6.4
1751 23.5 25.2 158.4 87 137.7 6.7 109.8 5.9 96.7 7.3 6.3
1752 26.2 26.1 2 10.0 85 178.5 8.0 131.1 6.8 111.5 7.3 6.3
1753 30.3 26.2 250.6 85 212.9 8.3 136.1 7.0 114.8 7.2 6.3 2

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 APPENDIX - contd

1754 29.9 26.2 208.4 88 183.4 7.0 114.8 6.1 100.0 7.2 6.3
1755 21.3 24.3 132.9 89 118.3 6.2 101.6 5.6 91.8 7.0 6.3
1756 23.3 23.2 148.4 92 136.5 6.4 104.9 5.9 96.7 6.4 5.8
1757 16.9 23.2 123.5 94 116.1 7.3 119.7 6.9 113.1 6.4 5.9
1758 24.6 26.3 123.9 96 118.9 5.0 82.0 4.8 78.7 6.8 6.3 $
1759 30.0 28.2 204.0 97 197.9 6.8 111.5 6.6 108.2 7.4 6.9
1760 36.8 31.1 306.2 91 278.8 8.3 136.1 7.6 124.6 7.5 7.0 9
1761 32.8 34.9 313.2 90 281.7 9.5 155.7 8.6 141.0 8.5 7.9 z
1762 31.1 37.6 242.6 92 223.2 7.8 127.9 7.2 118.0 9.1 8.5
1763 43.6 38.4 445.7 94 4 19.0 10.2 167.2 9.6 157.4 9.5 8.9 m
1764 43.9 39.1 425.3 97 4 12.3 9.7 159.0 9.4 154.1 10.0 9.5 8
1765 40.8 40.9 417.3 96 400.6 10.2 167.2 9.8 160.7 11.0 10.4
1766 36.3 39.6 444.5 93 4 13.4 12.2 200.0 11.4 186.9 11.9 11.1 p
1767 40.0 39.1 505.1 92 464.7 12.6 206.6 11.6 190.2 12.9 12.0 Fj
1768 37.2 39.5 545.1 92 501.4 14.7 24 1.O 13.5 22 1.3 13.2 12.3 $
1769 41.0 42.4 606.2 92 557.9 14.8 242.6 13.6 223.0 13.2 12.5 v,

1770 42.8 43.7 502.5 96 482.6 11.7 191.8 11.3 185.2 13.9 13.5
1771 51.2 45.5 615.0 103 633.6 12.0 196.7 12.4 203.3 13.6 13.5 0
1772 46.5 46.3 754.1 102 769.1 16.2 265.6 16.5 270.5 14.2 14.1 z
1773 46.1 46.4 619.7 101 625.8 13.4 219.7 13.6 223.0 15.2 15.3
1774 44.7 41.5 790.1 96 758.5 17.7 290.2 17.0 278.7 15.5 15.5
1775 43.5 35.3 718.9 102 733.4 16.5 270.5 16.9 277.0 15.1 15.2
1776 26.9 28.3 371.1 99 367.3 13.8 226.2 13.7 224.6 13.7 13.8
1777 15.3 21.0 218.2 106 231.3 14.3 234.4 15.1 247.5 13.4 13.8
1778 11.2 15.8 72.1 102 73.6 6.4 104.9 6.6 108.2 12.0 12.5
1779 7.9 14.8 125.2 106 132.7 15.8 259.0 16.8 275.4 11.8 12.4

