Dressing the Slavery: Textiles, Slaves, and the Contrato de Angola (18 th Century)

ABSTRACT The Transatlantic slave trade was closely related to the exchange of manufactured goods between Europeans and Africans, particularly of textiles, as historiography has pointed out for decades. In Angola’s ports and hinterland, textile imports were essential to procure and export slaves as well, since fabrics made up the bundle of goods exchanged for enslaved people. In this article, we approach the role of Contrato de Angola (contract to collect tax) as a supplier of textiles to the Luanda based merchants, underlying the geographical origin and the sort of fabrics, resorting to trade records by the Contrato’s managers in the 1760s and 1770s. In order to highlight the results, we draw comparisons between our figures and data of commercial dealings from late seventeenth century and from the Angolan external trade between the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. We conclude that some of the features of this trade were quite stable, such as the Lisbon merchants’s aversion to directly invest in slaves bound for Atlantic crossing, and we emphasize some differences as well, particularly the outstanding share of European textiles in the Contrato’s role as a supplier of trade goods.

摘要 跨大西洋奴隶贸易与欧洲人和非洲人之间的制成品贸易往来密切相关，其中纺织品贸易尤为核心，这一结论已为史学界的数十载研究所证实。在安哥拉的港口及其内陆腹地，纺织品进口同样是征购并出口奴隶的必要前提，因为织物正是用于交换奴隶的成套贸易商品。本文以安哥拉税收征收合同（Contrato de Angola）为研究对象，探析其作为罗安达（Luanda）本地商人纺织品供应商的角色，并依托该合同管理者在1760年代至1770年代留存的贸易档案，厘清纺织品的地理来源与品类。为凸显研究结论，我们将本次研究的统计数据与17世纪晚期的商贸往来数据，以及18世纪末至19世纪初的安哥拉对外贸易数据进行了对比分析。最终我们发现，该贸易的部分特征长期保持稳定——例如里斯本商人不愿直接投资即将跨越大西洋转运的奴隶；同时我们也着重指出了其间存在的若干差异，尤以欧洲纺织品在该合同作为贸易商品供应商的业务中所占的显著份额最为突出。