WEBVTT

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(Narrator) This is the story of a world
whose borders and territories

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were drawn by the slave trade,

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where violence, subjugation 
and profit imposed their own routes.

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This criminal system shaped our history
and our world.

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On São Tomé, the Portuguese
invented an economic model

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with unprecedented profitability:
the sugar plantation.

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- (English voiceover) This was 
the first black colony,

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the first slave society.

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- (English voiceover) We witnessed
the marriage of the black men

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with sugar cane.

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- (Narrator) In the 16th century,
other European powers

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were eager to follow their model.

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Their greed would plunge 
an entire continent

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into chaos and violence.

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Nearly 13 million Africans were cast onto
new slavery routes to the new world,

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where the English, the French,
and the Dutch hoped to become wealthy,

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immeasurably wealthy.

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(Intense music with strong bass drum beat)

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Because the Caribbean
has similar climatic features to São Tomé,

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it eventually became
the principal crossroads

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of the slave trader's routes.

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For people in the western world,

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these islands are today
associated with vacation.

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Guadeloupe offers tourists
a dream destination.

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Sunshine and pristine nature,

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rekindling myths of a lost paradise.

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Holidaymakers tend to confine themselves
to the beaches of Le Gosier, Sainte-Anne,

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and Saint François.

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But as this sign indicates,
they are all too close

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to another side of the islands heritage

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that was anything but a paradise.

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Just a few meters away from the bathers
is a burial site

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where countless skeletons were discovered.

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Between 500 and 1,000 graves
are still buried beneath the sand.

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The Raisins Clairs beach is one of 15 
slave cemeteries that have been excavated.

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15, among the 1,000
that exist in the Caribbean.

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89 skeletons have been exhumed
by French archaeological research experts.

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Judging by the state of the bones,
they concluded that these men and women

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had not reached the age of 30.

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By the time of their death,
the toll from working on the plantations

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had so deformed their bodies
that they seemed more like 75 year olds.

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These people were human guinea pigs
for the sugar experiment,

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the collateral damage of an unprecedented
trade war: The Sugar War.

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74% of all slaves carried off, were carried
off because of sugar.

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If you want to understand the slave trade, you
just need to know about sugar.

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Sugar proved more addictive
than pepper or cinnamon.

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From the 17th century onward, Europeans
craved this rare and expensive commodity

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In London, Amsterdam, and Paris,
sugar fever was rampant,

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prompting a new generation of adventurers
to go to any extremes to get it.

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Shipowners and fitters,
merchants and pirates,

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all knew that to produce sugar,
you needed a lot of slaves.

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John Hawkins was one of these
new entrepreneurs

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for whom profit reigned supreme.

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The English privateer was a pioneer
in understanding that a fortune

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could be made by shipping Black captives
to the New World.

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In the mid 16th century,
he convinced Queen Elizabeth I

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to lend him a ship, The Jesus of Lubec.

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For the expedition,
Hawkins conspicuously set the tone

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by choosing a trussed up Black man
on his emblem.

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- (Male speaker) "I do confirm
to your highness

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"that I will bring home 40,000 marks
without any offense of the least

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to any of Your Highnesses,
allies, or friends.

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"I will conduct this enterprise
and turn it to the benefit

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"of your whole realm,
with Your Highness' consent.

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"The voyage I propose
is to load negroes in Guinea

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"and sell them in the West Indies,

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"in truck of pearls, gold, and emeralds
that I will bring back in abundance."

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- (Narrator) 1620,
a century after sugar plantations

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were introduced in Brazil.

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The Atlantic became the battleground
for the sugar war.

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England, The Netherlands and France wanted
to break Spain and Portugal's hegemony.

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In the Caribbean,
the Dutch took control

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of Curaçao, Sint Eustatius,
and Saint Martin.

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The French: Guadeloupe, Martinique,
Grenada and Saint-Domingue.

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The English occupied The Bahamas, Jamaica,
Antigua, Barbados and Dominica.

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Only Cuba and Puerto Rico
remained under Spanish rule.

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After the extermination
of the native Arawak people,

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the first sugar canes flourished
on this fertile land.

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- The Caribbean became a space of conquest
for the Europeans very early on.

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Really, it was the first place
that Columbus landed in the new world,

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the first place that the Spanish
began to search for gold,

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and the first place they began
to enslave the Indians.

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So they were thoroughgoing
colonial spaces

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created by design of Europ,ean planters
and imperial policy makers

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and for their profit, right?

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There aren't so many places where you can
completely overlay a territory like that.

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So, in some ways, the Caribbean
is the space where you find

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the purest of Colonial territories.

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Where the masters of the space
actually get to create the space

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to suit their own needs.

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- (Narrator) In Guadalupe,
every plot of land,

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every single square inch of ground,

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is connected to this violent
and deeply rooted history.

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Today, all that is left of sugar war
is a field of ruins.

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Of the 250 sugar refineries active
in the late 19th century,

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only two remain in operation.

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In 2017, experts from France's

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National Institute of Preventive
Archeological Research

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exhumed the remains of the Saint Jacques
residence and sugar refinery

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in Anse-Bertrand:

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A mill, stock rooms,
and three rows of so-called "negro huts"

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where hundreds of slaves
were penned up together.

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In this brutal work camp, human beings
were but one tool among others.

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Each became a mechanized, emaciated body
consumed by work until their final breath.

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- Both the time in which the slaves
were digging the cane holes

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and the times in which
they were harvesting

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were really the peak of the labor
on a plantation.

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You could almost see the slaves
wasting away

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when they were digging these cane holes

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because the work was so strenuous and
they were getting fed so poorly.

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You found women in all of the gangs,

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often times doing the hardest,
dirtiest labor on the plantation

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alongside the men, or even before the men.

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And one of the things that means,

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when you find young women doing
this quite debilitating labor,

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is that the birth rates are very low
and the mortality rates,

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the infant mortality
rate is shockingly high.

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In the mid-18th century,
people talked about

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9 out of 10 infants born 
to enslaved Jamaican women dying, right,

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within the first year.

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So, there's no way in which the plantation
can reproduce itself

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under those kinds of conditions.

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- (English voiceover) The plantation
were managed by overseers

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who saw the slaves
in purely functional terms.

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This was an absolute exploitation
of the workforce.

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It was a very particular society

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because the average rate
of life expectancy on a plantation

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was extremely low,
about 8 to 10 years after arriving.

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- (English voiceover)
The logic of the slave system

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was one where the availability
of the workforce had to be absolute.

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And for this, man was conceived
as an accessory of the land.

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He appeared as such in house inventories.

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Slaves are listed next to records
for livestock or manufacturing implements.

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That's the archaic aspect which was
put to use by a capitalist system,

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and which largely met
market supply and demand,

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with its fluctuations, needs,
and competition - free competition.

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- (Narrator) The sugar plantations
saw slavery enter a new era.

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The stronger the demand for sugar,
the more the slave trade expanded,

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and the more the slave traders
sought support from banks

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to finance their expeditions.

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London is one of the oldest centers
of global finance.

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The city of London was the first
to create a commodities exchange,

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to develop credit markets
and to issue banknotes on a massive scale.

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Without the invention
of a centralized banking system,

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the explosion of the slave trade
in the 17th century

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would not have been possible.

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Preparing for a slave expedition
was expensive,

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and having a financial arsenal

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gave England a decisive advantage
over its competitors.

NOTE Paragraph

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You've got to remember that the State is getting a tremendous amount of revenue from the plantation complex,

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so they had a very strong, vested interest in the slave trade.

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If you had gone to the king of England in 1680

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and said, "Look, I'm gonna give you a choice.

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"You can either have these 13 colonies
in North America,

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"or you can have this one little island called Barbados."

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You would have taken Barbados
in a split second

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because of the sugar revenues.

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And this is something that's going to persist as a very important interest

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for European states up until the very end of slavery.

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To support the sugar war,

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the city lent money on a colossal scale.

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In the midst of these steel and glass buildings,

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the two pillars of the English economy that financed the slave trade

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are still prominent on the London skyline.

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At the heart of the financial district is the

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venerable bank of England,

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the world's first central bank.

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A couple of blocks away is Britain's most powerful 
insurance company,

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the prestigious Lloyd's of London.

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Atlantic slave traders had to take on heavy debts
to charter their ships.

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Without an insurance company, 
most would risk ruin on their first expedition.

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The slave traders made investments as if playing a game of poker.

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The risks were high, but if successful, 
the return would far outweigh any other type of investment.

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Insurers like Lloyd's had everything to gain by participating in this game of chance.

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A successful expedition could yield up to three times
the initial stake.

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In the Lloyd's archives,
little evidence remains

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of the profits of insuring these high-risk expeditions.

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Most accounting records were lost in a fire in 1838,

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the same year that slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean.

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Ports had to adapt to this initial scramble for Africa and the Caribbean.

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In London, Blackwall became the slave trade's principal wharf.

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All manner of goods were sold here.

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Precious fabrics, jewels, porcelain, weapons,