American Slavers
Before we moved to Rhode Island last year, I was familiar with Newport as the home of the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals. Indeed, we attended one afternoon of performances at the Newport Jazz Festival this summer. Newport is only an hour from our home in Rumford RI. Recently, I read in The New York Review of Books that Newport RI was once the epicenter of the North American African slave trade. This surprising (to me) news provoked me to read “American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644–1865” by Sean M. Kelley. Indeed, during colonial times, Newport became the major North American port through which British slavers disembarked their captives. Eventually, ships going out to Africa from Newport added to the trade and created a large cadre of experienced sailors and captains to exploit the African captive market. Lacking much in the way of goods to exchange, eventually Rhode Island slavers settled on rum, which eventually displaced French brand...