Slavery and Abolition

Vol. 29, No. 4, December 2008, pp. 477 – 501

The Atlantic Slave Trade to

Maranhão, 1680– 1846: Volume,
Routes and Organisation
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva

Maranhão has the best documented slave trade in all Portuguese America. However, it is
one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade. This article provides an assess-
ment of the volume, routes and organisation of the slave trade to Maranhão, in northern
Brazil. It shows that, although small in scale, the slave trade to Maranhão displayed
important features concerning the routes and organisation of the Atlantic slave trade.
Finally, because of the late European occupation and relative isolation, the slave trade
to Maranhão offers ideal conditions for observing the rise and fall of African slavery in
the New World.

Maranhão has the best documented slave trade of all Portuguese America, but, ironi-
cally, it remains one of the least studied branches of the Atlantic slave trade. Several
authors have recognised the region as an important place for studying the slave
trade and black slavery in general.1 In the context of Portuguese overseas expansion,
Maranhão offers an example of late European colonisation embedded in tropical
South America that became Brazil.2 Colonisation of Maranhão had begun by 1619,
after the Portuguese expelled the French from São Luı́s, an island off Maranhão’s
coast.3 The French had settled there to trade beads, mirrors and metal tools for
dyewood with the Tupinambá, the main indigenous people living in the area. Maran-
hão had a few good natural links with the interior. No rivers in the region penetrate as
far into the Brazilian interior as does the São Francisco River in northeast Brazil, or the
river system converging at Pará, connecting the Amazon Basin directly to the North
Atlantic. As a result, delayed occupation and relative isolation provides an opportunity
to observe the rise and fall of African slavery in Portuguese America at a relatively late
period, when better documentation survives.

Daniel B. Domingues da Silva is a PhD candidate at Emory University. Correspondence to: Daniel B. Domingues
da Silva, Department of History, Emory University, 221 Bowden Hall, 561 South Kilgo Circle, Atlanta, GA, 30322,
USA. Email: ddoming@emory.edu

ISSN 0144-039X print/1743-9523 online/08/040477– 25

DOI: 10.1080/01440390802486507 # 2008 Taylor & Francis
478 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Despite abundant documentation, no estimates of African slaves disembarking at
Maranhão exist. The most recent attempts offer numbers attributed to all northern
captaincies together.4 Estimates focusing on the region in particular are often chrono-
logically limited. The history of the slave trade to Maranhão falls into three well
defined time periods. The first covers the beginning of Portuguese colonisation in
1680 to the year 1755, when the Portuguese Crown granted a trade company a mon-
opoly over all maritime trade to Maranhão, including the slave trade. The second
embraces the years 1756 to 1777, during which time the Companhia Geral do
Grão-Pará e Maranhão (CGGPM) held the monopoly. Finally, the third period
begins with the end of the CGGPM’s monopoly in 1778 and runs until 1846, when
the last vessel disembarking slaves at Maranhão was recorded.5
An overall estimate such as this needs some prior discussion. The intent is to deter-
mine the volume of slaves disembarked at Maranhão, identify the major routes and
sources of slaves and, finally, explain the organisation of this slave traffic. The
region is especially interesting because it lies close to the intersection of two commer-
cial worlds: the North and South Atlantic, where two different slave trading systems
evolved in the Early Modern Era. Based on shipping data, Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade Database, to be published online by 2008, allows new estimates for the total
number of slaves disembarked at Maranhão as well as the identification of major
routes and sources of slaves.6 In addition, lists of merchants help reveal the organis-
ation of one of the most obscure slave trading regions of the Early Modern Era.

Volume
Assessments of the size of the slave trade necessarily begin with the pre-CGGPM
period. Before the CGGPM, Maranhão received slaves from individuals willing to
invest in the slave trade and from two other companies: the Companhia do Estanco
do Maranhão and the Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo Verde.7 Historians usually esti-
mate the volume of slaves disembarked at Maranhão in this period through contracts
signed by such companies and individuals. According to letters of privileges granted to
individual traders, the first slaves, numbering about 600, to arrive at the northern cap-
taincies of Brazil came in 1680. The secondary literature often mentions José Ardevi-
cus (or Hardevicus, or Erdovico) as an industrious slave trader. In 1680, he purchased
the right to introduce 350 slaves into Pará and 250 into Maranhão, and sell them at a
fixed price of 80,000 réis per slave. No reference exists as to whether José Ardevicus
executed his contract, but historians believe that he did indeed supply this number
and that these would constitute the first import of slaves direct from Africa.8 The
problem after this initial shipment is that some individuals were members of the
companies that held the monopoly over the slave trade to northern Brazil. As a result,
some scholars tended to double count some batches of slaves.
Table 1 shows the names of the individuals and the number of slaves each of them
undertook to deliver annually to Maranhão and Pará during the time of their contract.
Four individuals from Table 1 were members of trading companies undertaking to
provide Maranhão with slaves. Bezena, Baldez and Pascoal Pereira Jansen were
 Slavery and Abolition 479

Table 1 Number of Slaves Assigned to Contractors Delivered at Maranhão and Pará,

1676 – 1721
Years assigned Number of slaves assigned Contractors
1676–1682 – Bezena and Baldez
1680 600 José Ardevicus
1682–1701 500 Pascoal Pereira Jansen
1692 145 Gaspar de Andrade
1693 145 Gaspar de Andrade
1698 218 António Francisco de Ucanha
1702 200 António Francisco de Ucanha
1707–1708 200 João Monteiro de Azevedo
1718 150 Manuel de Almeida e Silva
1721 150 Diogo Moreno Franco

Sources: Lopes, A Escravatura, 137; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124.

