The slave trade
and the peopling of Santo Domingo287times not yet branded and unable to
speak French: the newly imported
Negroes included Kongos, Mozam-
bicans, Nagos, Senegalese, Mandin-
gos and Ibos. All this confirms that
the slave trade was still going on in
1792 and even up to the end of
March 1793.
It would be especially interesting
to know more about the slave trade in
its final manifestations. But, unfor-
tunately, for these last two years the
evidence of the newspapers is limited
to just a few announcements: the
Sérapis coming from Mozambique;
a cargo of 282 Negroes from the
Gold Coast; three others from the
same place (Gold Coast); Nine
cargoes coming from the Angola
Coast.
In 1792 the press was generally
silent about the composition of
cargoes, and the number of Negroes
announced did not exceed 2,000.
In 1793 the Moniteur Général,
though a daily paper carrying a
supplement, made only the following
announcements: (a) 14 January 1793
—3 Kongos, new Negroes from on
board the General Washington; (b)
20 February 1793—Sale of Bossales
from Senegal from a boat coming
from Havana; (c) 22 March 1793—
'The Nouvelle Société of Nantes
arrived from the Zaire River, AngolaCoast, with a very fine cargo of
331 head of Negroes for Demon-
haison Lelong and Co., who will
start putting them up for sale the
25thinst.';(d) 25 March 1793—'The
Bonne Henriette of Bordeaux with a
superb cargo of 378 blacks coming
from the Angola Coast ' ; (e) 27 March
1793—'The Postilion of St Malo com-
ing from Senegal for Foache, Mo-
range, Hardivillier.
This annoncement is the last to
appear about the official slave trade.^1
Curiously enough it ended with an
uprooting of the same Senegalese
Negroes as those with which it had
begun a century and a half earlier.
It was the firm of Stanislas Foache
—the biggest slaving company in
Santo Domingo—which had the
melancholy distinction of being re-
sponsible for the final crime, so
nonchalantly recorded in the colonial
gazettes.
Group providing most imports: Bantu
(Kongos and Mozambicans), fol-
lowed by cargoes from the Gold
Coast and Senegal.- The illicit trade was to continue a little
longer. In this last brief period supplies
came largely from neighbouring countries.
The trade ended as it had begun, with
slaves sent from the nearby islands, as in
the early operations before the foundation
in 1664 of the West India Company.
BibliographyMy main documentation came from the Santo Domingo newspapers (Moreau
de Saint-Méry Collection in the Bibliothèque National in Paris and the Archives
de la France d'Outre-Mer).
Following the early studies of Père Gabon, Gabriel Debien and Marie-
Antoinette Ménier drew up a complete list of these journals in the Revue
Historique des Colonies, Vol. XXXVI, 3rd and 4th quarters 1949, p. 424-75.