The Last Slave Ships dramatically expands our understanding of the last leg of the illegal slave trade across the Atlantic—the “final triangle,” as John Harris calls it. With lithesome style and intriguing revelations, the book highlights the intricate operations and evasive stratagems of a community of merchants that relocated to New York City following the Brazilian slave trade ban of 1850. Known as the Portuguese Company, a sort of dirty dozen with amazing business savvy, these slave traders had come of age as cashiers in Rio de Janeiro and earned their chops as agents in Angola. Expelled from Brazilian ports, they turned lower Manhattan into their new home, exploiting its many opportunities to evade surveillance.
Harris recounts how these men skillfully reconstituted their supply lines after 1850. Portuguese suppression efforts in Angola pushed their operations to secluded loading points farther north in West Central Africa. The new modus operandi eliminated...