Freedom's debt: the Royal African Company and the politics of the Atlantic slave trade, 1672 - 1752

"In the years following the Glorious Revolution, independent slave traders challenged the charter of the Royal African Company by asserting their natural rights as Britons to trade freely in enslaved Africans. In this comprehensive history of the rise and fall of the RAC, William A. Pettigrew grounds the transatlantic slave trade in politics, not economic forces, analyzing the ideological arguments of the RAC and its opponents in Parliament and in public debate. Ultimately, Pettigrew powerfully reasons that freedom became the rallying cry for those who wished to participate in the slave trade and therefore bolstered the expansion of the largest intercontinental forced migration in history. Unlike previous histories of the RAC, Pettigrew's study pursues the Company's story beyond the trade's complete deregulation in 1712 to its demise in 1752. Opening the trade led to its escalation, which provided a reliable supply of enslaved Africans to the mainland American colonies, thus playing a critical part in entrenching African slavery as the colonies' preferred solution to the American problem of labor supply"--

Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations and Tables -- PROLOGUE: "This African Monster" -- Part One. Deregulation, 1672-1712 -- ONE: The Politics of Slave-Trade Escalation, 1672-1712 -- TWO: The Interests: "A Well-Governed Army of Veteran Troops" versus "an Undefinable Heteroclite Body" of "Pirates" and "Buccaneers" -- THREE: The Ideas: Challenging the "Tales of . . . Mandevil" -- FOUR: The Strategies: "As Witches Do the Devil" -- Part Two. Re-regulation, 1712-1752 -- FIVE: The Outcomes: Tropical Burlesques -- SIX: The Legacies: Free to Enslave -- EPILOGUE: Confused Commemorations -- APPENDIX 1 Data Supplements for Annual Slave-Trading Voyages, 1672-1752 -- APPENDIX 2 A Directory of Independent Slave Traders, 1672-1712 -- APPENDIX 3 A Directory of Lobbying Independent Traders, 1678-1713 -- APPENDIX 4 A Directory of Royal African Company Directors, 1672-1750 -- APPENDIX 5 Africa Trade Petitions to Parliament on the Royal African Company's Monopoly, 1690-1752 -- Acknowledgments -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.