shareholders of the Companhia do Estanco do Maranhão, founded in 1676 to provide

Maranhão and Pará with 10,000 slaves in twenty years, beginning in 1682, at a rate of
500 slaves per year.9 Edmundo Correia Lopes and Maurı́cio Goulart considered them
to be individual contractors, and not shareholders of companies, and, as a conse-
quence, double counted the number of slaves associated with their names.10
In 1684, the colonisers from São Luı́s rebelled against the Companhia do Estanco do
Maranhão because it had not brought a single slave to Maranhão.11 The rebellion, com-
monly known as the ‘Beckham Revolt’, was also triggered by new powers granted to the
Jesuits, who prevented the colonisers from enslaving Amerindians, and by the Jesuit’s
exemption from the company’s freight charges.12 In the following year, the company
was dissolved, but another company emerged. The Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo
Verde, founded in 1690, held the monopoly over the slave trade to Pará as well as to
Maranhão. Gaspar de Andrade was, among others, a shareholder of the company and
not just an individual contractor as shown in Table 1.13 This company intended to
supply slaves especially to the Spanish Americas, but it also embarked slaves to the north-
ern captaincies of Brazil. The company’s contract did not specify the number of slaves it
was expected to introduce into Maranhão and Pará, or indeed mention any formal obli-
gation to introduce slaves.14 However, the correspondence between the captaincies and
Portugal shows that the company was expected to deliver 145 slaves per year – half to
Maranhão and half to Pará.15 The company functioned until 1706, but the monopoly
over the slave trade of the northern captaincies of Brazil lasted only until 1696.
Apparently, the Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo Verde was more effective than the
previous company. No rebellion against it occurred, though generalised complaints
were frequent. The Voyages Database indicates only one voyage of the company
embarking slaves at Cabo Verde to Maranhão (1696).16 While data about slave arrivals
in Maranhão is lacking, fragmentary information suggests that the company did
deliver the number of slaves contracted between the years 1691 and 1696. In a letter
dated 19 March 1695, the Portuguese king renewed the contract of the company ‘con-
sidering this provision very useful to the inhabitants and convenient to continue, in
480 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
view of the benefits they achieved with the employment of these Negroes’.17 In the
same letter, the king encourages the shipment of slaves, in part because in the previous
year the company’s vessel sank while embarking slaves at Cabo Verde. António Car-
reira thought that the date of this letter was mistaken because the king referred to
an adjustment made in the contract in 1694. However, though the company was
founded in 1690 and held the monopoly over the slave trade, renewals or adjustments
in the contracts must have been common, as the king’s letter shows.18 Also Gaspar de
Andrade’s name appears twice in Table 1, and the number of slaves linked to his name
is exactly the same as the number of slaves the company was supposed to introduce
into Maranhão and Pará in 1692 and 1693.
The Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo Verde, which replaced the Companhia do
Estanco do Maranhão, introduced a smaller number of slaves. The contract of this
company provided it should bring about 73 slaves per year to Maranhão between
1691 and 1696, but according to the king’s letter, a shipwreck at Cabo Verde made
it impossible for the company to deliver the number of slaves assigned for the year
1694. Hence, instead of disembarking 438 slaves, the company must have delivered
about 365 slaves to the captaincy of Maranhão.
The years from 1696 until the establishment of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e
Maranhão in 1755 were dominated by individual traders. The monopoly from the
Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo Verde ceased in 1696 and, after that, the company basi-
cally abandoned the slave trade to Maranhão. This was partly because it had now bigger
interests, since in that same year the company won the asiento to supply ‘ten thousand
tons of slaves in pieces of India’ to the Spanish Americas.19 Did private traders attempt
to fill the gap left by the company’s switch of interest to the Spanish Americas? By 1695,
gold discoveries in the Brazilian interior increased the price of slaves in every port of
Portuguese America.20 In Maranhão, for instance, the price of an African slave
increased in 1695 from 55,000 réis to 130,000.21 Between 1703 and 1706, the prices
oscillated between 160,000 and 180,000 réis, but by 1718 it had risen sharply to
300,000 réis.22 However, the ports providing slaves to the gold mines were located
on the eastern coast of Brazil. According to observers at the beginning of the gold
rush, Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro were the main ports of entry for
African slaves sold to the mining districts of Minas Gerais and Goiás.23 Maranhão
lacked the rivers or roads leading to those areas, which put the region at a disadvantage
in the competition with other Brazilian ports for the slave markets of Africa. Even Pará,
the neighbouring captaincy to Maranhão, participated in this internal traffic. The river
system converging at Belém, the port of Pará, allowed traders to sell slaves as far south
as Goiás or Mato Grosso.24 Slave merchants were certainly interested in investing in the
slave trade to Brazil, but not particularly to Maranhão.
Quite apart from its lack of access to the new gold producing areas, Maranhão’s
economy also held back the captaincy’s involvement in the slave trade. Until the
mid-eighteenth century, cacao was the main crop exported from Maranhão. The
produce found only limited markets in Europe and its value was much lower than
other commodities such as sugar. As a consequence, African slavery was hardly feasible
in the region. Additionally, because at that time cacao grew in the wild rather than on
 Slavery and Abolition 481

plantations, colonisers often preferred indigenous over African labour in the collection
process – probably because Amerindians knew better where to search for cacao.
Indeed, the reliance of colonisers on Amerindian labour was always a potential
source of conflict between them, Crown officials and missionaries. Enslavement of
Amerindians was theoretically forbidden and the Jesuits were most vigilant in prevent-
ing Amerindian captivity.25 Hence, the captaincy’s economy itself also inhibited
Maranhão’s capacity for competing in the Atlantic slave trade.
Maranhão’s minor role in the slave trade made shipments of African slaves to the cap-
taincy somewhat sporadic between 1697 and 1755. The Voyages Database indicates that
a total of 1,413 slaves disembarked in Maranhão during this period.26 However, the
number must have been higher. Records of voyages are missing for individuals who
signed contracts after 1697. Table 1, for example, shows that four individuals undertook
to deliver slaves to the northern captaincies of Brazil in the years 1698, 1702, 1707–
1708, 1718 and 1721, none of which are listed in the database. Additionally, in 1706,
the Crown arranged to ship 200 slaves to Maranhão, of which only 87 appear to be
in the database.27 The contractors generally divided the slaves equally between Pará
and Maranhão.28 Thus, adding the number each individual should have delivered to
Maranhão to the number available in the database plus the Crown’s shipment, we
can conclude that about 2,000 slaves disembarked in Maranhão alone between 1697
and 1755; about 30 per cent more than the figure available in the database. This is cer-
tainly not a major upward adjustment, but it is significant given the context of the
region in the transatlantic slave trade. Adding José Ardevicus’ shipment of 250 slaves
in 1680, and the Companhia de Cachéu e Cabo Verde’s shipment of 365 slaves in the
years 1691–1693 and 1695–1696, we can say that approximately 2,613 African slaves
disembarked in Maranhão before the establishment of the famous Companhia Geral
do Grão-Pará e Maranhão (CGGPM) – that is, over 60 per cent more than the
number computed by the database for this period alone.29
Assessments of the volume of the traffic after the establishment of the CGGPM are
more straightforward than for the previous period. This is because from 1755 the Por-
tuguese minister, later known as the Marquis of Pombal, transformed Maranhão from a
forest-based to a cash-crop economy and generated abundant documentation in the
process. Rice emerged together with cotton as the main crops exported by the captaincy
in the mid-eighteenth century. They both required more manpower to cultivate the
land and process the commodities rather than the simple search for cacao in the Ama-
zonian forest. As this implies, they also found better markets in Europe. Thus, rice and
cotton made a large-scale Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão feasible for the first time.30
At present, the Voyages Database is the most complete source of shipping records on
the Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão. The foundational text on the slave traffic to the
captaincy is the study by António Carreira on the Portuguese trade companies
founded in the mid-eighteenth century.31 Carreira consulted and published the data
contained in the accounting books of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão,
in addition to other manuscripts and correspondence available in Portuguese archives.
Carreira’s work revised previous assessments and became the starting point for all
subsequent studies.32 The organisers of the slave trade database checked Carreira’s
482 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
assessment and added to his tables and appendices from documentation available in
other archives of the Atlantic Basin and from studies by other authors.33 Although
the database is more complete, the differences in the number of slaves disembarked
in Maranhão between Carreira’s work and the database are small. While Carreira
found 9,163 slaves disembarked in Maranhão between 1756 and 1777, the database
counts 9,884 – a difference of only about 7.3 per cent.34
The period following the end of the monopoly over the slave trade held by the Com-
panhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão saw free trade for all Portuguese subjects. The
CGGPM’s monopoly ended in 1778, but the company still kept trading in competition
with independent slave traders until 1788.35 Hence, part of the data contained in
Voyages still comes from the company’s records. However, because the company’s partici-
pation declined in the face of individual traders, other documentation is needed to
supplement the company’s records. Carreira’s numbers from this point on are not com-
plete. State bureaucracy, in contrast, became more efficient by the end of the eighteenth
century. The Governor’s Office of the captaincy prepared detailed reports about
Maranhão’s exports and imports. Lisbon began to receive tables with summaries about
slave arrivals containing the names of the vessels, rig, captain and owner names, port
of embarkation, number of slaves, sometimes specifying their sex, age and even the
price for which they were sold in São Luı́s.36 All these data are available in archives
throughout Europe, Brazil and Africa, and are now part of the database sources thanks
to the contributions of various researchers.37 Additionally, regulations to prevent the
spread of epidemiological diseases brought from Africa increased in all Portuguese cap-
taincies in Brazil from 1782.38 Thus, records from the quarantine station of São Luı́s
(Maranhão’s port) provide further documentation useful to Voyages.39 Finally, because
the slave trade was a commercial activity spread over a wide geographical area, the data-
base also relies on trading documentation, such as newspapers, customs taxes and trading
correspondences. From 1778 through to the beginning of the illegal slave trade in 1830, we
conclude that Voyages has close to a complete record of slaves arriving in Maranhão.
Perhaps, the weakest part of the database regarding the slave traffic to Maranhão is
for the era of the illegal slave trade. Maranhão certainly was one of the last regions in
Portuguese America to receive slaves from Africa, but it was also one of the earliest
regions to feel the impact of abolition. The British engaged in a campaign to suppress
the entire Atlantic slave trade after abolishing their own trading activities in 1807. The
Portuguese colonies in the New World felt the impact of this policy first when a treaty
in 1810 included a vaguely worded clause on the slave trade, which the British inter-
preted as permitting them to interfere with Portuguese slave ships. Subsequently, the
British negotiated a treaty with Portugal prohibiting the slave trade north of the
Equator in 1815.40 São Luı́s is situated just south of the Equator, but all transatlantic
vessels entering the port had necessarily to sail in the North Atlantic. As discussed
below, the wind and ocean currents leading to Maranhão and its main sources of
slaves were all located in the North Atlantic.
However, despite the possibilities of illegal disembarkations, the flow of illegal African
slaves to Maranhão must have been low. The captaincy was situated between richer
regions that were also involved in the North Atlantic slave trade, such as the Caribbean
 Slavery and Abolition 483

Islands, especially Cuba, and the captaincies of northeast Brazil, like Bahia or Pernam-
buco. Sugar colonies, in comparison to rice and cotton economies, were still rather
more attractive for slave smugglers.41 Furthermore, as the British tightened their suppres-
sive policies toward the Atlantic slave trade, Maranhão, and other minor ports, became in
fact sources of slaves for major ports in Brazil, such as Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, this process
receives more attention in the period after 1850, following the abolition of the transatlan-
tic slave trade, but an internal ocean-borne traffic began much earlier for some of the
Brazilian regions trading in the North Atlantic.42 The scale of this export trade is hard
to determine, but it must have been significant, since the slave population of Maranhão
declined sharply in the years following 1815 from about 133,332 in 1819 to 97,132 in
1823.43 Given the fact that at the time Brazil was not emancipating significant
numbers of slaves and no reports of disease outbreaks have been recorded, this decline
may be attributed to negative rates of natural increase among the slave population as
well as to the slave traffic from Maranhão.44 Slave imports into Maranhão increased
again in the late 1830s as a response to the extension of British efforts to suppress the
slave trade into the South Atlantic. Nevertheless, the slave population of Maranhão
continued to decrease down to 1888, when Brazil abolished slavery.45 Contraband of
slaves to Maranhão was unlikely to have been extensive or even significant.46
Figure 1 tracks the evolution of the Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão between 1680
and 1846 according to our preferred estimates. It shows that the slave trade to Maran-
hão began in the late seventeenth century, probably as a speculative activity. Merchants
invested into the slave trade individually or grouped in companies whenever the
occasion seemed favourable or the Crown sanctioned special privileges. Maranhão
lacked the resources to maintain a constant inflow of African slaves before the

Figure 1. Estimated Evolution of the Atlantic Slave Trade to Maranhão, 1680 – 1846.
Source: Appendix A.
484 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
mid-eighteenth century. Between 1680 and 1755, only about 2,613 slaves disembarked
at São Luı́s, or an annual average of 34 slaves. The slave trade to Maranhão became a
continuous enterprise only after the establishment of the Companhia Geral do Grão-
Pará e Maranhão (CGGPM) in the mid-eighteenth century. During the CGGPM’s
monopoly, the shipping records from Voyages count 9,884 slaves as disembarked
between 1756 and 1777, but, in comparison to Carreira’s tables, the database
numbers seem to be incomplete for the years 1767 and 1777. The company’s shipping
records, from which Voyages drew most of its data for this period, missed some
voyages. Carreira alerted us to this fact in his work and managed to recover part of
them from other documents.47 Hence, replacing the estimates from the database
with those of Carreira for the two years (1767 and 1777), the number of slaves disem-
barked in Maranhão increases to 10,391 during the period of the company’s
monopoly; or 472 per year on average between 1756 and 1777.
In the following period, the database again offers the most complete numbers, but,
as previously noted in the years prior to 1778, some years need to be replaced with
more complete numbers from other sources. In the eighteenth century, such years
are related to the ending of the company’s monopoly. Edmundo Correia Lopes,
António Carreira and Colin MacLachlan recovered part of these numbers from
reports produced by the Governor’s Office in Maranhão, shown here in Appendix B.
The numbers they provide for the years 1778–1780, 1782, 1784–1785, 1788–1789,
1791–1796 and the year 1800, in particular, are more complete than those available
from the database and replace the latter. Slave totals arriving in Maranhão for the
remaining years of the eighteenth century were all drawn from Voyages.
In the nineteenth century, the annual totals for Maranhão in the database are pre-
ferred because all other sources are considered either incomplete or unreliable (see
Appendix C). The literature mostly offers numbers for slaves exported from Angola
to Maranhão, rather than arrivals in Maranhão. Edmundo Correia Lopes, Maurı́cio
Goulart, Manuel dos Anjos da Silva Rebelo and Joseph C. Miller have all accessed basi-
cally the same sources, but they have interpreted them differently. Without explaining
his assumption, Goulart appears to have accepted slave exports from Angola to Mar-
anhão as arrivals in the captaincy. In 1975, Miller accepted Goulart’s assumption, but
compounded the latter’s error by adding an allowance for mortality between Angola
and Rio de Janeiro. In 1989, Miller recognised Goulart’s figures for what they really
were: exports from Angola. In addition, Miller pointed out that Goulart’s numbers
were not just for Maranhão, but for other Brazilian areas as well, such as Ceará,
Piauı́, Rio Grande do Sul and Rio Grande do Norte. This observation certainly
applies to the numbers provided by Lopes and Rebelo. The only number Miller
offered that seemed to be for Maranhão alone is for the year 1820, but, as other
authors have not mentioned it, the Voyages based total was preferred over Miller’s.
In sum, the estimates for the years shown in Appendix C were all drawn from the ship-
ping records available in the database.
Thus, between the ending of the CGGPM’s monopoly in 1778 to the arrival of the last
vessel recorded disembarking slaves at Maranhão in 1846, about 87,521 slaves landed in
the captaincy, or an average of 1,268 per year. In total, Maranhão must have received
 Slavery and Abolition 485

approximately 100,525 slaves from Africa between 1680 and 1846. Although the final
estimate outlined here sought always for the most complete numbers, it still may
be lower than the actual figure, given the uncertain nature of the slave trade to the
captaincy before 1755. Appendix A provides the data for Figure 1. Appendices B and C
provide a comparison between the figures offered by Voyages and data found in
earlier studies (Appendix B before 1800, and Appendix C for the nineteenth century).

