Development of the Slave-Trade in Europe
Portugal and Spain having demonstrated that the slave-trade was profitable, England also determined to engage in the traffic; and as early as 1530 William Hawkins, a merchant of Plymouth, visited the Guinea Coast and took away a few slaves. England really entered the field, however, with the voyage in 1562 of Captain John Hawkins, son of William, who in October of this year also went to the coast of Guinea. He had a fleet of three ships and one hundred men, and partly by the sword and partly by other means he took three hundred or more Negroes, whom he took to Santo Domingo and sold profitably.7 He was richly laden going homeward and some of his stores were seized by Spanish vessels. Hawkins made two other voyages, one in 1564, and another, with Drake, in 1567. On his second voyage he had four armed ships, the largest being the Jesus, a vessel of seven hundred tons, and a force of one hundred and seventy men. December and January (1564-5) he spent in picking up freight, and by sickness and fights with the Negroes he lost many of his men. Then at the end of January he set out for the West Indies. He was becalmed for twenty-one days, but he arrived at the Island of Dominica March 9. He traded along the Spanish coasts and on his return to England he touched at various points in the West Indies and sailed along the coast of Florida. On his third voyage he had five ships. He himself was again in command of the Jesus, while Drake was in charge of the Judith, a little vessel of fifty tons. He got together between four and five hundred Negroes and again went to Dominica. He had various adventures and at last was thrown by a storm on the coast of Mexico. Here after three days he was attacked by a Spanish fleet of twelve vessels, and all of his ships were destroyed except the Judith and another small vessel, the Minion, which was so crowded that one hundred men risked the dangers on land rather than go to sea with her. On this last voyage Hawkins and Drake had among their companions the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, who were then, like other young Elizabethans, seeking fame and fortune. It is noteworthy that in all that he did Hawkins seems to have had no sense of cruelty or wrong. He held religious services morning and evening, and in the spirit of the later Cromwell he enjoined upon his men to "serve God daily, love one another, preserve their victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company." Queen Elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of a Negro's head and bust with the arms securely bound.
France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and Denmark, and the rivalry soon became intense. England, with her usual aggressiveness, assumed a commanding position, and, much more than has commonly been supposed, the Navigation Ordinance of 1651 and the two wars with the Dutch in the seventeenth century had as their basis the struggle for supremacy in the slave-trade. The English trade proper began with the granting of rights to special companies, to one in 1618, to another in 1631, and in 1662 to the "Company of Royal Adventurers," rechartered in 1672 as the "Royal African Company," to which in 1687 was given the exclusive right to trade between the Gold Coast and the British colonies in America. James, Duke of York, was interested in this last company, and it agreed to supply the West Indies with three thousand slaves annually. In 1698, on account of the incessant clamor of English merchants, the trade was opened generally, and any vessel carrying the British flag was by act of Parliament permitted to engage in it on payment of a duty of 10 per cent on English goods exported to Africa. New England immediately engaged in the traffic, and vessels from Boston and Newport went forth to the Gold Coast laden with hogsheads of rum. In course of time there developed a three-cornered trade by which molasses was brought from the West Indies to New England, made into rum to be taken to Africa and exchanged for slaves, the slaves in turn being brought to the West Indies or the Southern colonies.8 A slave purchased for one hundred gallons of rum worth £10 brought from £20 to £50 when offered for sale in America.9 Newport soon had twenty-two still houses, and even these could not satisfy the demand. England regarded the slave-trade as of such importance that when in 1713 she accepted the Peace of Utrecht she insisted on having awarded to her for thirty years the exclusive right to transport slaves to the Spanish colonies in America. When in the course of the eighteenth century the trade became fully developed, scores of vessels went forth each year to engage in it; but just how many slaves were brought to the present United States and how many were taken to the West Indies or South America, it is impossible to say. In 1726 the three cities of London, Bristol, and Liverpool alone had 171 ships engaged in the traffic, and the profits were said to warrant a thousand more, though such a number was probably never reached so far as England alone was concerned.10