Traders, Planters and Slaves

The significance of slave prices

The overwhelming predominance of slaves in the labor force of the sugar islands of the West Indies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries makes information about levels and trends in slave prices of obvious importance for an understanding of the early economic history of this richest region of British America, and the role of the Royal African Company as the foremost supplier of slaves to the islands makes its records the best existing source of such information. This chapter provides annual estimates of slave prices in Barbados, the West Indies' largest market for slave imports during the early part of the period considered here, and the colony for which coverage of the company records is consequently best overall for the full span of decades covered. These prices can be used to illuminate a number of important issues in the economic history of the slave trade and of the growth of slavery elsewhere in colonial English America. Some of these issues will be explored in the latter sections of this chapter, and others will be treated in Chapters 4 and 5.

Estimation of slave prices

The major source of quantitative evidence used in this chapter is the homeward bound invoice account books of the Royal African Company. Specifically, the estimation of slave prices is based on the records of all sales conducted by company factors in Barbados that are included in the surviving volumes of these accounts.