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Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Books in excellent condition. 4 Volumes. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Within thirty years of the opening of the British slave trade in 1698 to private traders Bristol succeeded in wresting from London the position of Britain’s leading port in the African trade. As was made clear in an introduction to an earlier volume in this series Bristol’s rise to ascendancy by 1730 was due in part to the faltering of London’s participation in the trade. But it was attributable also to a substantial increase in Bristol’s own investment in African commerce a fact reflected in the growth in the port’s clearances to Africa from under 5 ships per year in the period immediately after 1698 to over 40 a year in the late 1720s. The advantage achieved by Bristol in the African trade by 1730 largely persisted until the early 1740s when ascendancy in the trade passed finally and permanently to Liverpool. In only 6 of the 16 years covered by this volume were Bristol vessels in the African trade apparently outnumbered by vessels from any other single British port. London appears to have dispatched more vessels to Africa than Bristol in 1733 and 1736 while clearances from Liverpool to Africa outstripped those from Bristol for the first time in 1739 again in 1742 and persistently from 1744 onwards. Effectively therefore Bristol lost supremacy in British trade to Africa after 1743. Nevertheless during the 16 years beginning in 1730 Bristol merchants were responsible for over 40 per cent of British voyages to Africa fitting out on average 36 ventures a year or almost 550 during the whole period. By comparison clearances from Liverpool to Africa during these 16 years totalled 389 while clearances from London totalled 335. In the remaining sections of this introduction 1 propose firstly to describe the major sources of evidence available for tracing Bristol voyages to Africa between 1730 and 1745 and to assess the reliability of the data they yield and secondly to outline the major features of Bristol’s trade to Africa in this period including the fluctuations in the trade its distribution in West Africa and the pattern of slave sales in America by the port’s ships. (OS)