Rochefort et la traite négrière au XVIIIe siècle

Christophe Cadiou-Quella

« Le commerce honteux de négociants vertueux et d'une Marine insoupçonnable », ainsi l’auteur qualifie-t-il ce trafic qu’il exhume d’un passé oublié. Certes, la traite n’a pas eu à Rochefort les dimensions qu’elle a prises à Nantes, La Rochelle ou Bordeaux mais elle a connu un temps de splendeur à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Fruit d’une recherche originale, appuyée sur l’inventaire critique de très nombreuses sources, l’article analyse les caractéristiques d’un commerce risqué mais fructueux et en fait ressortir l’originalité dans un cadre national, en bousculant au passage des images d’une histoire locale convenue. Dans ce port-arsenal de création récente, ne disposant pas d’une riche bourgeoisie négociante ancienne, sont mis en lumière les réseaux avec d’autres négriers et surtout les relations avec l’État, ses grands commis, sa marine et sa politique militaire et économique.

ROCHEFORT AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN THE 18th CENTURY.

“The ‘shameful trade’ operated by virtuous merchants, in collaboration with a seemingly flawless Navy corps”: those are the very words used by the author to epitomize this dreary episode, conjured up from a forgotten past. And even if the slave trade in Rochefort never really developed as much as it did in Nantes, Bordeaux—or La Rochelle for that matter—it still reached quite a glorious climax at the end of the 18th century.
Proceeding from an original type of research, supporting itself on a critical inventory of numerous sources, this article analyses the various aspects of a dangerous but also very profitable form of trade, whose specific characteristics within a national framework are being clearly exposed, even though they may somewhat differ from the conventional approach based on local historical clichés. Which further allows the author to underline the fact that, as the ‘port-arsenal’ of Rochefort was still a fairly recent creation that could not rely on a long-established class of wealthy bourgeois merchants, all sorts of connections had to be maintained not only with other slave traders, but also with important decision-makers at State level, as far as naval affairs and military and economic policies were concerned.

Thèmes : colonisation, commerces, marine, navires