¹ The best account of the Company of Merchants is still to be found in Martin, E. C., The British West African Settlements, 1750–1821(London, 1927).Google Scholar

² The barters are all located in the Public Record Office, London, T70/1264 and 1265.Google Scholar

³ Miles usually totalled several items together in his barter lists, but it is possible to ascertain the value of each item individually through cross-referencing.Google Scholar

⁴ T70/1491, ‘List of Black's Debts due R. Miles, ultimo 1779’.Google Scholar

⁵ The whole complicated history of this dispute between Akron and Mumford, which was ultimately carried to London and The Hague, can be found in PRO., B.T. 6/1 and 2.Google Scholar

⁶ All otherwise unacknowledge direct quotations are from T70/1264 and 1265.Google Scholar

⁷ Botwe is frequently mentioned in Miles's dispatches to the African Committee found in T70/32. For John Kwamino see Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons Accounts and Papers, 1789, ‘Minutes of the Evidence’, vol. 83, 169–70, testimony of J. B. Weuves.Google Scholar

⁸ For Kwadwo, see Priestley, M., West African Trade and Coast Society (London, 1969), 1–16;Google ScholarBrown, E. J. P., Gold Coast and Asante Reader, 2 vols. (London, 1929), 11, 122–3.Google Scholar

⁹ Library of the United Africa Company, London. ‘Commenda Letter Book’, Miles to Stewart Beard, 28 July 1777, Beard to Miles, 31 July 1777.Google Scholar

¹⁰ T70/32 Miles to African Committee, 22 Jan. 1780.Google Scholar

¹¹ T70/32, Roberts and Council to African Committee, 8 Oct. 1780.Google Scholar

¹² See Metcalfe, G. E., McLean of the Gold Coast (London, 1962).Google Scholar

¹³ T70/1264, Barter with ‘Old Peter Quow’, 25 Jan. 1776.Google Scholar

¹⁴ T70/1491, ‘List of Blacks' Debts, Pawns and House Slaves’.Google Scholar

¹⁵ This characterization goes back to Barbot and Dupuis. See Benezet, A., Some Historical Account of Guinea (first published 1788, reprinted London, Frank Cass, 1968), 89Google Scholar (quoting Barbot); Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (first published London, 1824, reprinted Frank Cass, 1966), 167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Most modern historians have followed it. The point was disputed by the late Kwame Daaku in so far as trade in general was concerned, but even Daaku thought the slave trade was probably a preserve of the élites. See Daaku, , ‘Trade and trading patterns of the Akan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ in Meillassoux, Claude, ed., The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (Oxford, 1971), 170–1.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Daaku, op cit., p. 179.Google Scholar

¹⁷ T70/1265, barter on 16 Aug. 1777.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Quoted in Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1964), 37.Google Scholar It is of course likely that Miles and the other fort chiefs dealt with small traders more often than did ships' captains. As has been noted in the text, major African political figures preferred to deal directly with the shipping for political reasons. In addition, small traders who could not afford the cost either in security or subsistence of keeping slaves about for even a short period of time would naturally sell to the fort chief (who was always there) when no shipping was immediately available. Nevertheless Miles's lists clearly indicate the existence of a great number of small and part-time traders amongst the Fante, even if they exaggerate in overall terms the percentage of slaves sold by such individuals to the Europeans.

¹⁹ Donnan, E, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 11, 362. This was in 1753.Google Scholar

²⁰ Polanyi, K., ‘Sortings and the Ounce Trade’, J. Afr. Hist., V (1964), 381–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dahomey and the Slave Trade (Washington, 1968).Google Scholar

²¹ Polyani, Dahomey, 140–1.Google Scholar

²² Good summaries of the ‘substantive’ interpretation controversy can be found in Hopkins, A.G, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 51–2Google Scholar, and in Reynolds, E, Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast 1807–1814 (London, 1974), 33–6.Google Scholar

²³ See Peukert, Werner, Der Atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey 1750–1797 (Wiesbaden, 1978)Google Scholar, and Manning, Patrick, Slavery, , Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Johnson, Marion, ‘The ounce in eighteenth-century West African Trade’, J. Afr. Hist., vii (1966), 197–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., 202–3.

²⁶ T70/1482, Miles to John Bourke, 31 Jan. 1773.Google Scholar

²⁷ Rodney, W, ‘Gold and slaves on the Gold Coast’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, X (1969) 23–4.Google Scholar

²⁸ La Torre, Joseph Raymund, ‘Wealth surpasses everything: an economic history of Asante, 1750–1874’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1978), 180, 197–200, 435, 443–4.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., 422–3.

³⁰ T70/1531, G. Petrie to Miles, 5 Nov. 1770.Google Scholar

³¹ Anonymous, A treatise upon the trade of Great Britain to Africa (London, 1772), 36.Google Scholar

³² First noted in barter on 18 March 1774, in T70/1264 (slave nos. 596–8).Google Scholar

³³ First noted in barter with ‘Addadie’, 23 March 1774, in T70/1264 (slave no. 607).Google Scholar

³⁴ Donnan, Documents, 11, 572.Google Scholar

³⁵ All the Tantumkweri barters are in T7/1264. Purchases made with gold are listed in the margins.Google Scholar

³⁶ See T70/1264, barters of 15 July 1775 (slave no. 89); 21 November 1775 (slave no. 334); 17 Jan. 1776 (slave nos. 436–7); 20 Jan. 1776 (slave no. 440); 23 Jan. 1776 (slave no. 443); 22 Feb.. 1776 (slave nos. 483–7); 26 Feb 1776 (slave nos. 489–92); 10 April 1776 (slave nos. 546–8).Google Scholar

³⁷ T70/1483, Miles to Francis Ingram, 22 Feb. 1779.Google Scholar

³⁸ T70/1265, after his final barter of 1778.Google Scholar

³⁹ There are many references in the Miles papers to this practice. It is well illustrated by comparing the barter of 2 Oct. 1777 (slave no. 298), where Miles himself broke trade, with that of 18 Nov. 1777 (slave no. 300), where Capt. Muir had earlier broken trade, in T70/1265.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See T70/ 1265: barters of 3 July 1777 (slave no. 257); 16 Aug. 1777 (slave nos 276–7); 21 March 1778 (slave no. 331). For bejatepauts and neganpauts see T70/1483, Miles to Norris, 16 Jan. 1779.Google Scholar

⁴¹ T70/1483, Miles to Norris, 16 Jan. 1779.Google Scholar

⁴² T70/1265, barter for slaves and gold with ‘Aggumaucon’, 15 Oct. 1778.Google Scholar

⁴³ T70/1265, barter 25 May 1777, with John Kwamino (slave no. 230).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See T70/1265, barter 25 May 1777 (slave nos. 225–6).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ T70/1265, barters 5 Aug. 1777 (slave nos. 276 and 277), and 16 March 1778 (slave nos.330).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Johnson, op cit., p. 202.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Dickson, Kwamina, A Historical Geography of Ghana (Cambridge, 1969), 42.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See Chukwukere, I., ‘The Akan theory of conception — are the Fante really aberrant?’, Africa, XLVIII (1978), 141–3, 145–6.Google Scholar Entrepreneurial attitudes were clearly spreading to Asante as well in this period; see La Torre, ‘Wealth surpasses everything’, passimGoogle Scholar, and McCaskie, T. C., ‘Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history’, Africa, LIII (1983), 23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar