Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-7drmj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-04T18:38:43.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human Plunder: Slaving Raids, Economic Warfare, and Mercantilism in the French Caribbean, 1665-1713

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2026

Arne Bialuschewski
Arne Bialuschewski*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
*
Email: abialu@trentu.ca
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Between 1665 and 1713, at a time of almost perpetual warfare in Europe, privateers frequently assaulted and seized enslaved people from rival colonies all over the Caribbean. Following mercantilistic principles, the French in particular sought to increase the labour force in their colonies while undermining their enemies’ plantation economies. Of the about 14,000 to 16,000 slaves captured in inter-colonial raids, more than 10,000 were forcibly taken to French colonies. These raids not only came at a high human cost but also led to shifting economic fortunes in the Caribbean.

Keywords

RaidingSlaveryMercantilismFrench coloniesCaribbean history

Information

Type
Article
Information
Itinerario , First View , pp. 1 - 14
Check for updates
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Leiden Institute for History.

Introduction

In early May 1678 a fleet consisting of six ships and a number of smaller vessels gathered at Aves Island in the eastern Caribbean. They belonged to a French privateering force of about 800 men commanded by Jean de Grammont that set out for a large-scale raid of western Venezuela. A few weeks later they seized the port town Maracaibo and while the ships blocked the entrance to the vast lagoon, the Lago de Maracaibo, the bulk of the force advanced far inland. Various attempts to stop the intruders failed. They pillaged Gibraltar and Trujillo as well as numerous cacao plantations just south of the lagoon.Footnote 1 The men left a trail of destruction. Locals who did not manage to flee were abused and mistreated. In October Grammont’s gang returned to Maracaibo, and after efforts to extort ransom led to limited success, the raiders loaded their spoils onto their vessels. Before they set sail for Saint-Domingue in mid-December, the Frenchmen released 450 Spanish hostages. However, they kept about 60 Native Americans previously seized during forays into the wilderness and 170 people of African descent captured in the agricultural area.Footnote 2 While most captives were destined to work on the plantations of participants of the raid, some were surely sold on colonial slave markets.

The history of raiding is usually presented with little focus on human plunder. Indeed, the victims of predatory assaults in the seventeenth-century Caribbean have only recently received some scholarly attention.Footnote 3 Romanticized images of marauding along with an emphasis in the historiography on imperial narratives, often viewed through a national lens, has obfuscated the simple fact that, in the course of frequent raids, numerous innocent people lost their lives, others were severely injured, women were abused, homes and livelihoods were destroyed, and countless individuals suffered from other far-reaching and devastating consequences of ruthless attacks.Footnote 4 Among the victims were also slaves—the most vulnerable element of colonial society—many of whom were killed and, as the example of the Maracaibo raid illustrates, others were forcibly displaced for a second or third time in their arduous lives.

A recent shift in slave trade studies from transatlantic to intercolonial connections has opened new fields of research, and raids of colonies with the aim of acquiring slaves has become an important aspect of the history of the Caribbean. Human plunder, as Gregory O’Malley has demonstrated, provided English colonies that had been underserved by the legal channels of the transatlantic slave trade with forced labour before far-reaching networks of intercolonial trade facilitated the dispersal of enslaved Africans.Footnote 5 In an era when several European nations scrambled for mercantile supremacy in the Atlantic World, slaving raids of hostile colonies performed the dual strategic purpose of supplying one’s own plantation economy with a cheap workforce while undercutting those of rivals.

The connections between the various facets of Caribbean slavery and mercantilism have received scant scholarly attention in the past. Focusing exclusively on the English slave trade, William Pettigrew and Abigail Swingen have shown that mercantilism was by no means a hegemonic and unquestioned economic doctrine in the latter half of the seventeenth century.Footnote 6 This article will follow a different approach and shift the focus to the French colonial empire, where mercantilism has been generally regarded as the uncontested guiding principle until the end of Louis XIV’s reign.Footnote 7 However, this supposition requires a critical re-evaluation. Brett Rushforth has recently suggested that, around 1680, the French sugar colonies purchased significant numbers of Native American captives, prompting the Compagnie du Sénégal to employ privateers to defend its privileges in the transatlantic slave trade.Footnote 8 In this case metropolitan mercantilism was undermined by colonial actors rather than European overseas traders. In a similar vein, slaving raids can be interpreted as measures, carried out by paramilitary forces, to reach strategic goals and to bypass inefficient monopolies granted by central authorities.

It is only within this context that regional issues such as the question of how the number of enslaved people in Martinique and Guadeloupe rose so sharply between the late seventeenth century and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 can be addressed. So far historians have failed to explain this surge that laid the foundation for the enormous growth of the sugar industry in both colonies, surpassing that of nearby Barbados in just a few years.Footnote 9 In order to assess French efforts to acquire coerced labour through raids rather than the struggling transatlantic slave trade, it is necessary to place such practices in the context of half a century of raids and counter-raids that, in one way or another, involved all colonial powers during the peak years of inter-imperial strife in the Caribbean.

The Background

The northwest Europeans who appeared in the Caribbean beginning in the late sixteenth century to establish maritime bases on small islands uninhabited by Spaniards soon came to rely on captured natives and enslaved Africans appropriated from the Iberians. Raids of coastal communities and shipping resulted in the abduction of numerous men, women, and children who found themselves either forced to work for their captors or to be sold to agricultural ventures in the emerging colonies.Footnote 10 At the same time freebooters seized Portuguese slave vessels, which held the asiento de negros, the privilege to furnish the Spanish colonies with coerced labourers from Africa. These gangs then carried their human plunder to the growing French, English, and Dutch imperial outposts.Footnote 11 The Spanish crown’s war with Portugal in the 1640s brought a halt to the transatlantic slave trade, and for over a decade the supply of enslaved Africans faltered. During those years marauders conducted raids with increasing frequency in sparsely defended regions of the Spanish empire. When Spanish forces dislodged French settlers from the small island of Tortuga off the northwest coast of Hispaniola in 1654, they found about 70 black slaves who had been previously seized in Cuba, Hispaniola, and elsewhere.Footnote 12 Once non-Iberian powers settled more colonies of their own in the Americas, options for capitalizing on captured labourers expanded. While the emphasis shifted to large-scale raids, there is no reason to doubt that small-scale raids continued to target enslaved people, even though little is documented in the colonial correspondence about such assaults.

The era of unrelenting raids followed the establishment of plantation economies in English, French, and, to a lesser degree, Dutch Caribbean colonies around the middle of the seventeenth century. This development was closely connected to the importation of ever-increasing numbers of enslaved Africans to work in the agricultural sector. A steady flow was not only required to clear the natural vegetation and toil in the growing tobacco, indigo, and, above all, sugar plantations, but also to counteract the demographic catastrophe of the slave regime in which deaths permanently outnumbered births. Enslaved Africans suffered from a range of mortal diseases, poor diet, malnutrition, inhumane work conditions, and brutal treatment.Footnote 13 Disruptions of the transatlantic slave trade thus had immediate and far-reaching economic consequences in the New World.