Routes
It was not just the volume and lateness of the slave trade to Maranhão that separated
the latter from other branches of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil. In fact, the slave
traffic to Maranhão presents a pattern more similar to slave trading regions in the
North Atlantic than to those in Portuguese America. Basically, two reasons explain
why this pattern was so different to the Luso-Brazilian slave trade. First the wind
and ocean currents circulating in the North Atlantic and, second, the African
sources of slaves for the northern captaincies of Brazil were mostly situated in the
North Atlantic, far removed from the southerly regions that supplied the rest of Brazil.
Figure 2 shows in schematic perspective the wind and ocean currents circulating in the
North and South Atlantic. In the North Atlantic the wind and ocean currents are clock-
wise oriented, while in the South they move in an anti-clockwise direction. Vessels depart-
ing to Maranhão from ports at Senegambia, like Bissau or Cachéu, needed only to sail
towards the southern part of the North Atlantic until reaching the currents circulating
from east to west just a few degrees north of the Equator. By contrast, vessels leaving
from any spot in the South Atlantic for Maranhão would sail into the doldrums, delaying
the voyage for long periods in the calm waters either side of the Equator.
All ports in Brazil, except for Bahia and to a lesser extent Pernambuco, where the
region’s tobacco dominated the slave markets at Costa da Mina, embarked most of
their slaves at African markets in the South Atlantic.48 However, slaves shipped to
the northern captaincies of Brazil embarked mostly at ports situated in the North
Atlantic. Table 2 shows the percentages of slaves disembarking in São Luı́s by
African region of origin in the three periods of the slave trade to Maranhão. The
Voyages Database provides information on the African origins of about 87.7 per
cent of the total slaves estimated above. The data are better following the CGGPM’s
establishment, but grouped by different periods it shows how Maranhão was con-
nected to a different slave trading system than the rest of the Portuguese America.
The ports located at Senegambia, on the Upper Guinea coast, were the main slave sup-
pliers to Maranhão over the centuries, especially Bissau (39.8 per cent) and Cachéu
(21.9 per cent), but Maranhão also received slaves from Sierra Leone, Cape Verde
and other ports of the Upper Guinea coast. Costa da Mina was for Portuguese and
Brazilian slave traders a wide coastline stretching roughly from Cape Palmas, which
marks the border between present day Liberia and the Côte d’Ivoire, to Cape Lopez, in
Gabon. The dominant slave trading ports in this broad area, however, were mostly
in the Bight of Benin, which began providing slaves to Brazil in the late seventeenth
486 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva

Figure 2. North and South Atlantic in Perspective.

Sources: Adapted from Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 307; Alencastro, O Trato dos
Viventes, 62.

century, increasing the region’s share in the Brazilian slave trade especially after the
king of Dahomey captured Ouidah in 1727.49
When the CGGPM was established, the slave trade to Maranhão continued to draw
from Senegambia, but changed its secondary source from Costa da Mina to Angola, in
West-Central Africa. Luanda alone provided about 21.5 per cent of all slaves disembarked
in Maranhão. Much of this increase in West-Central African exports came after 1815, with
the British attempt to suppress the slave traffic north of the Equator. Some years earlier,
possibly as a result of the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, South-East Africa also
emerged as an alternative African source for Maranhão. Thus, the North Atlantic supre-
macy in the slave traffic to Maranhão declined only after British attempts to abolish the
Atlantic slave trade. In other words, Maranhão belonged to a slave trading system more
 Slavery and Abolition 487

Table 2 Percentages of Slaves Disembarked at Maranhão by African Coastal Regions of

Origin, 1680 – 1846
Coastal regions of origin

Periods Years Upper Guinea Costa da Mina WC Africa SE Africa

Pre-CGGPM 1680– 1755 61.5 38.5 0.0 0.0
CGGPM 1756– 1777 89.5 0.0 10.5 0.0
Free-trade era 1778– 1792 74.5 3.9 21.6 0.0
1793– 1807 68.0 2.9 27.6 1.5
1808– 1822 56.6 1.4 39.5 2.5
1823– 1837 23.0 0.0 77.0 0.0
1838– 1846 41.0 37.8 21.2 0.0
1778– 1846 60.9 3.4 34.4 1.3
All years 64.0 3.7 31.1 1.2

Source: Calculated from Eltis et al., Voyages.

similar to ports in the Caribbean Islands or North America than to ports in the Portu-
guese America. This distinctive feature and the reasons for it, as well as the shifts in
African provenance over time, have been poorly understood by scholars.
The fact that Maranhão imported the overall majority of slaves from the Upper
Guinea coast suggests that there was an Upper Guinea character to the region’s slave
population. Recently, this character has been sought mostly in cultural terms. As Mar-
anhão was a major exporter of rice in Brazil, some scholars argue that the majority of the
slaves imported in Maranhão came from the Upper Guinea because Africans from that
region in particular were long familiar with rice cultivation.50 They produced a type of
rice known as ‘Oryza glaberrima’, which has not as yet been identified in Maranhão.51
Nevertheless, stories about slave women disembarking with rice hidden in their hair cir-
culated among many people of African descent in the region. The northern captaincies
of Brazil had a native type of rice called ‘arroz de veneza’, which had a reddish color,
perhaps similar to the African variety, but they exported a different type of rice, intro-
duced in the region from the British Carolinas, on the American mainland, during the
monopoly of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão.52 Although the type of
rice produced in Upper Guinea has not been found in Maranhão, there remains the
possibility that the Portuguese colonisers displayed some preferences for slaves from
Upper Guinea because of their familiarity with rice cultivation. However, Table 2
shows that Maranhão imported Africans from Upper Guinea even before the establish-
ment of the CGGPM’s monopoly and, therefore, the introduction of Carolinas’ rice as
well. Hence, the larger proportion of slaves arriving from Upper Guinea in Maranhão
must be connected mostly to the patterns of navigation in the North Atlantic rather
than the colonisers’ preferences for manpower alone.

Organisation
One further unusual characteristic of the Maranhão trade also stems from the wind and
ocean patterns just described. In sharp contrast to the rest of Brazil, the organisational
488 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
base for the voyages supplying slaves to Maranhão was also situated at the North Atlantic
Ocean. Table 3 shows the distribution of slave arrivals in Maranhão across the ports of
departure of the vessels carrying those slaves. The sample size is large, covering over 75
per cent of all slaves arriving, and it clearly establishes that the operational base for the
slave trade to Maranhão was located in Europe. During all three periods of the slave
trade to Maranhão, Lisbon was the major port of departure for ships carrying slaves
into Maranhão. Never less than 65 per cent of the slaves disembarked in the captaincy
sailed in vessels beginning their slaving venture in Lisbon. Such a percentage shows
that the slave trade to Maranhão worked on a triangular basis, with voyages leaving
Europe, embarking slaves in Africa, sailing across the ocean, disembarking them at Mar-
anhão and finally returning to Europe. Most Brazilian ports, on the other hand, operated
on a bilateral system, with voyages beginning in the New World, embarking slaves in
Africa and returning to the New World port from which they had set out. Therefore,
the slave trade to Maranhão had a structure similar to the slave trade to the Caribbean
Islands and the North American mainland.
However, while Lisbon was clearly the major port of departure of vessels delivering
slaves to Maranhão, there is the possibility that the people sponsoring such ventures
might not have resided there. Here, too, Voyages can throw light on an issue hitherto
unexplored. As in other regions, the slave trade to Maranhão had a high degree of con-
centration of ownership. Before 1778, individuals or companies held the monopoly
over either the entire maritime trade to Maranhão or at least the slave trade part of
it. Even after the CGGPM’s monopoly ended, the slave trade to Maranhão continued
as a highly concentrated business. In this period, the database has details of 314
voyages, but only 174 of these include the name of the owners (55.4 per cent).
Some 90 individuals or companies can be identified.53 The names of these individuals
and the number of voyages they sponsored can be found in Appendix D. This sample,
however, shows that only 14 owners of slave ventures were responsible for organising
almost half of the voyages (48.9 per cent).

