Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press) 1st Edition

by Gregory E. O'Malley (Author)

5 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1469615349

ISBN-10: 1469615347

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This work explores a neglected aspect of the forced migration of African laborers to the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of captive Africans continued their journeys after the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. Colonial merchants purchased and then transshipped many of these captives to other colonies for resale. Not only did this trade increase death rates and the social and cultural isolation of Africans; it also fed the expansion of British slavery and trafficking of captives to foreign empires, contributing to Britain's preeminence in the transatlantic slave trade by the mid-eighteenth century. The pursuit of profits from exploiting enslaved people as commodities facilitated exchanges across borders, loosening mercantile restrictions and expanding capitalist networks.

Drawing on a database of over seven thousand intercolonial slave trading voyages compiled from port records, newspapers, and merchant accounts, O'Malley identifies and quantifies the major routes of this intercolonial slave trade. He argues that such voyages were a crucial component in the development of slavery in the Caribbean and North America and that trade in the unfree led to experimentation with free trade between empires.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

An exceptional work that will surely encourage other historians to explore the extensive intra-American slave trade conducted by French, Dutch, Spanish, and American merchants.--Louisiana History

In this rigorously-argued and well-sourced volume, Gregory E. O'Malley establishes himself as being on the cutting edge of scholarship with regards to the complexities of the transatlantic slave trade.--American Historical Review

It is rare for a first book to make such an important contribution to a field of such depth and maturity as the study of the slave trade. Scholars will be working through the broader implications here for some time to come." --Journal of Early American History

Sure to be required reading for students and scholars of the slave trade. . . . The many strengths of the book are on full display as the text guides the reader through the complex machinations that drew slaves to busy colonial ports like Charleston and backwater colonies like North Carolina.--Canadian Journal of History

A useful book for any scholar who studies colonial British North America.--Business History Review

With the publication of Final Passages, the historiography of the intra-American slave trade has made a giant leap forward.--William and Mary Quarterly

A refreshing and authoritative history of the English slave trade.--Journal of American History

Groundbreaking...enhances the scope and complexity of our understanding of the slave trade.--New England Quarterly

Will be the definitive account of intercolonial slave trading for many years to come, and it is a major . . . contribution to our understanding of the politics and economics of slavery.--English Historical Review

Important scholarly insights to our collective understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and, more broadly, Atlantic slavery, continue to arrive with increasing frequency every year. Few, however, are as likely to provide such major quantitative contributions and qualitative insights as Greg O'Malley's exemplary first book, Final Passages.--Journal of British Studies

Review

Just when the idea was taking root that all perspectives on the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans had been explored, O'Malley has opened up an entirely new field. His focus on the intercolonial movement of imported Africans illustrates that where millions of Africans ended up living their enslavement had little relation to where they entered.--Sir Hilary Beckles, University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados

Hundreds of thousands of Africans faced a second slave voyage before they reached their ultimate destination - an experience that scholars have so far inexplicably ignored. Final Passages fills this large gap in the literature with meticulousness and eloquence. . . . The definitive work on the subject for many years to come.--David Eltis, Emory University

By taking up the traffic in human chattel after the Middle Passage, O'Malley fundamentally transforms our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences in the English Atlantic world. . . . A critical contribution to scholarship on the economics of the slave trade, and on the lived experience of its victims.--Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University

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Product details

Series: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (June 24, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1469615347
ISBN-13: 978-1469615349
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
Average Customer Review: 5 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,168,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in Dominica Caribbean & West Indies History
- #44 in Barbados Country History
- #159 in Jamaica Caribbean & West Indies History

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June 6, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Served the purpose of purchase.

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October 12, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

a book well worth reading

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The Middle Passage was just the beginning

October 23, 2014

Format: Hardcover

For many slaves the "Middle Passage" marked the beginning, not the end of their forced migration from Africa and their voyage into slavery. Gregory O'Malley provides the first, detailed exploration of the intercolonial slave trade, the trade that continued the process of enslavement and forced migration beyond the Middle Passage.

