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Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830

by Joseph Calder Miller

University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
eISBN: 978-0-299-11563-0 | Cloth: 978-0-299-11560-9 | Paper: 978-0-299-11564-7
Library of Congress Classification HT1221.M55 1988
Dewey Decimal Classification 382.4409469

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This acclaimed history of Portuguese and Brazilian slaving in the southern Atlantic is now available in paperback.
With extraordinary skill, Joseph C. Miller explores the complex relationships among the separate economies of Africa, Europe, and the South Atlantic that collectively supported the slave trade. He places the grim history of the trade itself within the context of the rise of merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. Throughout, Miller illuminates the experiences of the slaves themselves, reconstructing what can be known of their sufferings at the hands of their buyers and sellers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Joseph C. Miller is T. Cary Johnson, Jr., Professor of History at the University of Virginia. His books include Kings and Kinsmen, Slavery and Slaving in World History, and The African Past Speaks.

REVIEWS

“A landmark study in the history of the Atlantic slave trade. It will be an essential reference for anyone who writes on the trade, from whatever perspective, for years to come. . . . This book is full of rich data, especially concerning the passage from the interior to the coast, the role of Luso-Africans and Europeans in Angolan port cities, and conditions on the ‘floating tombs’ that carried their deathly cargoes across the Atlantic.”—Phyllis M. Martin, African Economic History

“Way of Death . . . [opens] up in profuse detail and at considerable length the history of the Portuguese South Atlantic empire. . . . We meet African traders dependent on credit extended by Portuguese merchants supplying slaves to Brazilian shippers who were trying to become merchants on their own. And in the background is the shadowy . . . presence of English capital.”—Stuart B. Schwartz, New York Times Book Review

“Other scholars have attempted studies of this type, but no one approaches Miller in depth.”—John K. Thornton, International Journal of African Historical Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Maps

Tables and Figures

Translation of a Slave Inventory

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations Used in Notes

Part 1
Africa: Births and Deaths

Chapter 1
The People of Western Central Africa

Chapter 2
The Value of Material Goods and People in African Political Economies: An Interpretation

Chapter 3
Foreign Imports and Their Uses in the Political Economy of Western Central Africa

Chapter 4
The Production of People: Political Consolidation and the Release of Dependents for Export

Chapter 5
The Demography of Slaving

Part 2
Traders: On the Way

Chapter 6
Bridging the Gap: The Structure of the African Commercial and Transport Sector

Chapter 7
A History of Competition, Comparative Advantage, and Credit: The African Commercial and Transport Sector in the Eighteenth Century

Chapter 8
Casualties of Merchant Capital: The Luso-Africans in Angola

Chapter 9
The White Man's Grave: Expatriate Merchants in Luanda

Chapter 10
Floating Tombs: The Maritime Trade of the Brazilians

Chapter 11
Voyage of No Return: The Experience of Enslavement: Flight, Disease, and Death

Part 3
Brazil: The Last Stop

Chapter 12
Trading on the Fringes: The Rise of Brazilian Interests in the Southern Atlantic Slave Trade to the 1770s

Chapter 13
Toward the Center: Brazilian Investment in the Southern Atlantic Trade, ca. 1780–1810

Chapter 14
Back to Trading on the Fringes: Liberalism, Abolition, and the British in Brazil in the Nineteenth Century

Part 4
Portugal: Merchants of Death

Chapter 15
The Slave Duty Contracts in the Southern Atlantic, Before 1760

Chapter 16
“Freedom of Trade” in the Pombal Era, 1755–1772

Chapter 17
The Dry Well, 1772–1810

Chapter 18
Lisbon's Lost Colony, 1810–1830

Part 5
Conclusion

Chapter 19
The Economics of Mortality

Appendix A
Comparative Estimates of Basic Labor Rations

Appendix B
Estimate of Mortality among Slaves Awaiting Sale in the New World

Appendix C
Principal Authors of Documentation Cited

Glossary of Foreign Terms Used in the Text

Glossary of Portuguese Terms Used in the Notes

Works Cited

Index

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