Table 3 Slaves Disembarked at Maranhão Distributed by Ports of Departure of the

Vessels that Carried Them, 1680 – 1846
Periods (years) Port of departure Percentage of slaves disembarked
Pre-CGGPM (1680– 1755) Lisbon 70.3
Bahia 29.7
CGGPM (1756 –1777) Lisbon 100.0
Free-trade era (1778 –1846) Lisbon 66.7
Pernambuco 9.6
Rio de Janeiro 8.6
Maranhão 7.4
Bahia 5.3
Cape Verde 1.9
Havana 0.3
São Tomé & Prı́ncipe 0.1

Source: Calculated from Eltis et al., Voyages.

 Slavery and Abolition 489

In other words, between 1778 and 1846, about half of the slave voyages to Maranhão
were organised by a relatively few individuals. Until 1787, when the CGGPM perma-
nently retreated from the business, these individuals resided mostly in Lisbon, where
they were major merchants. However, after that year their names disappeared from the
records of the slave trade to Maranhão. Nevertheless, Lisbon still remained the major
departure point for vessels carrying most of the slaves disembarking in Maranhão.
Between 1788 and 1815, about 82 per cent of all slaves arriving in Maranhão embarked
on vessels that had departed from Lisbon.54 However, only three slave traders in the
database have their names listed in Lisbon’s rolls of great merchants.55 Between
1790 and 1822, Bernard Clamouse appears in seven records of the database, according
to which he was the sole sponsor of five of the seven. António Xavier and José Nunes
da Silveira were also among the major merchants of Lisbon. Xavier financed three
voyages, while Silveira shared a voyage with other slave traders. We do not yet know
the place of residence of most investors in the late Maranhão slave trade, but the
fact that so few of the names of owners can be identified as Lisbon merchants is
probably significant.
Despite operating on a triangular basis even after the CGGPM’s monopoly ended,
the participation of Lisbon’s merchants in the slave trade to Maranhão likely declined.
Probably, merchants residing in São Luı́s or other Brazilian ports increasingly assumed
control over the shipment of African slaves to Maranhão. This would have been
especially the case after 1815, when the number of slaves transported from Africa to
Maranhão by vessels originating from such ports increased significantly.56 It is import-
ant to note, however, that there was a shift that paralleled this change. Maranhão’s
sources of slaves in Africa were also changing during the free-trade era. As merchants
residing outside Lisbon assumed control over the shipment of slaves to Maranhão, the
role of Upper Guinea as the region’s major source of slaves declined over the years (see
Table 2). During the 1820s and 1830s, Maranhão was very much integrated into the
South Atlantic slave trading system. Although the wind and sea currents of this
portion of the ocean did not favour the slave trade to Maranhão, the credit lines of
the merchants conducting such ventures, which generally included extensive use of
agents, commissioners and familial resources, must have outweighed navigational
barriers to bring about this shift. If they indeed resided in Pernambuco or Rio de
Janeiro, as we may infer from Table 3, this could explain the shift in the African
sources of slaves to West-Central Africa, since both regions entertained long traditions
of slave trading in that region.57 The exception, of course, were the illegal years of the
Brazilian slave trade after 1830, in which the Upper Guinea coast regained its position
as the major exporter of slaves to Maranhão, providing an easier access to the region
than any other part of the African coast.

Conclusion
The slave trade to Maranhão was not a large branch of the Atlantic slave trade. The size
of the traffic estimated here represents, perhaps, a tenth of all slaves disembarked in
Bahia or, approximately, a fourth of all slaves disembarked in the United States directly
490 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
from Africa. It amounts to about the same total of slaves disembarked in the Dutch
Caribbean or transported by Scandinavian and German vessels together to the Carib-
bean over a longer period of time; the bulk of the slaves disembarking in Maranhão
arriving in just over ninety years, roughly.
In summary, the slave trade to Maranhão began late in the seventeenth century as an
activity initiated by individuals and companies in Europe, but the lack of an important
staple and the discovery of gold mines in the Brazilian interior, the labour for which
could be supplied by other ports, made it sporadic until the mid-eighteenth century.
By then, the cultivation of rice and cotton for export and the establishment of the
Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão encouraged a steady inflow of African
slaves. Slave arrivals increased after the monopoly of the company ended in 1778,
but some aspects of the structure of the slave trade to Maranhão remained the
same. Lisbon continued as the major port of departure for slaves disembarking at
São Luı́s, and the major route of Maranhão’s slave trade remained triangular with
voyages departing from Europe, calling at Africa and disembarking slaves in the
New World. Essentially, the forces shaping this system were the wind and ocean cur-
rents of the North Atlantic and the slave markets situated on the West African coast.
European products might have been more in demand in Senegambia than in slave
ports at Costa da Mina, dominated by Bahian tobacco, or the South Atlantic, where
sugar-rum was a major trade commodity.
Changes in the structure of the slave trade to Maranhão emerged when the suppression
of the Atlantic slave trade became a real possibility. As a response, alternative markets in
Africa opened for the slave trade to Maranhão, which forced it to devolve from a North
Atlantic based system into a South Atlantic one. Maranhão existed at the intersection of
two trading worlds, but the transition from one to the other was never really completely
realised. The free-trade era might have allowed time for resident traders in Brazil to real-
locate resources and adjust, but when the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade reached
the southern portion of the ocean, Maranhão’s participation in the Atlantic traffic soon
faded away in face of competition offered by ports in Brazil and the Caribbean.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Mrs Suzan Eltis for her help in reviewing my English and the
readers of Slavery and Abolition for their comments on the earlier draft of this article.
All interpretations and conclusions reached here are, of course, my responsibility.
I dedicate this article to my grandfather Alvaro Domingues da Silva, a Maranhense.

Notes
[1] See, e.g., Lopes, A Escravatura, 140; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 112.
[2] I derived this idea from Meredith John’s work The Plantation Slaves of Trinidad, 1783 –1816: A
Mathematical and Demographic Enquiry, where Trinidad presents a similar example, but in the
British sphere. I would like to thank Dr David Eltis and Dr Paul Lachance for bringing this work
to my attention.
 Slavery and Abolition 491

