English authors and editors like Richard Eden, Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Willes, John Pory, Hakluyt, Purchas, and others relied heavily on Portuguese sources.61 When Portuguese accounts were read alongside some of the recently translated and very rich Dutch sources, especially Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Itinerario, which was translated and published in England in 1598 at the recommendation of Richard Hakluyt, English readers were able to learn a great deal about West African polities, the nature of their religious practices, and the wealth of commodities that circulated along the African littoral.62
Dog-headed men and the descendants of the Magi would continue to fascinate Englishmen for years to come, but increasingly the English were reading about an Africa that was of interest because it was “full of Gold and Silver, and other Commodities.” As Englishmen traveled to Africa, George Abbot reported, they “found trafique into the parts of the country: where their greatest commoditie is golde, and Elephants teeth: of both which there is very good store.”63 These items were made available for trade by the numerous sophisticated polities that could be found along the West African littoral. These linguistically and culturally diverse kingdoms ranged in size from a few hundred people to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. Although they could be difficult for Europeans to describe with precision, African societies were dynamic and often as technologically and materially sophisticated as European societies. Active, long-distance trade networks blanketed the continent. Local rulers regulated trade and moderated the commercial activities of merchants. Cloth and iron manufacturing were characteristic features of local and regional economies. There was also slavery. Although it was an institution that existed to serve different needs and was justified by different criteria than the plantation-labor institution that would subsequently come to dominate the Atlantic slave system, slavery was as pervasive in African societies as it appeared to be in other parts of the world. Of course, there was an important difference. Although enslaved Africans were exported out of Africa by European traders in small numbers to start with, and constituted a small fraction of the value of all African exports before the seventeenth century, all Europeans took advantage of the availability of African peoples as commodities both at home and, especially, in their Atlantic world colonies.64
Slavery was nothing new to the inhabitants of Africa; it was not, as one historian notes, “an ‘impact’ brought in from outside.” Rather, “it grew out of and was rationalized by the African societies who participated in it.”65 Not surprisingly, disagreements persist about the relative importance of the institution before the arrival of European ships in the fifteenth century and a number of scholars suggest that slavery was a relatively insignificant social and economic institution until the Portuguese, French, English, and Dutch began exploiting African peoples. Nonetheless, slavery clearly existed in various sub-Saharan African societies as a tribute mechanism, a domestic institution, and, in rare cases, an industrial system. Thus, by the time the English began arriving in small numbers during the late sixteenth century, nothing would have surprised them more than the absence of slavery. Europeans were familiar with the commodity value of African peoples from their dealings with North Africans who had facilitated the trade in sub-Saharan Africans into the Mediterranean and southern European worlds for several centuries before Europeans began sailing southward.66 The English saw slavery wherever they looked. Why should Africa be any different?
English merchants entered the African trade slowly.67 During the 1530s and 1540s, as many as six English expeditions touched base on the eastern Atlantic seaboard of Africa. The most famous of these were the three expeditions to Brazil between 1530 and 1532 launched by the wealthy Plymouth merchant, William Hawkins, during which time the English captain “touched at the river of Sestos upon the coast of Guinea, where hee traffiqued with the negros.”68 A few decades later, however, English ships began to journey to Africa for the express purpose of regularizing a direct trade. During the 1550s and 1560s, when Englishmen and Africans encountered each other for the first time in a sustained fashion, perhaps a dozen expeditions, involving as many as 1,500 English mariners, sailed the waters between the southern coast of England and the western shores of Africa. But as vital as the English effort seemed to be during this early stage, the African trade presented numerous complications for English merchants, not least of which were the devastating mortality rates. As Richard Eden recounted about the 1558 expedition of Thomas Wyndham, “of the sevenscore men” who set out from Plymouth, there returned “scarcely forty, and of them many died.”69 Africa was a destination from which shocking numbers of English mariners failed to return.
The transatlantic slave trade was, in many ways, still in its infancy during the sixteenth century, but thousands of captive Africans were already being loaded onto European ships and transported across the sea to Spanish America and Brazil every year, especially after 1560.70 In this vein, an expedition under the command of John Lok reportedly returned to England with “certayne blacke slaves” in 1555. Although a small number of sub-Saharan Africans had been in the British Isles before this date, their arrival was remarkable. According to Eden, “sum were taule and stronge men, and could well agree with owr meates and drynkes.” At the same time, the “coulde and moyst ayer dooth sumwhat offende them.” The difficulties and sufferings of the indigenous inhabitants of equatorial Africa transplanted to England’s colder clime were not surprising: “[D]oubtlesse men that are borne in hotte regions may better abyde heate” than cold. But what about their apparent status as “slaves”? Certainly, these Africans were not slaves in the modern sense of the term. The English viewed these five men more as cultural mediators than as bondmen. William Towerson, a London merchant and commander of three well-documented expeditions to Africa (1555, 1556, and 1558) reported to a group of Africans during his first voyage that “they were in England well used, and were there kept till they could speake the language, and then they should be brought againe to be a helpe to Englishmen in this Countrey.”71 When three of the original five Africans who had been taken to England returned to Africa with Towerson on his second voyage, then, the English saw them as mechanisms that would make it easier to acquire gold, pepper, and ivory. To this end, the “slaves” proved their worth immediately. At one point, Towerson reported meeting some Africans who “would not come to us, but at the last by the perswasion of our owne Negros, one boat came to us, and with him we sent George our Negro ashore, and after he had talked with them, they came aboord our boates without feare.”72
The characterization of the five Africans on board Lok’s ships as “slaves” may have been a label of convenience rather than a true indication of their condition and, certainly, West Africans in general had little to fear from the English during their early voyages. Even so, some Englishmen clearly embraced the slave trade from an early date and accepted that it was a necessary component of successful African enterprises. In 1555, a group of English merchants petitioned Queen Mary in order to obtain free trade privileges in Guinea. They claimed that earlier English expeditions to Africa had uncovered several local rulers who were happy to trade with English ships. In addition, the “said inhabitauntes of that country offred us and our said factors ground to build uppon, if they wold make anie fortresses in their country, and further offred them assistaunce of certen slaves for those workes without anie charge.”73 These English merchants recognized the advantages of a captive labor force as well as the importance of the willing assistance of African merchants and leaders.
The rapid English embrace of African slavery, however, was demonstrated most clearly during the 1560s when four English expeditions (three of which were led by John Hawkins) sailed to the African coast, filled their holds with Africans, and sold their human cargoes in Spain’s American colonies. Hawkins’s first expedition, which departed England in 1562, consisted of three ships and “not above 100. men for feare of sicknesse and other inconveniences.” The small fleet sailed to Sierra Leone and, “partly by sworde, and partly by other means,” acquired “300. Negros at the least, besides other merchandises which that country yeeldeth.” As quickly as possible, the ships sailed on to the Caribbean where they unloaded their cargo. By September 1563, they were back in England. Hawkins set sail again the following year with a slightly larger and much more powerful fleet of four ships and more than 150 men. This expedition was broadly similar to the first and succeeded