The expansion of plantations coincided with the beginning of a period of almost permanent warfare between Europe’s maritime powers. This development not only interfered with the slave routes, it also enabled colonial governors to issue privateering commissions that permitted shipowners to assault and plunder targets all over the Caribbean.Footnote 14 Recognizing the nature of amphibious warfare in this part of the globe, the commissions dispensed in English and French colonies allowed the holders to apprehend goods and merchandise both at sea and ashore. Spoils from land raids were not subjected to the customary deductions by the respective authorities, which typically made up ten percent, rising to sixteen in Jamaica in 1662, of the net proceeds.Footnote 15 In practical terms, this loophole posed an incentive to land in hostile colonies and loot everything valuable that stood in the attackers’ way. Among the lawful prizes were all the tools and expensive equipment used to produce sugar and, perhaps most importantly, thousands of slaves.

Greed and Opportunism in Wartime Raiding

By the time news of the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War reached the New World, the veteran privateer John Wentworth was already prowling the Caribbean. In July 1665 his gang looted Tortola and seized 70 slaves from Dutch settlers. He then sold 23 of these captives in Bermuda and left for another roving voyage.Footnote 16 Meanwhile in Port Royal, Jamaica, freebooters readied to set sail. Many men had no source of income other than plunder, and raiding provided an opportunity to strike it rich, or at least to make some sort of living. However, during an assault on Sint Eustatius and nearby Saba, which led to the capture of 942 slaves, their commander Edward Morgan died, prompting the remainder of the gang to abandon plans to attack Curaçao.Footnote 17 While the English fleet dispersed, France joined the war, and in May 1666 Jean François, better known as L’Olonnais, fitted out a privateering expedition in Tortuga. Within weeks many hunters, the so-called bucaniers, as well as planters struggling to sell their tobacco and indigo crops for a profit signed up for the venture.Footnote 18 The men were determined to pillage prosperous parts of the Spanish empire. Similar to their English counterparts, French privateers were quite opportunistic, and the promise of tremendous spoils was a strong motivating factor.

Before the rise of sugar plantations the slave markets in the English, Dutch, and French Caribbean colonies were rather small. In the foundational decades of colonisation it could be difficult for raiders to turn the theoretical value of enslaved people into monetary gain. In July 1666, for instance, the freebooters led by L’Olonnais looted Maracaibo and Gibraltar, seizing about 50 people of African descent from the region’s cacao plantations and brought them to Saint-Domingue. They knew that local demand in their base of Tortuga with a mere 25 plantations could not absorb the influx of many captives. Thus the vessels first sailed to Gonaïves, just north of the agricultural heartland of the colony, where most of the human plunder was sold on the burgeoning slave market.Footnote 19 As much as aspiring planters clamoured for workers, they frequently lacked capital to pay for sufficient numbers of them in the early stages of economic development. Of course, marauders preferred to sell their loot, including slaves, in nearby colonial markets, but goods could be stashed for later sale as needed. Captives could not just be stowed away, however. They had to be fed and guarded to prevent resistance or escape. Raiders could only profit if they sold slaves quickly. This often proved to be difficult, if not impossible, and thus numerous slaves probably changed hands at a considerable discount, providing opportunities for pioneering settlers near the colonial frontier.

Reports presented raids as far more than a minor nuisance to their profitable system of labour exploitation. Raiding could undermine fledgling colonial economies, sometimes for years to come. One particular point of conflict between England and France was the small island of Saint Christopher, or Saint-Christophe, divided between both powers at a time when the settlers lived alongside the native population. In April 1666 the French seized the English part of the island and kept all enslaved Africans in their possession.Footnote 20 Two years later reinforcements from the other side of the Atlantic enabled English privateers to pillage French plantations and recapture a number of slaves.Footnote 21 Towards the end of 1671 the governor of the English Leeward Islands complained of his inability to retrieve slaves taken by the French in prior raids despite a provision in the Treaty of Breda agreeing to their return. He estimated that 1500 slaves had been seized from Antigua and Montserrat combined and 400 from Saint Christopher.Footnote 22 These figures are undoubtedly exaggerated, but due to their perceived significance, French and English officials squabbled about these forced labourers. In reality, it turned out to be very difficult to return captives of African descent who had been abducted across imperial lines and resold even after this was agreed upon in peace treaties, and many were held in illegal bondage.Footnote 23 This practice had not only economic but also cultural implications. As a consequence of repeated raids and counter-raids, the slave population in French Saint-Christophe generally spoke English.Footnote 24

The French chartered companies were hardly able to furnish the planters with the desired workforce, particularly as the sugar industry expanded, leading to a growing demand for coerced labour. The Compagnie française des Indes occidentales, created in May 1664 with the dual mandate to carry out the colonisation process and provide the plantations with enslaved Africans, never managed to fulfil the latter part of its contractual obligations and was dissolved at the end of 1674. Despite enormous investments from the crown, repeated attempts to develop a transatlantic slave trade in a manner that would enable the French to compete with the Dutch and English failed. In June 1679 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s mercantalistic mastermind, formed the Compagnie du Sénégal with the sole purpose of bringing enslaved people from West Africa to the Caribbean.Footnote 25 Even though it was agreed to sell 2000 slaves annually for eight years, in reality the company probably did not deliver half of that figure. The governor-general of the Antilles, for example, complained in July 1680 that, following years of dearth, no more than 500 to 600 Africans had arrived in the previous sixteen months, mostly in Martinique, and the numbers only gradually increased over time.Footnote 26 Guadeloupe was rarely the recipient of slave shipments directly from Africa and relied on the underserved market in Martinique. In order to expand the supply, both colonies also imported forced labourers through grey channels, which involved Dutch, Danish, and even Kalinago traders.Footnote 27

As the demand for coerced labour rose over time, raids increasingly targeted enslaved Africans. In June 1676 a mixed group of marauders from Jamaica and Saint-Domingue seized Maracaibo. The port town had been sacked twice in the previous decade, and thus the attackers certainly could not expect to find much material wealth. Indeed, the booty only consisted of some silver, textiles, and 130 slaves.Footnote 28 Around the same time Dutchmen based in Tobago launched a series of raids on French colonies. At Marie-Galante they captured approximately 200 slaves and at Saint-Martin more than 50.Footnote 29 Towards the end of the year a French gang reached the Spanish island of Margarita off the Venezuelan coast and seized 44 people of African descent.Footnote 30 In March 1677 a French naval squadron raided Tobago and devastated all Dutch plantations. About 70 to 80 of the 200 slaves who had sought refuge with the island’s native population were handed over to an English expedition a few months later.Footnote 31 In June 1677 Pierre La Garde led a multinational party to raid Santa Marta and abducted 112 black, mulatto, and indigenous captives. Half of them were brought to Jamaica and the other half to Saint-Domingue.Footnote 32 Jamaican freebooters assaulted Campeche in July 1678 where they withdrew with about 250 slaves, including quite a few Mayas.Footnote 33 After de Grammont had returned from Maracaibo, he struck again in El Guaira near Caracas in June 1680, escaping with 54 captives of African descent.Footnote 34 This noteworthy string of raids marks the beginning of a period in which human plunder became a central feature of inter-imperial strife.

