Transatlantic Slave Traders’ Insurance Strategies: Sources and Challenges
Mallory Hope, Nov. 30, 2023. Some of most fascinating scholarship on the transatlantic slave trade in recent years has explored the trade’s demand side. To ensure the success of their operations, European slave traders had to make a close study of changing consumer tastes in the African ports they targeted and procure an attractive variety of products from Brazilian tobacco to Indian textiles. Slave traders’ tactics for mitigating risk, however, remain largely in the dark. What proportion of slave-trading ships were insured? What special terms, if any, were included in slave insurance contracts? What premiums were charged on these ships and their human cargoes, and how did the rates compare with insurance on vessels and cargoes in other lines of trade? Were slave-trading voyages customarily insured in certain markets, such as London? In her presentation, Mallory Hope lays out the types of historical sources that can be used to respond to these questions, along with the methodological challenges they present, and Hope will begin to compare underwriters’ and slave traders’ practices on the Continent and in the British Atlantic world.