Interesting...I have found references to this trade (not always by name, but always refering to traders that commenced each venture in Europe, and finished it where they had started) in 7 separate books here - and no doubt will find more if I keep looking - from respected historians as disparate as G. M. Trevelyan, A. J. Parry, A. L. Rouse, and two encyclopedias, a specialist book on the slave trade, a history of pre-colonial Africa, a biography of Drake...um, that's 8. Old Sir John Hawkins, for instance, started in Plymouth; so it was England, Africa, the Caribbean, and back to England. He didn't capture the slaves himself, so he would have had to barter something he brought with him. If I can see one decent reference to that not happening I will start rethinking it.
You, yourself believed it until very recently. What changed your mind? AlanE 23:27, 26 August 2008 (EDT)