New Markets, More Victims

Within a few years slaving raids expanded in scope and volume, and colonial French privateers in particular sought to increase their profits by supplying new customers with forced labourers. The enormous economic opportunities promised by illicit slave trading with Spanish dominions aroused Colbert’s attention in March 1680.Footnote 35 While the Compagnie du Sénégal certainly did not have any capacity to deliver additional Africans to the Caribbean, other enterprising individuals began to take notice. Several months later, in December 1681, the seasoned marauder Nicolas van Hoorn, along with two French merchants, appeared in Cádiz to obtain a license to trade in Spanish America. After a confrontation in the port, the visitors fled and sailed to Africa’s Gold Coast, acquiring slaves in exchange for merchandise as well as through supporting a local ruler in a raid.Footnote 36 With more than 400 captives on board they steered for Cayenne where Van Hoorn sold about 80 Africans to French planters. He then set course for Santo Domingo, which rarely received any slave shipments, trying to unload the remainder of his human cargo but failed to gain access to the market there. Eventually he sailed farther on to Petit-Goâve in the French part of the island to find buyers for the 135 captives who had survived the ordeal.Footnote 37 Apart from the fact that this venture cost numerous innocent lives—no less than half of the Africans perished in the squalor of the ship—it also demonstrates how mercenary motives led to an escalation of raiding.

In Saint-Domingue, Van Hoorn became the driving force behind the preparations for a large-scale assault on Veracruz on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. In May 1683 a fleet of thirteen vessels with multinational crews entered the port under the cover of darkness, landed several hundred armed men, and quickly overwhelmed the garrison. The attackers then looted the town, kidnapped wealthy inhabitants, and seized 1463 able-bodied people of African descent, including many women, with no regard to their legal status. After having extracted some ransom payments for their hostages, an approaching force from Spain prompted the freebooters to withdraw in a hurry and set sail before they could load sufficient provisions.Footnote 38 Within hours the fleet dispersed, and in the following weeks the crews scattered their captives across the Caribbean and beyond.

The lack of provisions and drinking water soon became a major matter of concern. One vessel set a number of people of African descent ashore on a beach near Coatzacoalcos, located about 120 miles down the Mexican coast from Veracruz. Many men and women were reported to have been abandoned on “desolate Cayes.”Footnote 39 While the raiders searched for possible buyers for their human plunder, the conditions under which the captives languished on board steadily deteriorated. Based on eyewitness accounts, French officials noted that numerous victims starved to death and others succumbed to disease.Footnote 40 Mortality must have been horrendous. About 40 women were drowned when a small vessel was shipwrecked off Trinidad de Cuba a few weeks after the raid.Footnote 41 For countless survivors the violent abduction from Veracruz was just the beginning of a traumatic nightmare with no end in sight.

The wide range of destinations for the captives reflects the growth of the plantation economy and role of human plunder in its spread. Many were taken to Saint-Domingue, particularly the regions where tobacco and indigo plantations had recently been established. About 135 people of African descent disembarked at Petit-Goâve and another 200 at Cul-de-Sac.Footnote 42 It seems possible that some of these individuals were not employed by the locals but instead put on a trading vessel and sold to other, more prosperous, colonies. In any case, these arrivals barely offset losses due to mortality and numerous captives fleeing to the Spanish part of the island, which became a complication of such magnitude that, in October 1677, the authorities in Santo Domingo had to implement a formal sanctuary policy.Footnote 43 Other victims of the Veracruz raid scattered to a variety of locations such as Jamaica, where labour-intensive sugar plantations expanded across most of the island.Footnote 44 One vessel commanded by Jacob Hall sailed as far as Charleston, South Carolina, to sell the remainder of the captives. At that time Charleston was gaining a reputation as an open port to freebooters, and slaves were certainly in high demand in the fledgling plantation colony, which had not previously received any known shipments from Africa.Footnote 45 Pioneering settlers near the colonial frontier with poor access to Atlantic trade networks proved most willing to trade with outlaws. Desperate for cheap labourers, colonists usually turned a blind eye to their source.

Many marauders probably thought that the raid of Veracruz was a missed opportunity to strike it rich, and plans were made to return soon thereafter. As time progressed, these designs were altered to loot Campeche instead. In July 1685 about 700 men led by Jean de Grammont and Laurens de Graaf launched an attack and, after days of fierce fighting, seized the town. Over the next two months raiding gangs advanced far inland, pillaging villages and ranches, but most valuables had been brought into safety and attempts to extort ransom failed. Eventually the gang withdrew with nearly 250 captured Mayas and people of African descent.Footnote 46 Following the example from two years earlier, a number of indigenous captives—in large part women—were taken to Saint-Domingue, and it seems likely that some abducted people ended up in South Carolina. About 40 slaves were abandoned by de Graaf when his vessel ran aground near Cartagena months later.Footnote 47 For raiders these individuals were nothing but disposable wealth, and they treated their human plunder accordingly.

The Evolving French Connection

The outbreak of the Nine Years’ War in September 1688 once again disrupted transatlantic shipping. According to an official report, the Compagnie du Sénégal provided fewer than 100 enslaved Africans in 1689 and 1690, and the Compagnie de Guinée, established in January 1685 with the monopoly of the French trade south of the Gambia River, brought 711 Africans to Martinique.Footnote 48 As a result, raiding emerged as a substantial source of labour for the French Caribbean colonies. In the following years vessels crossed the Atlantic with the specific aim to lead large-scale raids and supply the sugar plantations with a workforce that the chartered companies did not manage to deliver. Since France was financially in dire straits, joint-ventures funded by private investors, so-called armateurs, but carried out with naval forces were formed. The agreements usually assigned a fifth of the net proceeds to the crown and a tenth to the Amirauté.Footnote 49 This policy opened a new era of raiding that devastated many colonies for years to come.

In April and May 1689 two heavily armed ships commanded by the former slave trader Jean-Baptiste du Casse sailed from France to Guyana and raided Dutch settlements in Pomeroon and Berbice before steering for Sint Eustatius where his crews seized 151 enslaved Africans.Footnote 50 A combined assault with privateers led by Jean Fantin, who had previously joined du Casse at the Canary Islands, on Saint Christopher in August of that year led to the abduction of no more than 38 slaves.Footnote 51 English counterattacks on Marie-Galante and Saint-Barthélemy in the following months were aimed at pillaging French plantations, but the spoils were equally meagre and only a few slaves were captured.Footnote 52 The settlers were left struggling to rebuild their colonies with little support, and it seems reasonable to assume that quite a few gave up and sought their fortunes elsewhere.

In June 1690 the French in Saint-Domingue joined the war and dispatched a raiding party to Santiago de los Caballeros in the Spanish part of the island, but the men failed to acquire any spoils.Footnote 53 This set off a chain of further assaults. In January 1691 the Spanish militia, supported by the Armada de Barlovento, retaliated by attacking settlements on the north coast of Saint-Domingue. The force included two companies of negros minas who had formerly escaped from French plantations and sought refuge in the Spanish-controlled part of the island. The foray led to the acquisition of 140 people of African descent, some of whom were reported to have surrendered to the invaders.Footnote 54 Previously displaced captives may also have played a role in the next assault when a small privateering fleet from Jamaica attacked Cul-de-Sac in May 1691 in an attempt to capitalise on the Spanish raid. The incursion, however, did not result in the capture of a substantial number of slaves but rather triggered an insurrection led by those seeking to exploit the chaos of the situation to throw off the chains of their bondage.Footnote 55

For the French an unexpected but certainly welcome opportunity for reprisal with the potential for material gain arose in June 1692 when an earthquake destroyed Port Royal and killed thousands, including many slaves. In the wake of this disaster English defenses were neglected for quite some time. French privateers operated nearly unchecked in Jamaican waters and not only plundered merchant shipping but also launched a series of assaults on undefended plantations. Although one raid led to the capture of 45 slaves, the overall haul of these incursions seems to have been rather paltry.Footnote 56 It took two years until three naval vessels from France enabled the freebooters based in Saint-Domingue to seriously threaten English rule over Jamaica. In June 1694 a fleet of 21 vessels landed several hundred Frenchmen who obliterated about two dozen sugarmills in the island’s southeast and seized between 1300 and 1400 slaves.Footnote 57 The Jamaicans retaliated a few months later, in May 1695, when a squadron of privateers and two frigates from England joined Spanish militia units from Santo Domingo. This combined force pillaged French plantations and settlements on the north coast of Saint-Domingue. There the men seized a multitude of slaves. About 400 were taken to Santo Domingo, 20 went to Cuba, and 86 remained on the Spanish vessels. The number of African labourers brought to Jamaica was probably of a similar magnitude so that a total of 1000 victims seems to be a reasonable estimate.Footnote 58 There can be little doubt that quite a few captives had been previously seized by the French in other colonies.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the imperial authorities in Paris increasingly intervened in the Caribbean, leading to an intensification of economic warfare. After two naval expeditions had achieved little, the French endeavored to deal a decisive blow to the Spaniards by seizing and destroying a major port. In January 1697 a privately outfitted fleet of twenty ships commanded by Baron de Pointis was dispatched to Saint-Domingue.Footnote 59 Here the vessels were joined by a privateering force that included many free people of African descent for a large-scale raid of Cartagena. The assault turned into a fierce battle, but the Spaniards were eventually defeated, and after days of plundering the naval contingent withdrew with considerable riches while the freebooters netted virtually nothing. Determined not to waste an opportinity, they returned to loot the target for a second time. Among the spoils were an estimated 200 African captives.Footnote 60 Most of them were brought to the depopulated northern parts of Saint-Domingue where they were set to toil on plantations that formed the foundation for a burgeoning sugar industry.

Escalation During the War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession led to further escalation of hostilities in the Caribbean. As soon as news of the motherland entering the conflict reached Saint Christopher in June 1702, the English militia moved to occupy the French part of the island. As usual in such takeovers, the settlers were forced to seek refuge elsewhere—in this case Martinique—while their slaves fell into the hands of the aggressor.Footnote 61 In January 1706 a naval squadron commanded by Henri-Louis de Chavagnac attempted to reclaim the colony for the French. When the assault on the fortification was repulsed, the attackers plundered all nearby plantations, some of which they burned to the ground. Word of an approaching English fleet then prompted the French to withdraw to their vessels and leave the island with 412 captured slaves to be sold in Martinique.Footnote 62 Three months later, in April of that year, Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville joined de Chavagnac and, along with privateers and militiamen from Martinique, arrived with a fleet at Nevis where the men went ashore, pillaging one plantation after the other. To stop the advance, the English armed who they considered to be the most reliable slaves. However, the defenders soon had to surrender, and in the chaos of the takeover many slaves seized the opportunity to flee to the island’s volcanic interior. The French departed with 3187 captives, which was about half of Nevis’s unfree workforce.Footnote 63

Nevis was not the only example where desperate colonists armed their slaves to enhance the resistance against attackers. Enslaved Africans and their descendants contributed to the defense of Essequibo when the Dutch colony was assaulted by a privateering gang under Pierre Borne in October 1708. The Frenchmen looted native villages and set plantations on fire. To avoid preventable losses, the Dutch agreed after weeklong negotiations to pay a ransom of 163 slaves in addition to the 74 men and women, including indigenous people, that the French had already captured. However, this did not satisfy the invaders who returned in February 1709 and pillaged the colony, seizing another 234 people of African descent.Footnote 64 The victims were brought to Martinique and sold on the local slave market.

Slaving raids may have escalated in part because in August 1701 the French had been granted the asiento. For this purpose du Casse transformed the Compagnie de Guinée into the Compagnie de Guinée et de l’Assiente, which was responsible for supplying not only the French but also the Spanish Caribbean as well as South America with enslaved Africans.Footnote 65 The French chartered companies, however, were never able to satisfy the growing demand for coerced labour in their own colonies, and efforts to purchase slaves elsewhere, such as in Curaçao, only met with limited success. Against this background there can be little doubt that additional shipments to the Spanish colonies in the early eighteenth century could hardly be achieved with peaceful means.Footnote 66 In response, the French resorted to large-scale amphibious operations with the aim of seizing slaves from English and Dutch colonies. From the port of landing some captives were then transported to other colonies in the French empire and sometimes beyond. Having flooded Martinique and Saint-Domingue’s markets with 800 and 2158 captured slaves from Nevis in May and June 1706, for example, the remainder of d’Iberville’s human plunder was sold at Havana and Veracruz.Footnote 67 As a consequence of this raid, the demand for enslaved Africans in the entire French Caribbean in the next few years must have been at a low, and slaves continued to be brought through a clandestine trade from French ports to various Spanish colonies.Footnote 68

Another major French campaign, which targeted the plantations of their European enemies, began in July 1712 when peace negotiations were already underway. A massive fleet of 36 naval vessels and several thousand men under Jacques Cassard crossed the Atlantic and raided the English colony Montserrat, where they seized about 1160 people of African descent. The attackers then turned to Surinam, which they spared in exchange for 730 slaves as ransom, and after that briefly occupied Berbice, only staying long enough to take possession of 259 of the most valuable slaves.Footnote 69 These raids were evidently carried out with a focus on the labour markets. About half were ferried to Martinique and the other half to Guadeloupe.Footnote 70 It seems likely that some captives were destined to be sold to other colonies, but, as is so often the case, little is known about the final whereabouts of countless forced labourers.

Cassard’s incursions mark the end of the peak years of raiding in the early eighteenth century. An assault on Sint Eustatius in January 1713 led to the seizure of 264 of the island’s 460 slaves, and in Curaçao the parties agreed to a ransom payment, including an unknown number of enslaved Africans. Some of the human plunder was put on two smaller vessels and, along with other spoils, sold in Cartagena and Portobelo.Footnote 71 Ultimately, the Peace of Utrecht concluded the formative period of non-Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean. The French lost the asiento, which had supplied the Spanish colonies in this part of the globe with approximately 12,500 slaves in the preceding decade.Footnote 72 Furthermore, the chartered companies were about to lose their monopolies while separate traders provided colonial markets with an ever-increasing number of enslaved Africans in order to gradually close the gap between supply and demand.

Conclusion

During the half century between 1665 and 1713 about 14,000 to 16,000 people of African descent plus several hundred Native Americans were seized by hostile forces using a variety of violent practices throughout most of the Caribbean colonies. The overwhelming majority of raids, particularly the large-scale assaults towards the end of the period under consideration, were carried out by the French who captured and abducted more than 10,000 of these individuals. To place this number in perspective, a total of approximately 49,000 enslaved Africans were transported across the Atlantic to the French colonies between 1689 and 1713.Footnote 73 This suggests that raiding constituted a major source of coerced labour in French plantations.

These figures reflect the reality of mercantilism in the French overseas empire at a time when its transatlantic slave trade fell increasingly behind the English and the Dutch. After Louis XIV had dismantled the ailing Compagnie de Guinée et de l’Assiente towards the end of 1713, it took another three years until separate traders from the major Atlantic ports were allowed to dispatch their vessels to the Gold Coast.Footnote 74 In the meantime colonists and privateers found in raiding a more immediate and cost-effective means to supply additional slaves to the Caribbean plantations. What began as manifestations of greed and opportunism on the part of raiders evolved into a mercantile policy in French colonies that eventually expanded to a geopolitical strategy in state-level economic warfare. Raiding helped to fill a perceived gap in the labour force and laid the foundation for the enormous growth of the French sugar industry, which turned out to be more productive than the British in the following decades.

Raiding had an impact on the fortunes of most Caribbean colonies. Above all, Martinique and, to a lesser degree, Guadeloupe’s plantation economies profited from the influx of forced workers seized from hostile colonies to become the world’s leading sugar producers by 1713. Saint-Domingue was also inundated with captives, but parts of the colony were devastated in the 1690s so that agricultural production could not catch up until the early eighteenth century.Footnote 75 Smaller islands, such as Saint-Christophe and Saint-Martin, hardly recovered from repeated raids during the second half of the seventeenth century and fell behind the economic development of better defended colonies. Among France’s rivals in the Caribbean only Barbados, the prime destination of slave vessels coming from Africa, did not suffer from the consequences of any raids. Other English, Spanish, and particularly Dutch colonies lost a considerable number of slaves to French attacks, and while Jamaican privateers also seized more than 1000 people of African descent, the Dutch barely engaged in any paramilitary operations to offset previous losses to their enemies.

Regardless of their final destination, for African captives who had survived the Middle Passage and adapted to plantation life, becoming casualties of a raid and being transported overseas to an unknown location for a second or even third time probably led to further traumatisation. Abductions severed whatever familial, cultural, and sentimental ties enslaved people had managed to establish in the New World. Social networks based on ethnic connections that facilitated survival under horrendous, often deadly, conditions were annihilated, and many had to adjust to a new environment along with appalling labour arrangements. All of these factors placed a heavy burden on a substantial part of the slave population, including hundreds of Native Americans, and even free people of African descent were vulnerable to re-enslavement and its dehumanizing consequences.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Evan Burke, Victor Enthoven, Miriam Felman, Javier Francisco, Wim Klooster, Raynald Laprise, Karl Offen, Juan José Ponce Vázquez, Brett Rushforth, David Wheat, Kate Zubczyk, and Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva along with the University of Rochester history graduate students who commented on an earlier version.

References

1 Archives nationales, Paris [hereafter AN], Marine B4 8, fols. 388-92, report of Jean de Grammont, 10 April 1679; Luis Britto García, Demonios del mar: Piratas y corsarios en Venezuela, 1528-1727 (Caracas: Fundación Francisco Herrera Luque, 1998), 500-06; David F. Marley, Pirates of the Americas, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, Cal.: ABC-Clio, 2010), 1: 155-56; Jacques Gasser, Dictionnaire des flibustiers des Caraïbes (Les Sables d’Olonne: Editions de Beaupré, 2017), 205-08.

2 Archivo General de Indias, Seville [hereafter AGI], Santo Domingo 196, ramo 2, no. 16, Antonio de Aguirra to Francisco de Alberro, 16 July 1678; AGI, Santa Fé 219, no. 68, testimonies of Diego Suárez de Velasco, Martín de Urdaneta, Juan de Andrada, Pedro Velasco, Nicolás del Pozo, Mauricio Quintero, José de Aguirre, and Francisco de Ontiberos, 16 to 21 February 1679; AGI, México 51, ramo 1, no. 18b, fols. 5-6, Francisco Gonzáles de Figueroa to Martín de Moscotegui, 21 February 1679; AGI, Santa Fé 218, no. 20, Rafael Capsir y de Sanz to Crown, 6 March 1679. For the African origins of the slaves see Luis Alberto Ramírez Méndez, “Los esclavos en el sur del Lago de Maracaibo, siglos XVI-XVII,” Boletín de la Academia Nacional de la Historia 94 (2011), 85-96.

3 Arne Bialuschewski, “Slaves of the Buccaneers: Mayas in Captivity in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Ethnohistory 64 (2017), 41-63; Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, “Afro-Mexican Women in Saint-Domingue: Piracy, Captivity, and Community in the 1680s and 1690s,” Hispanic American Historical Review 100 (2020), 3-34; April Lee Hatfield, Boundaries of Belonging: English Jamaica and the Spanish Caribbean, 1655-1715 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 87-106.

4 Raids are surprise attacks into enemy territory without the intention of holding ground. Overviews with a transimperial focus include Christian Buchet, La lutte pour l’espance caraïbes et la façade atlantique de l’Amérique centrale et du sud, 1672-1763, 2 vols. (Paris: Libraire de l’Inde, 1991), 1: 102-81; David F. Marley, Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World (Santa Barbara, Cal.: ABC Clio, 1998), 160-99; Jean-Claude Castex, Combats franco-anglais de la Guerre de Trente Ans et de la Guerre de la Ligue d’Augsbourg, 1627-1697 (Vancouver: Editions du Phare-Ouest, 2012), 121-46.

5 Gregory E. O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 85-94.

6 William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 86-91; Abigail L. Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015), 172-95.

