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（尤以纺织品为核心）交换紧密相关，这一观点已为史学界数十年来的研究所证实。在安哥拉的港口及内陆腹地，纺织品进口同样是获取并出口奴隶的关键环节，因为纺织品正是用于交换奴隶的主要货物组合。本文以18世纪60年代至70年代安哥拉税收承包协议（Contrato de Angola）管理者留存的贸易档案为依据，探讨该协议向驻罗安达商人供应纺织品的角色，并厘清纺织品的地理来源与品类。为凸显研究结果，本文将本次研究的数据与17世纪晚期、18世纪末至19世纪初安哥拉对外贸易的商贸往来数据进行对比。研究结论显示，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用于跨大西洋运输的奴隶；同时本文也着重指出了若干差异，尤其是在安哥拉税收承包协议作为贸易货物供应商的角色中，欧洲纺织品所占的突出份额。