John Barbot, a Frenchman, served for several years as an agent of the French Royal African Company. In that capacity, he made at least two slaving voyages to the West Coast of Africa, one in 1678 and the other in 1682. He published an account of his trips in 1682 in France. The illustrations below appeared in the 1732 translation of his text entitled A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea.
Questions to Consider
How would you describe Barbot's depiction of Africans?
Source:
John Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea. . . . Now first printed from his original manuscript, in Awnsham and John Churchill, comps., Collection of Voyages (London, 1732), vol. 5. (copies in the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library). Downloaded from Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite, Jr., The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/.
