Thread by @DavidVeevers1

Superb work, especially by Ghanaian archeologists. Forts were key components of formal and organised European regimes of the trade in enslaved people. But it's also important to recognise that Anglo-British participation had a much longer history /1
bbc.co.uk/news/world-afr…

Even before Fort Kormantine (above) was built in 1630s, English captains and merchants had trafficked thousands of ppl from West & Central Africa across the Atlantic. Most were sold to Iberian colonies in Greater Antilles & South America. Many were captured from Iberian ships /2

The English ships Treasurer and White Lion captured the Portuguese slaver San Juan Bautista in 1619, along with its human cargo of traumatised Ndongo ppl. The main investor in the White Lion was Samuel Argall, who had captured Matoaka, aka the Powhatan 'Pocahontas'. /3

He'd also recently been governor of Jamestown, so the Ndongo were sent to Virginia to work the booming tobacco plantations - the first recorded transporting of enslaved ppl from Africa to North America. England's emerging empire was bound up with slavery from the get-go. /4

But it was the Caribbean which became the hub of England's unorganised trade in enslaved ppl before the formal trafficking monopolies of companies such as the Royal African Company in the later C17th. By 1641, the English had trafficked 4,000 West Africans into the Caribbean. /5

When we think of slavery in English Caribbean colonies, we think Barbados. But it was the island of Liamáiga - renamed St Christopher or 'St Kitts' by Europeans - which was the epicentre. After massacring 2,000 Indigenous Kalinago, English & French partitioned island in 1627. /6

Tobacco was the chief crop of England's first Caribbean colony. But tobacco cultivation was labour intensive work, 'ffor in sowing, plantinge, weedinge, worminge, gatheringe, Curinge, and making up, it Consumes ten monthes [of the year] at least, yf not elevent.' /7

To produce at scale with profitable margins, the small European population of St Kitts turned both to indentured labour from England and recently conquered Ireland, but also at the same time enslaved labour from Indigenous Kalinago and Americans. /8

Attacks & occupation of other Kalinago islands, as well as the brutal Pequot War in New England, opened up sources of Indigenous enslaved labour for the English on St Kitts. These poured into the burgeoning English settlement of Old Town & its plantations on the leeward coast. /9

The English colony became both a consumer of enslaved Indigenous labour, and an exporter. A thriving slave market was established at Old Road in Kalinago as well as 'the Cannibal Negroes from New England', with European merchants purchasing slaves for across the Atlantic. /10

In 1627 when an English slave ship from St Kitts docked at Jamestown, the enslaved Kalinago escaped, fled into the forests, and waged war on the colony, raiding plantations, killing colonists, and then joined with the Indigenous Powhatans in their war against Jamestown. /11

Enslaved Indigenous people were increasingly joined by enslaved people from West Africa One typical 100 acre plantation on neighbouring Nevis in 1650s was worked by 4 indentured Irish servants but '33 negroes and Indians, great and small.' /12

In fact enslaved ppl from Africa were present from the foundation of the colony: 60 had been trafficked there by its leader Thomas Warner in 1626, chiefly to clear vegetation to make way for tobacco plantations. Within 10 years, their number ballooned to 600. /13 158

Recognising their increasing numbers, in 1636 a law was passed formally allowing enslaved ppl from Africa to be trafficked onto St Kitts. This was mirrored by the island's French settlements. But the growing numbers of enslaved were determined to resist. In 1637 they rose up. /14

In the first non-Spanish slave rebellion in the Caribbean, 500 mostly Senegalese people fled to the mountains and built a stronghold, harassing English & French plantations. A large French force eventually captured the fort, executed the leaders, and re-enslaved the rest. /15

When sugar cultivation reached St Kitts in late 1640s, decline of Kalinago population & need for greater pools of coerced labour to cultivate sugar led to explosion in the demographic of enslaved ppl from Africa. By end of C17th, enslaved Africans outnumbered colonists 2:1. /16

But Africans in English colonies not just enslaved: successfully resisted & even took war to English. When English arrive in 1620s, already 1,000 'maroons' living amongst Kalinago - self-liberated slaves who fled Spanish colonies. Kalinago integrate them into their villages /17

African maroons 'allied with the Caribs and live together' with Indigenous Kalinago communities. When English trafficked thousands more into Caribbean, swelled maroon numbers. On St Vincent, Kalinago numbers boomed due to 'a very large number of fugitive slaves from Barbados.'/18

With a force of 1,500 Afro-Kalingo and 80 ships, unleashed war on English colonies. They burned plantations, freed enslaved ppl & took English captives. Unlike European chattel slavery, Kalinago adopted their captives into society, some of whom rose to prominent positions. /19

Afro-Kalinago attacks were so effective that arc of English colonies, from Montserrat to Antigua, begged for help from London. The colonists complained that the Afro-Kalinago began 'lookinge on us as their tributaries'. By 1660 Europeans desperate for peace. /20

Anglo-French delegation signed treaty partitioning the Eastern Caribbean with Kalinago & promising to respect independence of Kalinago heartland. Another 100 years before this was destroyed, and by then millions of enslaved Africans had arrived and died in the Caribbean. Finis.