7 For the demise of the mercantilistic trade monopolies around 1715 see, for example, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Nantes au temps de la traite des Noirs (Paris: Pluriel, 2014), 45-53; Pierre Ménard, Le français qui possédait l’Amérique: la vie extraordinaire d’Antoine Crozat, milliardaire sous Louis XIV (Paris: le Cherche midi, 2017), 285-99.

8 Brett Rushforth, “Monopolizing Violence: African Slave Trading Companies and the Suppression of Native Slavery in the Americas,” in Beyond 1619: The Atlantic Origins of American Slavery, ed. Paul J. Polgar, Marc H. Lerner, and Jesse Cromwell (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), 53-56.

9 Paul Butel, Histoire des Antilles françaises, XVIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 76-83; Frédéric Régent, La France et ses esclaves de la colonisation aux abolitions, 1620-1848 (Paris: Grasset 2007), 93-105.

10 Casey Schmitt, The Predatory Sea: Human Trafficking and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), 27-95.

11 AGI, Indiferente General 2796, ramo 3, declaration of Melchor Gómez Angel and Cristóbal Méndez de Sosa, 1 March 1631; AGI, Santo Domingo 55, ramo 16, no. 82, Alonso de Cereceda to Crown, 8 May 1636; AGI, Guatemala 16, ramo 2, no. 13, confession of John Pinckard, 5 October 1637; Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foudation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20-38.

12 AGI, Patronato 273, ramo 7, fols. 183-84, Juan Francisco Montemayor de Cuenca to Crown, 31 March 1654. In addition to the Africans, quite a number of enslaved Mayas from the Yucatan Peninsula toiled in Tortuga. For the background see Michel-Christian Camus, L’île de la Tortue au cœur de la flibuste caraïbe (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 42-45.

13 Richard B. Sheridan, Doctors and Slaves: A Medical and Demographic History of Slavery in the British West Indies, 1680-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 162-94.

14 Privateering was a strictly regulated business. See John Coakley, “‘The Piracies of Some Little Privateers’: Language, Law, and Maritime Violence in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean,” Britain and the World 13 (2020), 14-19. Raiders who did not follow their legal obligations are interchangeably termed freebooters or marauders.

15 The National Archives, London [hereafter TNA], High Court of Admiralty 49/59, fol. 92, commission for George Brimacain, 18 September 1662; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris [hereafter BnF], Mélanges de Colbert 31, fols. 634-35, commission for William Griffin, 18 September 1668.

16 Michael Jarvis, Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints: An Atlantic History of Bermuda, 1609-1684 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), 294-98. The fate of the other captives is unknown.

17 TNA, Colonial Office 1/19, fols. 278-89, Theodore Carey to Henry Lord Arlington, 17 November 1665; Michael Pawson and David Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2000), 31-34; Nuala Zahedieh, “The Second Anglo-Dutch War in the Caribbean,” in War, Trade, and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict, 1652-1689, ed. David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2020), 197-98.

18 Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence [hereafter ANOM], Colonies C9A 1, fols. 18-21, Bertrand d’Ogeron to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 20 September 1666; ANOM, Colonies F3 164, fols. 122-26, memorandum of Bertrand d’Ogeron, 20 April 1667; Jacques Ducoin, Bertrand d’Ogeron: fondateur de la colonie de Saint-Domingue et gouverneur des flibustiers (Brest: Le Télégramme, 2013), 118-21.

19 AGI, Santo Domingo 273, no. 60, declaration of Pedro Velasco, 11 November 1666; AGI, Guatemala 22, ramo 1, no. 11, declarations of Jean de Lebaquoi and Pierre Dugren, 8 October 1668; AGI, Santo Domingo 196, ramo 2, no. 55, declaration of Juan Fernández Ortiz, 15 May 1680. For the plantations see ANOM, Colonies C9B 1, fols. 12-14, Bertrand d’Ogeron to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 20 July 1666; BnF, Cartes et plans, Ge SH 18, portf. 150, div. 5, François Blondel, “L’isle de La Tortue,” 1667.

20 TNA, Colonial Office 1/20, fols. 335-36, William Willoughby to Crown, 8 December 1666.

21 ANOM, Colonies C10B 1, pt. 2, fols. 1-5, Antoine Le Febvre de La Boine to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 13 May 1668.

22 TNA, Colonial Office 1/27, fols. 130-36, Sir Charles Wheler to Henry Lord Arlington, 9 December 1671. A few months later the governor and the council and assembly of Montserrat made a similar petition and complained about the French failing to return seized slaves. See TNA, Colonial Office 1/28, fol. 164, William Stapleton to Council of Trade and Plantations, 19 June 1672; David Chaunu, “Sortir la guerre, rétablir la paix dans la Caraïbe coloniale: l’application de la paix de Breda à Saint-Christophe, 1667-1674,” Revue d’histoire diplomatique 129 (2015), 216-17.

23 TNA, Colonial Office 31/3, fols. 62-70, Benjamin Worsley to Council of Trade and Plantations, 18 February 1673.

24 ANOM, Colonies C8A 6, fols. 324-41, Gabriel Dumaitz de Goimpy to Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 16 February 1691.

25 Abdoulaye Ly, La Compagnie du Sénégal (Paris: Karthala, 1993), 89-157.

26 ANOM, Colonies C8A 2, fols. 334-49, Charles de Courbon de Blénac to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 13 July 1680; ANOM, Colonies C8A 3, fols. 310-20, Charles de Courbon de Blénac and Michel Bégon to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 18 June 1684; Jacques Petitjean-Roget, La société d’habitation à la Martinique: un demi-siècle de formation, 1635-1685, 2 vols. (Lille: Service de reproduction des thèses, 1980), 2: 1375-85.

27 James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 217-20.

28 AGI, Panamá 37, no. 65, Antonio Camarillo and Alberto de Soto to José Daza, 11 July 1676; National Library of Jamaica, Kingston, Ms. 60, vol. 2, fols. 124-25, deposition of John Morris, 24 July 1676.

29 ANOM, Colonies C7A 3, fols. 12-18, narrative of Vincent Gonnaire de Vauluisant, 19 June 1676; ANOM, Colonies C8A 1, fols. 383-87, Jean-Charles de Baas to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 27 July 1676. For the devastating impact of the raids see Christian Schnakenbourg, “Recherches sur l’histoire de l’industrie sucrière à Marie-Galante, 1664-1964,” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe 18 (1981), 18; Denise and Henri Parisis, “Le siècle du sucre à Saint-Martin français,” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe 31 (1994), 10.

30 AGI, Santo Domingo 181, ramo 7, no. 24, Francisco Meija y Alarcón to Crown, 24 February 1677.

31 ANOM, Colonies F3 26, fols. 140-53, Charles de Courbon de Blénac to Gabriel Dumaitz de Goimpy, 13 January 1678; TNA Colonial Office 1/42, fol. 31, William Stapleton to Council of Trade and Plantations, 19 January 1678.