[3] The Portuguese had attempted to settle at Maranhão in 1534, but without success (see
Hemming, Red Gold, 198 –216; Gomes, O Índio na História, 113– 138).
[4] Eltis, ‘Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, Table 3.
[5] Estimates for select periods, especially for the era of the company rule, are more abundant. For
the pre-CGGPM period, see Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de
Navegação, 18 –23; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 123– 125. During the CGGPM period,
the major references are: Mendes da Cunha Saraiva, ‘As Companhias Gerais de Comércio e Nave-
gação para o Brasil’; Lopes, A Escravatura, 137–138; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de
Navegação, 31 –190; Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 459–498; MacLachlan, ‘African Slave
Trade and Economic Development’, 112 –145; Mettas, ‘La Traite Portugaise’. Finally, concerning
the period after the CGGPM, see Lopes, A Escravatura, 139–140; Goulart, Escravidão Africana
no Brasil, 269 –272; Curtin, Atlantic Slave Trade, 208, 240; Rebelo, Relações entre Angola e Brasil,
Table 2; Miller, ‘Legal Portuguese Slaving from Angola’, 135– 176; Miller, ‘Numbers, Origins and
Destinations of Slaves’; Eltis, ‘Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’.
[6] Eltis et al., Voyages. Voyages refers to the forthcoming second edition. Authors of the first
edition were David Eltis, David Richardson, Stephen Behrendt and Herbert Klein (see Eltis
et al., Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade). While overall the Voyages database is still incomplete, the
material on Maranhão to which I have contributed is not likely to change prior to publication.
[7] Lopes calls the individual investors ‘asientistas’, as the holders of the contract to supply slaves to
the Spanish America. Maurı́cio Goulart disagrees with calling them asientistas, because the size
of the slave trade the Portuguese merchants planned to Maranhão was incomparably small (see
Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 125).
[8] See Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124–125; Carreira, As
Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 20; MacLachlan, ‘African Slave Trade and Economic
Development’, Note 4; Salvador, Os Magnatas do Tráfico Negreiro, 56, 103, 172.
[9] The names were cross-listed with the names available in Carreira’s work (see Carreira, As
Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 18). Bezena e Baldez were actually António de Barros
Bezerra and Manuel Preto Valdez. The company was called Companhia de Cachéu, Rios e
Comércio da Guiné in 1676. In 1682, it became Companhia do Estanco do Maranhão.
[10] Lopes, A Escravatura, 136; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124–125.
[11] Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 124.
[12] Alden, ‘Indian versus Black Slavery’, 102.
[13] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19.
[14] The only obligation stated was that the company should never sell slaves to heretics. Carreira
transcribed the contract of the company (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação,
305 –308) – see article 3.
[15] Carreira commented and transcribed excerpts of the letters in the text (Carreira, As Compan-
hias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19 –29).
[16] Voyage id number 41226. The name of the company in this voyage appears as Companhia da
Guiné.
[17] ‘[N]a consederação de ser mui útil este provimento para esses moradores e conveniente o
continuar-se a respeito do grande benefı́cio que lograrão como serviço destes negros’ (Carreira,
As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 22).
[18] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 22, Note. 22.
[19] ‘[D]iez mil toneladas, estimadas cada una de ellas en tres pieças de India de la medida regular
de 7 quartas, nó siendo viejos ni con deffectos . . . à razon de ciento y doze pesos y medios por
cada tonelada de escravo’ (Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 19, 23).
[20] Boxer, Golden Age of Brazil, 35. MacLachlan seems to disregard the influences of the gold dis-
covery in the prices of slaves in the Amazon captaincies (see MacLachlan, ‘African Slave Trade
and Economic Development’, 115 –116).
[21] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 29.
492 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
[22] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 29; Alden, ‘Indian versus Black Slavery’,
94 –95.
[23] See, e.g., Antonil, Cultura e Opulência do Brasil, 184–186; Parscau, ‘A invasão francesa de 1711’,
135.
[24] Karasch, ‘Central Africans in Central Brazil’, 124–129.
[25] Alden, ‘Indian versus Black Slavery’, 113. See the entire text for the problems related to indigen-
ous versus black slavery in Maranhão.
[26] Calculated from the variable SLAMIMP (imputed number of slaves disembarked).
[27] The number of slaves (200) was broken down in smaller shipments (see Alden, ‘Indian versus
Black Slavery’, 105, Note 53). E.g., only 87 slaves were dispatched by 1709 (see voyage id
number 41229 in the database and Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Maranhão, box 12, docu-
ment 1247). I considered only 113 slaves in 1706.
[28] Especially after the Crown ordered the shipment of slaves to Maranhão and Pará be divided
equally in the beginning of the eighteenth century (see MacLachlan, ‘African Slave Trade and
Economic Development’, 117).
[29] Dias’ assertion that there was no African slavery in the captaincies of Maranhão and Pará before
the establishment of the Companhia Geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão was a mistake (see Dias,
Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 461).
[30] Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 149 –206, 397–458.
[31] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação.
[32] The works revised by Carreira were mainly by Cunha Saraiva (‘As Companhias Gerais de
Comércio e Navegação para o Brasil’), Lopes (A Escravatura) and Dias (Fomento e Mercanti-
lismo). As regards the works based on his assessments, see, e.g., MacLachlan (‘African Slave
Trade and Economic Development’) and Mettas (‘La Traite Portugaise’). It should be noted
that only Carreira presented an annual series of slaves embarked to and disembarked at
Maranhão. Most of the studies usually present a sum of all slaves embarked to and disembarked
at Maranhão, in particular, or to all northern captaincies of Brazil, during the whole period of
the company’s monopoly.
[33] Concerning the Atlantic slave trade to Maranhão the organisers accessed the files of the
company in Lisbon, Portugal, available in the Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Arquivo His-
tórico do Ministério das Finanças and the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino. They also incorpor-
ated data from archives in Luanda, as the Biblioteca Municipal de Luanda, and in Brazil, as the
Arquivo Público do Pará, through the catalog compiled by Anaı́za Vergolino-Henry and Arthur
Napoleão Figueiredo (A Presença Africana na Amazônia Colonial). Finally, they also used
Herbert Klein’s databases on the slave trade (Klein, The Middle Passage).
[34] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 95– 100.
[35] Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 48– 50.
[36] Jean Mettas employed some of this documentation in his 1975 article (Mettas, ‘La Traite
Portugaise’).
[37] In addition to the bibliographical references and archives cited in Note 32 above, the database’s
team also consulted the Arquivo Histórico Nacional de Angola, Arquivo Nacional do Rio de
Janeiro, Arquivo Estadual João Emerenciano (Pernambuco), Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de
Janeiro, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, and the
Public Record Office (London). Regarding the contributions of various researchers, see in
addition to the references cited in Note 32: Medeiro dos Santos, ‘Relações de Angola com o
Rio de Janeiro’; Conrad, World of Sorrow; Frutuoso et al., O Movimento do Porto de Lisboa;
Bethell, Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade. The database also benefited from data made
available by Dr Manolo Florentino and Dr José Capela.
[38] Rodrigues, De Costa a Costa, 284.
[39] Available at the Secretaria de Planejamento do Estado do Maranhão under the title ‘Livro de
termo de visita da saúde de São Luı́s, 1779– 1795’.
 Slavery and Abolition 493

[40] Bethell, A Abolição do Comércio Brasileiro de Escravos, 31 –35.

