The South Sea Company and the Slave Trade
Trade of such Places as we shall Seize and Plant, will, by Degrees . . . open such a Vein of Riches, will return such Wealth, as, in few Years, will make us more than sufficient Amends for the vast Expences.
-A True Account of the Design, and Advantages of the South-Sea Trade, 1711 [7]
In 1713, Queen Anne of England and King Philip V of Spain signed the Treaty of Utrecht, formalizing the end of Great Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. Under the Treaty, Spain gave Great Britain the asiento—a license to conduct the slave trade in the Spanish colonies in the New World. The contract went to the South Sea Company, which had previously been granted a trade monopoly with the Spanish colonies of South America in exchange for converting government debt into company shares.
An intensive propaganda campaign encouraging investors to buy shares in the South Sea Company promoted the promise of the South Sea trade. [8] “Speculators in the slave trade thought that this asset could only go up in value given that the Atlantic economy was centrally dependent on slave labor, and bought South Sea stock on the basis of this barbaric confidence,” historian Sean Moore writes. [9] In 1711, John Morphew, a prolific distributor of political pamphlets and periodicals, published A True Account of the Design, and Advantages of the South-Sea Trade, which foresaw vast wealth accruing to investors. [10] Morphew’s other publications included A View of the Coasts, Countrys, and Islands within the Limits of the South-Sea Company, by Herman Moll. Moll’s book, with an accompanying map, provided readers an overview of the history, geography, and opportunities for trade in the area. Richard Mount, the stationer to the South Sea Company, furnished further details on the possibilities for trade in An Essay on the Nature and Methods of Carrying on a Trade to the South-Sea, written in 1712 by Robert Allen. [11]
Parliament believed in the South Sea Company’s potential through the slave trade to increase England’s influence in South America and broaden the reach of the British Empire—noted in A True Account as “benefical [sic] to the said Corporation, and to the whole British nation.” [12] The British were now assuming the place of the French, who had been granted the asiento from 1701 to 1713. “The South Sea Company’s factories marked the first incorporation of subjects of the British monarch within the borders of the broader Spanish empire as important agents of trade,” Adrian Finucane writes in The Temptations of Trade: Britain, Spain, and the Struggle for Empire. [13]
Under the treaty, the asiento called for the annual transport of 4,800 enslaved persons from Africa for a period of thirty years to Spanish colonial sites in the New World, including Cartagena, Buenos Aires, Veracruz, Havana, Caracas, Portobelo, Santiago de Cuba, and additional trade ports. [14] Enslaved Africans constituted a significant workforce in Spanish holdings in the Americas, which included numerous gold and silver mines. The British brought with them linen, pewter, tin, pepper, amber, woolen and silk hose, and other goods of interest to Spaniards living in the Americas. “Over its entire trading lifetime, the [South Sea Company] forced nearly 42,000 people to leave the African coast. It disembarked almost 35,000 people meaning that just over 7,000 people died on the crossing,” economic historian Helen Paul writes. “Their bodies would have been thrown to the sharks. These facts are at odds with some of the contemporary satires and entertainments about the SSC, none of which deal with the horrors of the trade.” [15]
The South Sea Company worked with the Royal African Company (an English royal chartered company) and with independent traders. The Royal African Company had held a monopoly on the British slave trade until 1698, when the trade, then opened to independent traders, greatly expanded. The asiento required the South Sea Company to pay duties on the agreed-upon export of 4,800 slaves a year whether the quota was reached or not. Because the failure to meet this number and compulsory payment of duties could severely affect profits, the company had to rely on independent traders to ensure they did not fall short of the quota. The Royal Navy also assisted the company by lending ships and tracking down pirates. Much of the shipping activity in England took place in London on quays not far from Exchange Alley, where many financial transactions, including trading of stock, took place. Newspapers regularly reported on South Sea ships’ activity. The Stamford Mercury, for example, wrote in 1716 of the South Sea Company ship Wiltshire that “the 200 Negroes she took on Board at Guinea, sold at very good Prices.” [16]
On the long and grueling passage from Africa, captives suffered in extremely close quarters, where they were exposed to rampant disease and subject to violence. Ships from Africa arrived first in Jamaica, or in some cases in Barbados, where the South Sea Company conducted the administrative operations of the slave trade. In Jamaica, the company engaged in the brutal and dehumanizing practice of branding their captives with an “A.” [17] The brand made it possible for the South Sea Company to identify Africans who might have been transported by trade interlopers. “The A tagged African people not only as the property of the South Sea Company but also as property in the eyes of the company and all others engaged in such commerce,” historian Gregory O’Malley writes in Final Passages. [18]
From these ports of entry, the South Sea Company transported healthy captives to Spanish ports and on from there to settlements inland. Less healthy individuals were sometimes sold to traders locally. Many women and girls endured sexual exploitation. For enslaved individuals, O’Malley writes, “The company’s handling and sorting of people in Jamaica continued to convey . . . their captors’ dehumanized view of them. Fear, anger, and sadness were commonplace, as the meaning of traders’ choices were imagined or became known through conversations with experienced slaves working the waterfronts or holding pens.” [19]
British agents—or factors, as they were known—conducted their affairs in factories or trading centers that contained warehouses where captives and provisions were housed. At a given trading site, agents, including a surgeon and an accountant, administered the transport of slaves to ports and to interior parts of the Spanish colonies. Back in London, the directors of the South Sea Company kept in contact with factors regarding not only the business of the company but also their ability to maintain order and rule in the New World, where they were adjusting to a different climate, foreign languages, and diverse cultures.
Some Britons had voiced opinions against entering the slave trade—not on moral grounds but on the basis of the financial risks associated with the perceived inability of the South Sea Company and its agents to carry out their work. The company directors had little experience in the slave trade and had to draw on the expertise of established British traders in the Caribbean. At the same time, they had to contend with English, French, and Dutch interlopers who repeatedly violated the asiento contract. Many Spaniards, too, were not in favor of allowing a former rival power to operate within their territories and had concerns about losing a monopoly on trade in the Spanish colonies. They hoped to keep the population of British agents relatively small in order to mitigate their political and religious influence.
While the terms of the asiento required that the South Sea Company provide five-year accounts, the company routinely evaded this request in order to cover up its practices of illicit trading, which included the smuggling of contraband. Such practices were referenced in An Address to the Proprietors of the South-Sea Capital Containing a Discovery of the Illicit Trade and other publications. “The cost of compliance was too high; the benefits of cheating substantial,” Salvador Carmona, Rafael Donoso, and Stephen P. Walker write in “Accounting and International Relations: Britain, Spain and the Asiento Treaty.” [20]
After 1720, when the overinflated value of the South Sea Company stock fell dramatically, the company itself survived and maintained its involvement in the Spanish American colonies. The company would continue to experience the complexities of carrying out the slave trade with a foreign power and the conflicting and competing interests of independent traders, local South American authorities, and national governments. The asiento contract itself was disrupted during conflicts from 1718 to 1720 (War of Quadruple Alliance), 1727 to 1729 (Anglo-Spanish War), and 1739 to 1748 (War of Jenkins’ Ear), adding to the heightened tensions between the two countries. In 1750, the asiento granted to Great Britain by Spain came to an end. [21]
The debt-equity scheme and stock certificates of the South Sea Company counted on exploitation of a human asset—the labor carried out by enslaved persons. [22] From the start, Finucane notes, “The British saw an enticing opportunity to expand their own trade in slaves and manufactured goods and to exercise their considerable naval power; long before the moral debates about abolition became widespread, this seemed simply another opportunity for financial gain.” [23]
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