The Portuguese Slave Trade from Angola

Abstract

Ever since Philip Curtin's census of the Atlantic slave trade was published in I 969, historians have been preoccupied by attempts to quantify the slaves exported from Africa by various national carriers between I 500 and I 870 and the levels and patterns of slave mortality in the middle passage. Given the title of Miller's book, one might be forgiven for assuming that his lengthy study of the Angolan slave trade follows this established pattern, particularly since Miller himself has made important contributions in the past to quantifying this branch of the trade. A survey of the contents of the book soon undermines such an assumption, however, for although Miller provides a brief summary of slave exports from Angola (pp. 228-34) and the story of the slaves and the appalling levels of mortality they suffered during their terrible journey from the Angolan interior to the shores of Brazil figure prominently in his book, the reader will search in vain through its 770 pages for an integrated analysis of long-term trends in slave exports and other time series in the Portuguese slave trade from Angola. The relegation of the quantitative aspects of the trade to a supporting role in Miller's study reflects to some extent his scepticism about the available trade statistics, most of which derive from official tax records and are, he believes, too unreliable to permit 'the formal statistical and economic analysis that has informed much recent work on the Atlantic slave trade' (p. xvi). But it also arises from the fact that Miller's primary concern is not with the levels of trade per se, but with the principal actors in the business African rulers and lineage heads, Luso-African merchants and colonial officials based at Luanda, Brazilian shipowners, and Lisbon tax contractors, merchants and trading companies and how their attitude toward and involvement in it shaped its internal structure and organization. This is an ambitious and formidable undertaking, for not only did the roles and levels of participation in the trade of those associated with it vary over time, but the commercial, political and, ultimately, cultural and ideological worlds in which they operated differed greatly and changed significantly in the period that he covers. Moreover, the evidence available to Miller for assessing the perceptions and motives of the key players in the trade and how these shaped their behaviour and the trade's structure largely derives from the records of the colonial authorities, which, given their 'eloquent silences' (p. xxiii), are far from ideal for his purposes. By his own admission, important parts of his argument depend, therefore, upon inferences and interpretations drawn from slender and contentious evidence and assumptions, and can, and no doubt will, be the subject of criticism and revision. Nevertheless, in terms of the insights that it provides into the organization of the Portuguese slave trade, particularly at Luanda, and the general scope and range of issues that it confronts, this is unquestionably a notable addition to the literature on the Atlantic slave trade. Those familiar with Miller's previous work, most of which has centred on precolonial Angola and the pattern of slave shipments from the region, will be