Indicating the growth of internal violence that paralleled the growth of the slave trade, Rasimilaho’s son and successor was killed in 1767. By 1791 the kingdom had all but collapsed, and the last king was killed in 1803 by his own subjects.26 The Betsimisaraka have continued as a cultural community to the current era.
North American Slave Trading in Madagascar
The official (or legal) slave trade from Madagascar to the Anglo-American colonies was actually short lived. Official slave trading open to English and colonial vessels began in the 1670s, only to close again in 1698 by an act of Parliament.27 The legal Madagascar trade reopened to the Americans in 1716 and remained open until 1721, when it was permanently discontinued.28 American colonist participation in the slave trade with Madagascar created government debate in late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Britain regarding the interpretation of the Acts of Trade and Navigation, such as the issue of whether Negroes should be classified as merchandise within the meaning of the acts.29 This issue, much debated at the time, brings us to the crux of the drama that Malagasy slaves experienced. While the British Parliament discussed whether slaves could be counted as any other cargo, like horses or bolts of Indian cotton, the captives—the subject of the debates—were confronted with the very human problem of survival and identity in a very different context, a problem of little concern to many gentlemen in Parliament.
The area that is now New York State, as well as some parts of New Jersey and Delaware, was named New Netherland by the Dutch and began as a settlement under the Dutch West India Company. It remained in the hands of the Dutch until a series of conflicts with the British, which had began in 1664 and ended in 1674, when the area from Albany, New York, to Delaware fell to the British Crown. Settlers in New Netherland came with the hope of making money; they did not come because of religious persecution, and many were not Dutch. The Dutch West India Company promoted settlement in order to gain value for their investment, and the first slaves who came to the settlement were brought by the Dutch.
The local Dutch trader Frederick Philipse of New Amsterdam was not among the most wealthy merchants, but he was successful in importing slaves to New Netherland and stayed when the British took over. Through his agent, Adam Baldridge, he facilitated the export of hundreds of Malagasy to New York during the seventeenth century, some of whom were further shipped to Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other points of New England upon their arrival in the New World.30 He was also a major contact in Madagascar for other visiting Europeans.31 Baldridge’s trading post in Madagascar has been likened to the slave factories and forts that had already been established on Africa’s western coast.32 But instead of being financed and maintained by joint-stock companies and their shareholders, as in West Africa, the post at Saint Mary’s was primarily created through the actions of pirates and ordinary seamen, as scholars have described quite vividly.33 Complementing the existing trade networks was the financial backing Baldridge received from some of New York’s wealthiest merchants, and he and Philipse maintained contacts with pirates, including some who had emigrated from the Caribbean to Madagascar.34
The latter period of Madagascar slave trading to the Americas is of particular interest to the story begun in this chapter. The slave cargo exports of 1719–21 that brought so many enslaved Malagasy to the trading posts on Virginia’s York and Rappahannock Rivers were part of the increased slave exports that originated along Madagascar’s eastern coast, just as the earlier slave exports to New Netherland had come from the same region.35
It was not until after the American Revolution that regular trade to the western Indian Ocean by North Americans resumed. By that time the Malagasy trade in slaves was not a significant part of U.S. Indian Ocean activities, largely due to efforts of abolitionists in Britain and the United States. The transatlantic slave trade was made illegal in 1808. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, the spice trade and whaling superseded the slave trade for American merchants in the Indian Ocean.
Captives
The Malagasy captives who arrived in Virginia in 1719 could not have known that their fate was very much tied to the political vagaries of the British Parliament and the East India Company’s future. Due to persistent lobbying on the part of Anglo-Americans and private shippers in England, the protectionist policy allowing the British East India Company exclusive trade rights in the region had been repealed.36 Evolving relations between North American colonies, European settlements in Madagascar, and the emerging Betsimisaraka federation, in northeastern Madagascar, reveal, at this stage, the complex workings of early modern colonizing projects that progressed in multiple directions, and these relations demonstrate the transregional nature of the slave trade.37 The story of the slaves and early immigrants from Madagascar should be seen in this evolving global context.
The trajectories of the Madagascar slave trade to America were transregional and transnational, and actors entered and played the game both from the metropole (England, France) and from new territories that eventually were established as possessions of either crown. The historical record allows us to at least cobble together a liste de présence that reveals the dynamics that led to shipments between Madagascar and Virginia, and from this we can discern the local interplay of forces that, while leading to the Betsimisaraka federation, also led to the deportation of hundreds of people from the northeast of Madagascar.
For the purpose of their subsequent debarkation, and after traveling in canoes that plied the riverways of areas further inland, young women, men and children in slave coffles were likely forced to march to the northeastern coastal area facing Saint Mary’s Island and to the port town of Fort Dauphin, further south along the coast. It is probable that they knew what they were in for. As we have seen, by 1716 this area was known for its brisk commerce with foreigners, including slave trading. Since slave exports had seen a peak in the late seventeenth century, some fifteen years earlier, the presence of Anglo-American foreigners circulating along the coast may have suggested to the captives that their destination would not be slavery within Madagaskaria, or the Red Island, as it was known to its European visitors. However, while captives probably suspected shipment abroad, they could not have imagined their coming voyage of thousands of miles to the New World.
Due to navigational constraints, such as ocean currents, seasonal monsoons, and the difficulty of sailing the Mozambique Channel most of the year, the greater part of the trade destined for the Americas traveled from Madagascar’s eastern coast southward, stopping for provisions and trade at the Cape of Good Hope, in what is today South Africa, before crossing the Atlantic.
In 1721 Capt. Joseph Stretton entered Kingston, Jamaica, with 243 Negroes from “Africa” in the Tunbridge Galley of Bristol. Historian Virginia Platt suggests that often, when the generic term Africa was listed and the captain of record had Madagascar experience, it is probable that the ship was illegally carrying captives from Madagascar. Many captains simply reported Africa as the source of slaves in order to avoid discovery during the period between 1698 and 1712, when the Madagascar trade was illegal.38 In 1721 the trade eventually closed again, which may be why Stretton listed “Africa” as his port of call.
Stretton’s next post was as captain of the Prince Eugene, a vessel in which the British merchant John Duckinfield was an investor. The Prince Eugene, having been on an unlicensed voyage to Madagascar, arrived in Virginia from Madagascar after making a stop in Jamaica. Later, a vessel named the Duckinfield (partially owned by John Duckinfield) entered Kingston with 280 slaves from “Africa,” also probably in 1721.39 That ship also continued on to Virginia. As it happens, Duckinfield was also among the owners of the Rebecca Snow, one of the other ships arriving in Virginia from Madagascar during this period.40 These are four examples of ships partially owned by John Duckinfield that brought Malagasy slaves to Jamaica, three of