After the Atlantic Crossing: The Arrival and Sale of African Migrants in the British Americas, 1672-1693

Stephanie Smallwood

This paper examines the enslaved African migrants' transition from the slave ships to the plantation societies of the British Americas - a moment in their forced migration from African to American soil that has received little attention in the scholarly literature on either the Atlantic slave trade or New World slavery. Focusing specifically on African immigration in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, the paper uses invoice records for slave cargoes delivered by the Royal African Company of England to undertake a comparative analysis of the size and gender composition of the groups in which African immigrants left the slave ships and entered the plantations and farms that would be their new homes.

[WP #96013]