[41] As evidence, see the sugar colonies in the British Caribbean, which yielded high values in com-
pensation payments made to masters as late as 1834. E.g., in the British Honduras, the average
compensation for adult slaves could reach £60.9 sterling per slave. Predial unattached field
laborers in the same island could yield even higher amounts (£82 sterling, on average) (see
Higman, Slave Populations, 79, Table 4.3).
[42] Slenes, ‘Brazilian Internal Slave Trade’, 325 –366.
[43] 1819: Souza e Silva, ‘Investigações sobre os Recenseamentos da População do Império tentados
desde os Tempos Coloniais’, Attachment D, 31 –33; 1838 and 1823: Marcı́lio, ‘Accroissement de la
Population’, 15.
[44] It is possible that the natural rates of increase were not negative if we take as example the cotton
plantations of the southern United States, which in fact presented positive rates of natural
increase. As in the plantations of the American South, cotton was Maranhão’s main staple for
much of the eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth as well. More studies about slavery
in Maranhão are necessary before an estimate of the scale of this early slave exports becomes feas-
ible. In the 1860s, the Brazilian government engaged in a project of gradual emancipation of
slaves financed by the state treasury. Variola was endemic in Maranhão, which suffered periodic
outbreaks. In 1866, Lafayette Rodrigues Pereira, president of the province, published a state
report in which he provides a brief history of the major outbreaks of variola that had occurred
in Maranhão. He noted that these were particularly harsh in the years 1621, 1662, 1695, 1784,
1799, 1836 and between 1854 and 1855 (see Maranhão, Relatorio 1866, 29 –30).
[45] According to presidential reports, in 1861 the slave population of Maranhão numbered 84,755,
and in 1874 it had decreased to 73,245. The reports are completely silent regarding slave
imports into Maranhão, while in contrast they provide regular information about the
number of slaves exported in the interprovincial slave trade. Between 1846 and 1869, e.g.,
the presidential reports show that Maranhão exported an average of 355 slaves per year (see
Maranhão, Relatorio 1861; Maranhão, Relatorio 1871; Maranhão, Relatorio 1874).
[46] After 1815, the Voyages database has records on 106 voyages between Africa and Maranhão.
Ninety-four have information on the outcome of the voyages and only six (6.4 per cent)
seem to have been captured either by British, Brazilian or Portuguese forces.
[47] As Carreira points out, it is important to exercise great care when using the company’s shipping
records. He transcribed part of these records in Appendixes N and O of his book (see Carreira,
As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 95 –100).
[48] For the slave trade between Bahia and Costa da Mina, the major reference work is still Verger
(Fluxo e Refluxo do Tráfico de Escravos, 19 –51).
[49] Asiwaju and Law, ‘From the Volta to the Niger’, 437.
[50] See Carney, Black Rice; Carney, ‘Rice and Memory’.
[51] According to Judith Carney, specialists have failed to test for the presence of African rice in both
Brazil and Suriname (see Carney. ‘Rice and Memory’, Note 84).
[52] Dias, Fomento e Mercantilismo, 1: 430 –436.
[53] I calculated the concentration using only records with some indication of identity of owners.
Individuals in society were considered separately from the voyages they sponsored by them-
selves. Counting both as a single venture would inevitably increase the degree of concentration
of ownership to even higher levels!
[54] The database has records on 170 voyages between 1788 and 1815, but only 107 of these have a
known port of departure (62.9 per cent).
[55] Jorge Pedreira has compiled lists of Lisbon’s major merchants for the years between 1790 and 1822
(see Pereira, Os Homens de Negócio da Praça de Lisboa de Pombal ao Vintismo, 189–190, Table 3.11).
[56] According to the database, after 1815, about 62.9 per cent of the slaves disembarked at Maran-
hão from Africa were delivered by vessels departing from Brazilian ports.
[57] Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution, 65 –83.
494 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
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496 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Appendix A. Estimated Number of Slaves Disembarked at Maranhão per Year,
1680–1846
The estimates provided here follow the observations in the text. They were based on
the database version labeled ‘basecoy56’, accessed between March and July of 2006.
All voyages with Maranhão as the ‘principal port for slave disembarkation’ and as
‘intended port for slave disembarkation’, whenever the first was unknown, were
selected. The numbers of slaves from the forthcoming edition of Voyages: the Trans-
Atlantic Slave Trade Database were added from the variable ‘imputed number of
slaves disembarked’.

Years Voyages Estimated Years Voyages Estimated

1680 250 1721 75
1681 0 1722 0
1682 0 1723 0
1683 0 1724 0
1684 0 1725 0
1685 0 1726 0
1686 0 1727 0
1687 0 1728 0
1688 0 1729 0
1689 0 1730 0
1690 0 1731 0
1691 73 1732 0
1692 73 1733 0
1693 140 73 1734 0
1694 0 1735 0
1695 102 73 1736 0
1696 158 73 1737 0
1697 0 1738 0
1698 109 1739 0
1699 0 1740 69 69
1700 0 1741 7 7
1701 115 115 1742 0
1702 100 1743 92 92
1703 170 170 1744 0
1704 0 1745 0
1705 0 1746 0
1706 113 1747 0
1707 100 1748 0
1708 87 100 1749 0
1709 0 1750 0
1710 0 1751 0
1711 0 1752 282 282
1712 0 1753 0
1713 0 1754 0
1714 356 356 1755 150 150
1715 85 85 1756 155 155
1716 0 1757 318 318
1717 0 1758 305 305
1718 75 1759 186 186

(Continued)
 Slavery and Abolition 497

Appendix A Continued
Years Voyages Estimated Years Voyages Estimated
1719 0 1760 298 298
1720 0 1761 300 300
1762 182 182 1805 2,212 2,212
1763 569 569 1806 3,888 3,888
1764 423 423 1807 2,523 2,523
1765 854 854 1808 1,179 1,179
1766 523 523 1809 2,004 2,004
1767 900 982 1810 2,284 2,284
1768 995 995 1811 2,490 2,490
1769 583 583 1812 1,299 1,299
1770 274 274 1813 1,043 1,043
1771 0 1814 945 945
1772 512 512 1815 1,379 1,379
1773 169 169 1816 564 564
1774 608 608 1817 2,456 2,456
1775 431 431 1818 3,282 3,282
1776 1,002 1,002 1819 2,063 2,063
1777 297 722 1820 1,812 1,812
1778 476 489 1821 1,404 1,404
1779 1,327 1,474 1822 1,760 1,760
1780 717 926 1823 1,418 1,418
1781 947 947 1824 0
1782 659 752 1825 871 871
1783 1,816 1,816 1826 820 820
1784 614 1,375 1827 2,069 2,069
1785 1,022 1,345 1828 290 290
1786 739 739 1829 470 470
1787 2,236 2,236 1830 1,422 1,422
1788 2,525 2,894 1831 159 159
1789 1,787 2,107 1832 0
1790 1,495 1,495 1833 0
1791 1,037 1,166 1834 0
1792 1,186 1,187 1835 0
1793 1,556 2,361 1836 0
1794 1,242 2,186 1837 0
1795 1,474 1,740 1838 122 122
1796 1,222 1,854 1839 189 189
1797 1,595 1,595 1840 1,199 1,199
1798 401 401 1841 1,164 1,164
1799 1,196 1,196 1842 720 720
1800 251 637 1843 0
1801 1,532 1,532 1844 0
1802 2,059 2,059 1845 0
1803 1,105 1,105 1846 56 56
1804 4,351 4,351 All years 93,820 100,525
Sources: text; Appendixes B and C; Eltis et al., Voyages.
498 Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Appendix B. Comparison of Numbers Available in the Historiography about Slave
Arrivals in Maranhão from Africa during the Eighteenth Century

