Captive Passage - Departure
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Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Making of the Americas
Trading States
Items of Trade
Kongo
Benin

Captive Passage
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National Endowment for the Humanities
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DepartureDeparture from AfricaWest Africa Before Slaving
Contact Between Europeans and AfricaThe Enslavement of AfricansResistance and Endurance

Items of Trade

The king of a town sells whom he
dislikes, or fears; his wives and children
are sold in turn by his successor.

King Eyo Honesty II, 1850

When slave ships arrived on the African coast with goods to trade, ship captains usually offered gifts to local kings and merchants. In many cases they also paid a tax to gain the right to trade in that area. Most slavers from Europe and the Americas were not allowed to venture into the African interior to find captives, but rather left this part of the business to African middlemen.

Trade Items
Trade Items
Some items of trade were more valuable than others. Rum, or more precisely, a specially distilled variety of rum became their admission ticket to the exclusive European trading clique that had been serving the African market for a century. Sales of Rhode Island rum on the African Coast spurred the growth of the colony's only major industry, and eventually accounted for 35 percent of all rum retailed outside the colony. Rum served equally well as a drink, currency, or barter.

Like gold, rum achieved currency status on the coast. Not simply traded alone or in combination with other goods, rum became a standard by which other items were measured. Slave prices were commonly quoted in gallons, as were a dozen lesser products.


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