The format of slave sale records

Among the Royal African Company records deposited at the Public Record Office in London are 24 manuscript volumes of homeward bound invoice accounts. These books contain invoices of all goods sent on the “homeward” legs of Royal African Company voyages, including not only goods sent to England by company factors in the West Indies, but also the contents of voyages that departed from West Africa on the company's account. The greater part of the latter was made up of slaves, and these books therefore contain the records of the sales of slaves held by company factors in America.

The earliest sale of slaves recorded in the company's accounts was held in Barbados on March 11, 1673; photographs of the two pages of the record are shown in Figure A.1. This record describes the sale of 220 slaves delivered to the island by the London Merchant, under the command of Captain Edmond Sabine. As was often the case in the early years of the company's trading in Barbados, the slaves were recorded as sold both for money and for sugar by the company's factors on the island, Robert Bevin and Edwyn Stede, whose names appear at the close of the account. Slave purchasers are listed individually by name, along with an itemization of the number of men, women, boys, and girls they bought and the amounts they paid; in this early sale the agents also sometimes recorded the duration of the credit given to a purchaser and the price per head he paid for the slaves.