What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods
What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods
复制标题
非洲人为奴隶得到了什么：欧洲贸易商品总清单
作者：
Stanley B. Alpern
近几十年来，关于大西洋奴隶贸易的著作很多，包括购买的机制和条款，但关于非洲人从奴隶和其他出口品（如黄金和象牙）中获得的回报相对较少。然而，如果有人试图重建奴隶贸易时期西非几内亚海岸的物质文化，那么欧洲的巨大投入就不容忽视。书面证据包括数千份幸存的提单、货物清单、港口记录、航海日志、发票、结算单、贸易站库存、账簿、装运建议和非洲贸易商的订单。在奴隶贸易达到顶峰的18世纪，英国与非洲的贸易记录就包含了成千上万的事实。对所有可用数据的彻底分析需要配备计算机的研究小组的服务，并填写许多卷。我用一台便携式打字机（现在终于被WordPerfect抛弃了）和一个卡片文件夹，筛选了数百份出版的资料，多年来，我汇编了一份附有注释的总清单，列出了从葡萄牙时代到世纪中期在几内亚海岸部分地区出售的欧洲贸易商品。地理上的重点是从利比里亚到尼日利亚的海岸线;从那里离开去新大陆的奴隶比非洲海岸任何可比的延伸都要多。我称该地区为“夸兰”，因为几乎所有土著人民都属于夸语系。
A great deal has been written in recent decades about the Atlantic slave trade, including the mechanics and terms of purchase, but relatively little about what Africans received in return for the slaves and other exports such as gold and ivory. And yet, if one is trying to reconstruct the material culture of, say, the Guinea Coast of West Africa during the slave-trade period, the vast European input cannot be ignored. The written evidence consists of many thousands of surviving bills of lading, cargo manifests, port records, logbooks, invoices, quittances, trading-post inventories, account books, shipping recommendations, and orders from African traders. English customs records of commerce with Africa during the eighteenth century, when the slave trade peaked, alone contain hundreds of thousands of facts. A thorough analysis of all available data would call for the services of a research team equipped with computers, and fill many volumes. Using a portable typewriter (now finally abandoned for WordPerfect) and a card file, and sifting hundreds of published sources, I have over the years compiled an annotated master list of European trade goods sold on a portion of the Guinea Coast from Portuguese times to the mid-nineteenth century. The geographic focus is the shoreline from Liberia to Nigeria; from it more slaves left for the New World than from any comparable stretch of the African coast. I call the area “Kwaland” for the Kwa language family to which nearly all the indigenous peoples belong.
皇家非洲公司
DOI：
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
影响因子：
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作者：
William A Pettigrew
通讯作者：
William A Pettigrew