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 1780 17.9 16.3 174.2 105 182.9 9.7 159.0 10.2 167.2 11.5 12.2
1781 21.8 23.1 276.4 106 292.9 12.7 208.2 13.4 2 19.7 13.4 14.6
1782 22.5 28.9 283.2 113 320.0 12.6 206.6 14.2 232.8 12.5 13.6
1783 45.4 33.1 740.2 111 821.3 16.3 267.2 18.1 296.7 13.3 14.5 'd
1784 36.8 38.2 404.8 109 44 1.2 11.0 180.3 12.0 196.7 14.0 15.3
1785 39.0 42.4 538.7 106 571.0 13.8 226.2 14.6 239.3 14.4 15.6 8
1786 47.2 40.9 771.0 106 817.3 16.3 267.2 17.3 283.6 14.5 15.7 v,
1787 43.8 40.3 627.4 111 696.6 14.3 234.4 15.9 260.7 15.7 17.1 2
1788 37.6 41.0 645.5 108 697.1 17.2 282.0 18.5 303.3 17.1 18.6 f
1789 33.9 41.2 572.2 112 641.0 16.9 277.0 18.9 309.8 17.0 18.7 <
1790 42.6 44.5 877.2 109 956.2 20.6 337.7 22.4 367.2 18.4 19.5
1791 47.9 41.3 776.3 108 838.3 16.2 265.6 17.5 286.9 17.4 18.2 'i:
1792 60.5 43.4 1,285.0 94 1,208.0 21.2 347.5 20.0 327.9 17.2 17.6 $
1793 21.7 40.1 264.2 101 266.8 12.2 200.0 12.3 201.6 15.8 16.2 2
1794 44.3 37.5 689.3 101 696.4 15.6 255.7 15.7 257.4 16.7 17.3 >
1795 26.3 32.3 363.6 112 407.1 13.8 226.2 15.5 254.1 16.7 18.0 $
1796 34.8 38.5 7 14.6 113 807.6 20.5 336.0 23.2 380.3 18.3 19.8 q
1797 34.6 39.8 745.8 109 812.8 21.6 354.1 23.5 385.2 20.0 22.4
1798 52.4 42.0 1,051.2 104 1,093.2 20.1 329.5 20.9 342.6 22.3 25.9 9
1799 50.8 43.3 1,227.0 119 1,460.3 24.2 396.7 28.7 470.5 22.6 26.8 @
1800 37.4 45.2 940.0 132 1,240.6 25.1 411.5 33.2 544.3 22.7 27.3 3
1801 41.4 40.4 911.5 125 1,139.5 22.0 360.7 27.5 450.8 23.8 29.3
1802 44.0 38.4 976.1 118 1,151.9 22.2 363.9 26.2 429.5 23.9 29.5 r
1803 28.3 37.2 725.0 121 877.2 25.6 419.7 31.0 508.2 24.5 29.8 $
1804 41.0 35.6 1,010.9 121 1,223.1 24.7 404.9 29.8 488.5 26.9 32.5 %
1805 31.4 31.5 884.7 123 1,088.6 28.2 462.3 34.7 568.9 27.3 33.2
1806 33.5 1,127.5 122 1,375.4 33.7 552.5 41.1 673.8
1807 23.2 567.5 120 680.9 24.5 401.6 29.3 480.3

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 (1) Estimated annual British slave exports from Africa (000s).
(2) Estimated British slave exports from Africa, five year moving averages (000s).
(3) Estimated annual British exports to Africa used to purchase slaves, official values ( € 0 0 0 ~ ) .
(4) Price index of British exports to Africa (1700 = 100).
(5) Estimated annual British exports to Africa used to purchase slaves, current prices (E000s).
(6) Estimated annual price (E) of slaves, constant prices.
(7) Price Index of Column 6,1700 =base 100.
(8) Estimated annual price (E) of slaves, current prices.
(9) Price Index of Column 8, 1700 =base 100.
(10) Estimated price (E) of slaves, five year moving averages, constant prices.
(11) Estimated price (E) of slaves, five year moving averages, current prices.

Notes:
(1) The figures on slave exports given in column (1)differ slightly from those reported in Richardson (1989a).The latter relates to slave exports
from the west coast of Africa whereas the figures given here also cover small numbers shipped from the east coast. In addition, figures on exports from
the west coast have been slightly revised following further refinement of the estimates of trade goods shipped to Africa via Madeira in 1713-30.
(2) All the data on British exports to Africa derive from PRO Customs 3 and 17, except for 1705 and 1712, where the data are from PRO BT6/
185, Sir Charles Whitworth, State of the Trade of England in its imports and exports from 1697 (London, 1776).

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