For many slaves, the Middle Passage ended with the arrival of their ship at a Caribbean entrepôt such as Jamaica or Barbados. Local plantation owners and merchant slave traders purchased slaves either at auction or from the transatlantic ship captain. Plantation owners tended to purchase healthy, male slaves in the prime of their lives. Slave traders often purchased the slaves the plantation owners didn’t want for transshipment to other North and South American ports, where the infrequency of slave ship arrivals made buyers less picky about the health, sex, and age of slaves. O’Malley focuses on this transshipment trade.

O’Malley sets out to prove five important points about the intercolonial slave trade:

1. The intercolonial slave trade was “robust” in scale.

2. The extensive scale of the intercolonial slave trade powerfully shaped enslaved people's experiences.

3. The intercolonial slave trade was not just incidental to the British transatlantic slave trade, but VITAL to its growth and to the growth of American slavery in general.

4. The intercolonial slave trade facilitated other branches of commerce, which entangled the profits of many traditional trades with the buying and selling of people.

5. The intercolonial slave trade influenced imperial policy. It pushed Great Britain, France, and Spain away from mercantilism and toward policies of free trade.

O'Malley takes on an ambitious project, but he argues all five points convincingly because he has the facts and figures to illustrate his points.

O’Malley relies on shipping records, the business papers of merchants, and state papers to prove his points. These matter-of-fact records reveal that the intercolonial slave trade was hemispheric in nature; it often began in the Caribbean and stretched to mainland North and South America. These documents also show that many British intercolonial slave traders used the slaves as a gateway commodity.

British manufacturers and merchants wanted to trade British goods in Spanish and French North American ports. As neither the French nor the Spanish could satiate their colonists’ demands for slaves, French and Spanish governors and customs officials often turned a blind eye when British ships entered their ports with slaves. Ports once closed to the British opened for slaves.

Rather quickly, British merchants learned that the more slaves they shipped to foreign ports, the more opportunities they had to trade British produce and manufactured goods. They filled ship holds with a minimum number of slaves needed to enter a foreign port and packed the rest of the holds with British manufactured goods and produce. Once ship captains disembarked their human cargo, they unloaded the rest of these goods.

O’Malley points out that the British desire to open ports to its goods resulted in the greatest horror of the intercolonial slave trade: African people became commodities. O’Malley provides ample evidence to argue this point. Business and state papers reflect that British intercolonial slave traders and the imperial government viewed Africans not as humans, but as commodities to be traded and used to open markets to British goods. However, I wish he had provided a bit more evidence to differentiate this mindset from that of the transatlantic slave traders.

This book is well-written and well-argued, but it is a dense read.

O’Malley did not have the luxury of having scores of slave narratives to tell him how Africans experienced their Middle or intercolonial passages. He does not ignore how they experienced the trade. He uses the scant personal and second-hand accounts he found, as well as the matter-of-fact business and legal records he uses throughout the book, to infer and make educated guesses about the slaves’ experiences. Unfortunately, without these first-hand accounts, there are no historical persons who readers can follow and live through vicariously throughout the book.

Although a dense read, I thought it was well-worth my time. O'Malley's work deepened my understanding of the slave trade, how and why slavery expanded throughout the western hemisphere, and why the slave trade lasted for over a century.

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must-read on the American end of the Atlantic slave trade

August 10, 2017

Format: Hardcover

O'Malley's mission is broader than the title reveals: this is a book about the inter-colonial slave trade in British North America and the Caribbean, but it is also a stunning synthesis of how the Atlantic slave trade actually worked, in terms of routes, national strategies for obtaining slaves and capitalizing on the slave trade, and lived experience. O'Malley points out early in the book that the Middle Passage was indeed, for many African captives, the middle passage of three, following a long journey from the interior of Africa to the shores of the Atlantic, and preceding transshipment from a Caribbean port of arrival to another port, or a long march or river journey inland from a mainland port. He has truly mined the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database--I haven't seen anything else quite like this. It will take me a while to digest all of what I read.

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

December 8, 2015

Format: Hardcover

Such a wonderful author. I had the pleasure to go to one of his talks. Someone truly invested in his work.

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