32 Longleat Library and Archives, Coventry Papers 75, fol. 217, Lucas Fernández de Piedrahita to Francisco Rodríguez de Ledesma, 17 September 1677; AGI, Escribanía de Cámara 755B, pieza 4, fols. 111-20, testimony of Antonio de Quintana Caballos, 11 May 1681.

33 AGI, México 1010, fol. 555, Payo Enríquez de Rivera to Crown, 28 August 1678, along with enclosed documents.

34 AGI, Escribanía de Cámara 678A, pieza 2, fols. 174-81, testimony of Pablo Martínez de Bergara, 29 May 1681.

35 ANOM, Colonies F2A 10, no. 114, memorandum for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 28 March 1680. The comprehensive manuscript contains sections on privateering and the slave trade, but it is not clear whether the French authorities realised the economic potential of slaving raids at that time.

36 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag [hereafter NA], West-Indische Compagnie 337, fols. 41-43, resolution of Kamer Amsterdam, 10 February 1682; AGI, Escribanía de Cámara 25C, pieza 32, fols. 4-5, declaration of Louis Maget, 10 December 1682.

37 TNA, Colonial Office 1/51, fols. 106-07, deposition of James Nicolas, 3 March 1683; AGI, Santo Domingo 875, libro 22, fols. 100-04, instructions for Simón Ibañéz Lezcano, 28 February 1684; NA, Sociëteit van Suriname 212, fols. 141-45, testimony of Abraham Bergenaer, 31 March 1684; Juan José Ponce Vázquez, “Smugglers, Pirates, Diplomacy, and the Spanish Caribbean in the Late Seventeenth Century,” Colonial Latin American Review 32 (2023), 54-73.

38 AGI, Patronato 243, ramo 2, fols. 200-04, interrogation of Julian de Salinas, 25 June 1683. For an outline of events see David F. Marley, Sack of Veracruz: The Great Pirate Raid of 1683 (Windsor, Ont.: Netherlandic Press, 1993), 29-60; Joseph M.H. Clark, Veracruz and the Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 226-29; Pablo Miguel Sierra Silva, In the Wake of the Raid: Blackness, Piracy, and the 1683 Sack of Veracruz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2027), forthcoming.

39 TNA, Colonial Office 1/52, fols. 230-33, Sir Thomas Lynch to Lords of Trade and Plantations, 12 September 1683 (quote); AGI, Santo Domingo 3, ramo 2, no. 66b, Joseph Fernández de Córdoba to Crown, 13 December 1683.

40 AN, Marine B4 9, fols. 389-90, Pierre Arnoul to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 13 November 1683; ANOM, Colonies C8A 3, fols. 289-90, Claude de Roux de Saint-Laurent and Michel Bégon to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 23 November 1683. The latter source even stated that more than half of the captives had died of starvation, but it seems unlikely that officials in Martinique were in a position to assess the full extent of this tragedy. For a reference to disease on board the vessels see Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers XXIV, folder 2, Sir Thomas Lynch to William Blathwayt, 14 August 1683.

41 AGI, Escribanía de Cámara 25B, pieza 16, fols. 30-42, declarations of Pedro Bernardino, Marcelo del Canto, and Nicolás Cantillano, 4 August 1683.

42 ANOM, Colonies C9A 1, fols. 184-93, Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 24 August 1684. Spanish privateers raided Petit-Goâve in August 1687 and took with them nine or ten individuals identified as mulattos who had probably been seized in Veracruz. See BnF, Fonds Clairambault 1016, fol. 47, Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 27 August 1687.

43 Juan José Ponce Vázquez, Islanders and Empire: Smuggling and Political Defiance in Hispaniola, 1580-1690 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 245-48.

44 TNA, Colonial Office 1/52, fols. 230-33, Sir Thomas Lynch to Council of Trade and Plantations, 12 September 1683. At that time it was illegal for Englishmen to serve under a French commission, which prompted Lynch to seek the arrest of participants of the raid.

45 TNA, Colonial Office 1/54, fols. 273-74, William Earl of Craven to Council of Trade and Plantations, 27 May 1684; AGI, México 56, ramo 1, no. 26, declarations of Elmo Mermique and Glado Satre, 11 January 1686. It appears that Hall may have sailed farther on to Virginia.

46 After the raid various, mostly inflated, estimates of the number of captives were reported. For a realistic assessment see, above all, AGI, México 363, ramo 3, no. 6, fols. 35-40, declaration of José de Letancur, 3 October 1685. See also Héctor Pérez Martínez, Piraterias en Campeche, siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII (Campeche: Universidad Autónoma del Sudeste, 1984), 53-61; Carlos Saiz Cidoncha, Historia de la piratería en América española (Madrid: Editorial San Martín, 1985), 322-28.

47 TNA, Colonial Office 5/288, fols. 75-76, Thomas Craven to Robert Quarry, 1 February 1686; AGI, Guatemala 32, ramo 1, no. 41f, declaration of Julien de Chedemail, 30 July 1686; ANOM, Colonies C9A 1, fols. 413-42, memorandum of Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, 3 May 1688.

48 ANOM, Colonies C8A 6, fols. 324-41, Gabriel Dumaitz de Goimpy to Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 16 February 1691.

49 John S. Bromley, Corsairs and Navies, 1660-1760 (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 187-99.

50 NA, West-Indische Compagnie 1080, no. 67, demands of Charles de Courbon de Blénac, 6 April 1689; NA, Sociëteit van Suriname 219, fols. 374-77, journal of Abraham van Vredenburgh, 5 to 12 May 1689; AN, Marine B4 12, fols. 129-30, Jean-Baptiste Paquin to Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Seignelay, 9 June 1689; Philippe Hrodĕj, L’amiral du Casse: l’élévation d’un Gascon sous Louis XIV, 2 vols. (Paris: Libraire de l’Inde, 1999), 1: 87-90.

51 ANOM, Colonies C8A 5, fol. 239, Gabriel Dumaitz de Goimpy to Charles de Courbon de Blénac, 27 August 1689.

52 TNA, Colonial Office 152/37, fols. 767-68, Christopher Codrington to Thomas Hewetson, 26 December 1689; TNA, Colonial Office 28/1, fols. 40-41, Edwyn Stede to Council of Trade and Plantations, 11 February 1690.

53 AGI, Santo Domingo 65, ramo 6, no. 215, Ignacio Pérez Caro to Crown, 6 August 1690; ANOM, Colonies F3 165, fols. 142-44, memorandum of Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, 19 August 1690.

54 ANOM, Colonies C9A 2, fols. 150-51, declaration of Servan de La Jannais-Bocquet, 19 April 1691; AGI, Santo Domingo 65, ramo. 7, no. 229, Fernando de Araujo Rivera to Crown, 24 April 1691. Negros Minas, which is an ethnic label for slaves from the Gold Coast, obtained their freedom and found a new home in a settlement near Santo Domingo.

