Appendix: Archival sources
for a study of the external slave trade
from Africa
A large amount of the materials relating to the slave trade which are available in
European archives has recently been listed among other materials for African history
in foreign archives in two parallel sets of series, one of which deals with only West
Africa, as follows :
Patricia Carson, Materials far West African History in the Archives of Belgium and
Holland, London, 1962.
Patricia Carson, Materials for West African History in French Archives, London, 1968.
Noel Matthews, Materials for West African History in the Archives of the United
Kingdom, London, 1973.
A. F. C. Ryder, Materials for West African History in Portuguese Archives, London,
1965.
A very large proportion of the unpublished archival materials relating to the slave
trade will be found listed in the above booklets and it is unnecessary to duplicate them
here. But these booklets do not list all the materials relating to the slave trade that may
be found in European archives. For example, the list for United Kingdom archives
does not contain the very important British Parliamentary Papers, in particular, the
'Accounts and Papers' in the British Museum which contain a large amount of mat-
erials relating to the slave trade; the important Tarleton Papers in the Liverpool
Record Office, and the Records of the Heywoods Bank of Liverpool, in Barclays Bank,
Heywoods Branch, are also not included. Lloyds Corporation Archives in London
also contain some materials relating to the slave trade and are not included in the list
by Matthews. The Chancery Masters' Exhibits in the London Public Record Office,
mentioned by Matthews, include a very large amount of materials relating to the
slave trade, but because of the way those records are described it has not been easy
to detect which of them relate to the slave trade. Some of those not mentioned by
Matthews are :
C. 109/401: 'Accounts of Five Slave Voyages by Samual Sandys & Co. of Liverpool,
1771-1772 '.
C.114/1-3 and C.114/154-8: 'Records of Thomas Lumley& Co., of London, Guinea
Merchants and Dealers in East India Goods, 1801-1807 '.
C.103/130-3: 'Papers of Thomas Hall & Co., of London, Slave Merchants, 1730-
1743'.
Recently, some of the records of the Royal African Company of Great Britain have
been discovered among the Chancery Masters' Exhibits (C. 113/261-95). These have
been described by David P. Henige, 'Two Sources For the History of the Guinea