African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 April 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 April 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0295
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 April 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 April 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0295
Introduction
Enslaved and free Africans played a crucial role in the economies of the Atlantic world throughout the era of the slave trade. As small merchants and artisans, producing and selling articles of daily use, they were the most common participants in the retail marketplaces of the slave societies of the Americas. As counterparts to the European slave merchants, they were a crucial component of the African end of the Atlantic slave trade and of the increasing participation of tropical Africa in global markets in other goods. In regions with few slaves, such as the northern colonies of North America and Western Europe, free people of color were predominantly urban. In port cities in those areas, they were heavily represented in the small retail and artisanal workforce. Historians of the Atlantic world have portrayed the lives of these workers in great detail since the 1970s. Culturally, urban people of color were descended from “Atlantic Creoles,” as Ira Berlin and Jane Landers termed them. Their culture and ancestry drew on African, European, and sometimes indigenous roots, and they maneuvered the thicket of racial norms, class prejudice, laws related to slave status, and imperial regulations to forge lives for themselves as independent economic actors. On the eve of the Haitian Revolution, free colored activist Julien Raimond called the free people of color the “natural bourgeoisie” of the colonies. He meant that they held a middle status, between the mass of enslaved workers and the tiny minority of white slave owners, and he also probably meant to refer to the supposed superior moral standards of the bourgeoisie when compared with the (also supposedly) corrupt and decadent nobility. But if we take bourgeois to mean what it does in contemporary class analysis, a middle class changing society through the modern virtues of pragmatism, individualism, rational utility, and profit, he had a point.
General Overviews and Textbooks
It was the path-breaking work of Africanists in the 1970s that led to a fuller understanding of the role of Africans in the Atlantic world. Curtin 1975 (cited under Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and the Ivory Coast) returned agency to the African merchant. At the same time, historians of the United States and of Latin America were digging into public records and revealing the economic life of free and enslaved African-descended people in the Americas. Cohen and Greene 1972 is a collection of essays that told the story of free people of color and began the task of demonstrating their key role in the economies of slave societies in the Americas. Studies of the Atlantic economy have continued to address the independent agency of Africans and African-descended people. Realizing that the African merchant was an independent player who exercised a great deal of control over the terms of trade was a remarkable, and controversial, new perspective. Similarly, the growing realization that African-descended people in the Americas, suffering as they did under the twin handicaps of race and status, were nonetheless able to be independent actors in the economy deepened our understanding of the complexity of slave societies as a whole.
Berlin, Ira, and Philip Morgan, eds. The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas. London: Frank Cass, 1991.
Collected essays that first appeared in Slavery and Abolition give a tour d’horizon of the impact of slave production in the economy. Most of the work concentrates on agriculture, but marketing is an important ancillary activity and gets its share of attention in all these articles.
Cañizares- Esguerra, Jorge, Matt D. Childs, and James Sidbury. The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 384.
Essays discussing the role of African-descended people in urban areas in the Americas and Africa. Focus on the role of black civic associations.
Cohen, David W., and Jack P. Greene, eds. Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972.
A classic collection containing a number of foundational essays for the study of this group.
Dantas, Mariana L. R. Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the Eighteenth-Century Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
A pathbreaking comparative study of the urban black populations of Baltimore and Minas Gerais. Both groups included many artisans and small merchants, and there is a chapter dealing specifically with the free population and labor.
Flint, J. E., and I Geiss. “Africans Overseas, 1790–1870.” In The Cambridge History of Africa. Edited by J. E. Flint, 418–457. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521207010.014
A general overview of the African diaspora during the precolonial century as seen from an Africanist perspective.
Hansen, Thorkild. Coast of Slaves, Ships of Slaves, Islands of Slaves. Accra: Sub Saharan Publishers, 2002.
A 21st-century edition of the classic trilogy, originally published 1967, 1968, and 1970, on the Danish colonial empire and slave society by one of Denmark’s greatest writers in a recent English translation. Merchants and artisans play an important role. Although this is a case study of a relatively minor player in the colonial Atlantic, its readability and focus on the lives of ordinary people make it a good introduction to the field for non-specialists. The edition cited is an excellent new translation.
Hopkins, Anthony G. An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.
Somewhat dated, but still a foundational text for understanding the role of Africans in the Atlantic economy.
Peabody, Sue, and Keila Grinberg. Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.
Important edited collection of primary documents on the legal status of slavery and legal restrictions on people of color; useful background for students of the period.
Scott, Rebecca J., and Jean M. Hébrard. Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674065161
This is a sweeping family history that tracks the life of a family of color from Sénégal to Saint-Domingue in the 18th century, on to Louisiana, Cuba, and Mexico in the early 19th century, and then to Europe and New York, and even into a concentration camp in mid-20th-century Europe. Most members of the family in freedom were businesspeople, and the book discusses their economic activities as well as family relationships, politics, and culture.
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
A standard text introducing readers to Africans as agents in the Atlantic economy of the early modern period. The author’s style is very accessible for undergraduates. The 1998 second edition refines the argument and broadens the chronologic and geographic coverage, making the book suitable as a text for a class in Atlantic history.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos South Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets