Nantes slave trade
[2] The transatlantic slave trade, between Europe and America, deported 12 to 13 million Africans, the majority of those from the end of the 17th century onwards.
[6] This situation compensated for the shallow draft of the Loire estuary, which was limited to eleven feet and so allowed only for ships at a maximum of 150–170 tonnes in fully loaded conditions to reach Nantes.
The Gironde estuary, however, had a draft of 14 to 16 feet, as a result of which 250 vessels could reach Bordeaux, a port situated far from the major routes between London and the Po Valley, capable of exporting the riches offered by the Aquitaine Basin.
[8] The first ship in Nantes to be utilised in the slave trade was most likely the Hercule in 1707, launched by the compagnie du Sénégal and belonging to the Montaudouin family.
[10] The years which followed were much more chaotic: the War of the Austrian Succession, in which France participated, hindered maritime commerce – which was, at the time, the main battleground for the Anglo-French rivalry.
[10] The years 1750 and 1751 saw a lull in activity, due notably to the fact that ship-owners in Nantes were waiting to discover the results of their post-war investments.
This loss of market-share is explained by several factors, notably: However, even if the number of slave voyages fell from an average of 29 per year (between 1763 and 1766), to 22.2 (between 1767 and 1771) and 20.6 (between 1772 and 1778, i.e. the beginning of the American Revolutionary War), the overall tonnage fell more slowly (from an average of 3,954 tonnes per year between 1763 and 1766, to 3,556 tonnes between 1772 and 1778), which means that while ship-owners in Nantes deployed less ships, they used vessels with a greater capacity.
Between 1789 and 1793, the port of Nantes accounted for 36.1% of slave trade traffic with 152 ships: as much as the output of their main rivals, Bordeaux and Le Havre, put together.
These slaves were taken mainly from the Gulf of Guinea (principally the region of Calabar, on the south east coast of what is now Nigeria) and the "Angola coast" (now part of Angola and the Republic of the Congo[14]),[15] numbered as follows : Nantes traders were not only capable of adapting to market conditions in both America and Africa, but were also capable of changing the point of sale according to competition.
[17] The August 1793 decree for the abolition of slavery put an end to all slave trade activity across all French territory for nine years.
[22] The commercial activity produced by triangular trade generated the success of maritime commerce within the kingdom of France and with the rest of the European continent.
