Reconstituting ‘the archives of silence’: how to ‘recreate’ slavery and slave trade archives

Abstract

Records of the slave trade are almost exclusively those of the slave-traders: the silence of the victims is deafening. There is a dearth of contributions from the slaves themselves in documents relating to the slave trade, most of which dealt with administrative or business issues and all of which were produced by the perpetrators rather than by the victims of slavery. Any testimonials from the slave perspective are very precious. One of these is a long unpublished manuscript, the critical edition of which was first published most recently: the ‘Memoirs’ of Claude-Vincent Polony (1756–1828), a French officer who took part in three slave trading expeditions between the African Coast and Santo-Domingo. The document recounts several tragic events, including the tale of an African princess reduced to slavery. So impressed was Polony by her majesty and dignity that he was keen to know more about her life and capture. He recorded her story, enabling the victim’s tale to reach our times. Taking into account the issues raised by stories coming from the mouths of slaves, and the reliability and credibility of such texts, this article discusses how this kind of precious documents may be used to reconstitute the ‘missing pages’ of history.