55 ANOM, Colonies F3 165, fols. 260-63, memorandum of Jacques Yvon des Landes, 5 July 1691; Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers XXII, folder 10, William O’Brien to William Blathwayt, 12 August 1691.

56 TNA, Colonial Office 140/5, 181-82, Jamaica Council minutes, 28 May 1692; ANOM, Colonies F3 165, fols. 368-71, Jean-Baptiste du Casse to Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 1 June 1693; TNA, Colonial Office 137/44, fols. 84-85, William Beeston to Earl of Nottingham, 19 October 1693.

57 British Library, London, Add. Ms. 12430, fols. 4-13, narrative of William Beeston, 23 June 1694; ANOM, Colonies C9A 3, fols. 26-30, Jean-Baptiste du Casse to Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 3 September 1694.

58 ANOM, Colonies F3 166, fols. 1-20, report of Claude-Antoine du Lyon, 27 August 1695; AGI, Patronato 271, ramo 8, no. 6, fols. 1-4, Gil Carreoso Catalán to Crown, 20 November 1695. One English commander noted: “It is impossible to ascertaine the number off Negroes taken from the French [due to] the secret and different practicing of the Spaniards, Jamaica Privateers, and our Souldiers and Sailers.” Shortly thereafter the authorities in Jamaica identified a considerable number of “free Negroes” among the captives. See TNA, Colonial Office 137/3, fols. 217-28, journal of John Murray, 11 August 1695 (quote); Antonio Espino López, “Sobre la creación de fronteras: El caso de La Española y las guerras del reinado de Carlos II, 1673-1697,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 75 (2018), 274-79.

59 James Pritchard, “The French West Indies during the Nine Years’ War, 1688-1697: A Review and Reappraisal,” French Colonial History 2 (2002), 53-54.

60 Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Ms. 1188, fols. 18-27, journal of Louis Chancel de Lagrange, 14 April to 7 June 1697; ANOM, Colonies C9A 3, fols. 307-18, Jean-Baptiste du Casse to Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrin, 29 June 1697. For conflicts that emerged when the abducted slaves were replaced see AGI, Santa Fé 435, ramo 1, no. 2, memorandum of Julián Antonio de Tequada, 5 October 1700. The background is outlined in Jean-Yves Nerzic and Christian Buchet, Marins et flibustiers du Roi-Soleil: Carthagène, 1697 (Aspet: PyréGraph, 2002), 205-16; Jon Latimer, Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 273-79.

61 ANOM, Colonies C8A 14, fols. 49-50, Nicolas de Gabaret to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 27 August 1702.

62 TNA, Colonial Office 152/6, no. 44, John Johnson to Council of Trade and Plantations, 13 March 1706; AN, Marine B4 31, fols. 111-13, Henri-Louis de Chavagnac to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 16 March 1706.

63 TNA, Colonial Office 184/1, fols. 12-14, journal of Richard Abbott, 4 April 1706; ANOM, Colonies C8A 16, fols. 119-36, Jean-Jacques Mithon to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 10 November 1706. Mithon noted that several captives claimed to have been free people of African descent.

64 TNA, Colonial Office 116/20, fols. 237-56, Pieter van der Heijden Rezen to Kamer Zeeland, 1 January 1709; ANOM, Colonies C8A 17, fols. 81-100, Nicolas-François Arnoul de Vaucresson to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 18 April 1709; NA, West-Indische Compagnie 812, fols. 220-29, Kamer Zeeland to Pieter van der Heijden Rezen, 15 November 1709.

65 Reyes Fernández Durán, La corona española y el tráfico de negros: Del monopolio al libre comercio (Madrid: Editorial del Economista, 2011), 39-59.

66 An outline of Venezuela’s reliance on Curaçao and the efforts made by the French to purchase additional slaves there during the war is in Alex Borucki, “Trans-imperial History in the Making of the Slave Trade to Venezuela, 1526-1811,” Itinarario 36 (2012), 37. For the greater efficiency of English and Dutch traders leading to lower prices for slaves compared to the French transatlantic trade see David Eltis and David Richardson, “Productivity in the Slave Trade,” Explorations in Economic History 32 (1995), 465-84; David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 118-29.

67 TNA, Colonial Office 7/1, fols. 53-54, John Johnson to Charles Hedges, jr., 28 May 1706; AN, Marine B2 196, fols. 215-17, Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain to Joseph Le Moyne de Sérigny et de Loire, 12 January 1707; AGI, Indiferente General 2751, no. 45, memorandum of Hernán Forrado de Guzmán, 10 May 1707.

68 ANOM, Colonies F2A 8, no. 5, Jean d’Arros d’Argelos to Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, 24 October 1708.

69 NA, Sociëteit van Suriname 129, fols. 302-17, journal of Johan de Goyer, 9 to 22 October 1712; AN, Marine B4 36, fols. 201-03, memorandum of Jean Moans de Grasse, 15 November 1712. For the background see Cornelis C. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and in the Guianas, 1680-1791 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1985), 282-83; Philippe Hrodĕj, Jacques Cassard: armateur et corsaire du Roi-Soleil (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2002), 159-93.

70 AN, Marine B4 36, fols. 224-25, François-Noël-Laurent Le Vasseur to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 27 January 1713; ANOM, Colonies C7A 6, fols. 181-84, Georges-Robert Cloche de Mont-Saint-Rémy to Jérôme Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain, 8 April 1713.

71 AN, Marine B4 36, fols. 252-59, memorandum of François Calquier-Pommet, 16 March 1713; AGI, Santo Domingo 696, no. 31, José Francisco de Cañas to Crown, 16 June 1713; AN, Marine B4 36, fols. 287-88, account of [?]Gressier, 18 August 1713.

72 Karsten Voss, Sklaven als Ware und Kapital: Die Plantagenökonomie von Saint-Domingue als Entwicklungsprojekt, 1697-1715 (München: C.H. Beck, 2016), 146-50. About the same number of slaves were delivered by the company to the Rio de la Plata region.

73 Estimates of the slaves seized in raids are based on numbers previously stated in this article with an additional ten to twenty-five percent for raids that are not mentioned. The number of enslaved people transported from Africa to the French Caribbean derives from www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates. Figures for earlier years are either missing or seem to be extremely unreliable. The published estimates include Africans seized on slave vessels and delivered to a Caribbean port, but these cases are poorly documented.

74 Liliane Crété, La traite des nègres sous l’Ancien Régime: le nègre, le sucre et la toile (Paris: Perrin, 1989), 24-29. The authorities levied taxes on the private traders to support French fortifications on the African coast, and a new Compagnie du Sénégal was formed in 1709, which was taken over by the Compagnie des Indes orientales in 1720.

75 For the argument that the spoils of raids provided start-up capital for the ensuing “sugar revolution” in Saint-Domingue see Karsten Voss and Klaus Weber, “The Most Valuable and Most Vulnerable Asset: Slaves in the Early Sugar Plantations of Saint-Domingue, 1697-1715,” Journal of Global Slavery 5 (2020), 204-37.