African Slave Trader, Angola, 1855
Caption, Vabia, alias John Sawyer, Meluca [Mafuka] of Malembo [Malemba] and One of his Wives. The wife is holding an infant; the bearded Vabia is making a mat. Malemba/Malembo, north of the Congo river on the Loango coast of present-day Angola, became a major slave trading station of the KaKongo people by the 18th century. The Mafuka (Mafouk, Mafuk) was the offical charged with the overall management of the trade (see P. Martin, The External Trade of the Loango Coast, 1576-1870 [Oxford, 1972]). The NMM description of this image notes that John Sawyer is employed making a mat & lamenting the decline of the slave trade. 25 June 1855. Also noted is that the British Foreign Office estimated that Malemba exported some 27,000 slaves between 1817 and 1843. However, by the date of this illustration the trade had declined considerably, impoverishing many of the officials who had profited from it. The NMM has a volume of watercolors, including the one show here, showing the commission of the sloop Linnet to suppress slavery. The drawings were done by Henry Need in 1852-1856; see and D. Hamilton and R. Blyth, Representing Slavery: Art, Artifacts and Archives in the Collections of the National Maritime Museum (London, 2007), p. 242.
Image Title
African Slave Trader, Angola, 1855
RegID
SI-OB-730
Date
1855
Title
African Slave Trader, Angola, 1855
Source
National Maritime Museum, London (neg. D9666)
Language
English
Item sets
Slave Sales & Auctions: African Coast & the Americas
Spatial Coverage
Africa--West Central North
Researchers
Handler, Jerome; Tuite, Michael; Randall Ericson; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Last Updated
16-Jun-16
Identifier
NMM-5