Results Results
for for
Years Carreira Voyages estimates Years Lopes Carreira MacLachlan Voyages estimates
1756 155 155 155 1779 1,474 384 1,474 1,327 1,474
1757 283 318 318 1780 926 387 926 717 926
1758 300 305 305 1781 994 315 944 947 947
1759 186 186 186 1782 752 19 752 659 752
1760 298 298 298 1783 1,602 4 1,602 1,816 1,816
1761 298 300 300 1784 1,375 4 1,375 614 1,375
1762 181 182 182 1785 1,345 25 1,345 1,022 1,345
1763 566 569 569 1786 666 0 662 739 739
1764 423 423 423 1787 2,148 0 2,160 2,236 2,236
1765 847 854 854 1788 – 23 2,894 2,525 2,894
1766 522 523 523 1789 – – 2,107 1,787 2,107
1767 982 900 982 1790 – – 1,411 1,495 1,495
1768 907 995 995 1791 – – 1,166 1,037 1,166
1769 581 583 583 1792 – – 1,187 1,186 1,187
1770 274 274 274 1793 – – 2,361 1,556 2,361
1771 0 0 0 1794 – – 2,186 1,242 2,186
1772 511 512 512 1795 – – 1,740 1,474 1,740
1773 169 169 169 1796 – – 1,854 1,222 1,854
1774 398 608 608 1797 – – 1,536 1,595 1,595
1775 14 431 431 1798 – – – 401 401
1776 546 1002 1,002 1799 – – – 1,196 1,196
1777 722 297 722 1800 – – 637 251 637
1778 489 476 489

Sources: Lopes, A Escravatura, 135 –140; Carreira, As Companhias Pombalinas de Navegação, 95 –100;
MacLachlan, ‘African Slave Trade and Economic Development’, 139; Eltis et al., Voyages.

Appendix C. Comparison of Numbers Available in the Historiography about the

Atlantic Slave Trade to Maranhão during the Nineteenth Century

Miller Miller Results for

Authors Lopes Goulart Rebelo MacLachlan 1975 1989 Voyages estimates

Years (1) (2) (1) (3) (1) (1) (3) (3)

1801 – – – 1,328 – 1,532 1,532
1804 1,578 1,578 – – 1,650 – 4,351 4,351
1805 1,608 1,608 – – 1,755 – 2,212 2,212
1806 – – – – – – 3,888 3,888
1807 – – – – – – 2,523 2,523
1808 – – – – – – 1,179 1,179
1809 – – – – – – 2,004 2,004
1810 450 450 – – 506 – 2,284 2,284

(Continued)
 Slavery and Abolition 499

Appendix C Continued
Miller Miller Results for
Authors Lopes Goulart Rebelo MacLachlan 1975 1989 Voyages estimates

Years (1) (2) (1) (3) (1) (1) (3) (3)

1811 – – – – – – 2,490 2,490
1812 374 374 374 – 413 – 1,299 1,299
1813 – – – – – – 1,043 1,043
1814 – – – – – – 945 945
1815 – – – – – – 1,379 1,379
1816 576 576 – – 624 – 564 564
1817 2,663 2,663 2,663 – 2,895 – 2,456 2,456
1818 1,916 1,916 – – 2,141 – 3,282 3,282
1819 3,594 3,594 – – 3,852 – 2,063 2,063
1820 – – – – – 2,987 1,812 1,812
1821 – – – – – – 1,404 1,404
1822 – – 1,178 – – – 1,760 1,760
1823 1,959 1,959 1,255 – 2,088 – 1,418 1,418
1824 – – – – – – 0 0
1825 966 – 1,102 – – – 871 871
1826 – – 1,283 – – – 820 820

Notes: Observations: (1) Number of slaves embarked in Angola to Maranhão. (2) Number of slaves
disembarked in Maranhão. (3) Number of slaves disembarked in Maranhão from Africa.
Sources: Lopes, A Escravatura, 135 –140; Goulart, Escravidão Africana no Brasil, 269; Rebelo, Relações
entre Angola e Brasil, Table 2; MacLachlan, ‘African Slave Trade and Economic Development’, 139;
Miller, ‘Legal Portuguese Slaving from Angola’, 171–172; Miller, ‘Numbers, Origins and
Destinations of Slaves’, 395 – 397; Eltis et al., Voyages.

Appendix D. Names of Owners of Slave Vessels and Number of Voyages They Sponsored between 1778 and 1846
Number of voyages
Names
Amorim, Antônio José de
Antônio, João
Baião, Inácio Xavier
Barreto, João Pereira
Bastos, João Vicente da
Belfort, João
Brown, Nicholas de Clamouse
Carvalho, José Pereira
Cascais, Antônio José Gomes
Chaves, José Gonçalves da
Cintra, Elias Coelho
Clamouse, Bernard
Clamouse, Bernard
Cobrão, Francisco Pereira
Companhia Geral do Grão Pará
e Maranhão
Cordeiro, Manoel
500
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Number of voyages Number of voyages
sponsored Names sponsored Names sponsored
1 Ferreira, Bası́lio Gonçalves 1 Pinto, Antônio José 8
1 Ferreira, Caetano José 1 Pinto, José Teixeira 1
1 Ferreira, Jacinto José 1 Guimarães, Luı́s A
3 Ferreira, Manoel Bento 2 Ramos, José D 1
Dias
1 Ferreira, Manoel Rodrigues 1 Regadas, Antônio de 1
Queirós Monteiro
1 Fonseca, Antônio José da 1 Reis, Teotônio Simeão dos 1
1 Fonseca, Francisco Xavier 1 Ribeiro, Domingos Antônio 1
da
1 Freire, Luı́s Antônio 1 Rio, Antônio Alves do 1
Esteves
5 Garces, José Bento 2 Roberto, Antônio José 5
1 Garreto, Antônio Bernardo 2 Rocha, José Ferreira da 3
1 Genus, Joaquim Pedro 1 Rosa, Joaquim dos Santos 1
5 Gomes, João 1 Sacramento, Manoel Pires 1
do
2 Gomes, José 2 Santos, Antônio F dos 1
1 Graces, José Bento 1 Santos, Feliciano dos 2
19 Inácio, Gregório José 1 Santos, João Gonçalves dos 1
1 Leal, José Joaquim 1 Santos, José de Azevedo 1
Carneiro
Corrêa, Felisberto
Correa, José António
Costa, Antonio Simões da
Cruz, Manoel da
Cunha, Joaquim Pereira da
Dezor, José Leandro da Silva
Dias, João José
Dias, José Antônio
Duarte, Antônio José Soares
Duarte, Joaquim Ribeiro
Faria, Antônio Ferreira de
Fernandes, Bernardo José
Ferreira, Antônio José Meireles
Ferreira, Antonio José
Meireles
Note:  Participation in joint venture.
Source: David Eltis et al., Voyages.
1 Leal, Ricardo Nunes 9 Seixas, Antônio José de 3
2 Leal, Ricardo Nunes 1 Silva, Antônio Pereira da 1
3 Leão, José das Neves 1 Silva, Francisco de Sales e 2
1 Lima, Raimundo Antônio 1 Silva, José Gonçalves da 2
1 Madeira, Joaquim Lázaro 1 Silveira, José Nunes da 1
1 Martins, João António 1 Soares, Verissimo da Rocha 1
Rodrigues
7 Matos, Joaquim Antonio 1 Souza, Antônio José de 1
de
2 Medeiros, Gregório Dias de 2 Teixeira, Caetano José 9
1 Meireles, Antônio José 2 Teixeira, Caetano José 1
1 Melo, Francisco José da 1 Trindade, Manoel Lopes 1
1 Oliveira, Francisco Antônio 1 Viana, Antonio P 1
de
1 Oliveira, Francisco Antônio 1 Vieira, Raimundo José de 1
de Souza
1 Pereira, José Antônio 2 Xavier, António 3
1 Pinho, José Fernando do 1 Xavier, Raimundo 3
Slavery and Abolition
501