ABSTRACT
The English continental colonies were involved in various ways in the slave trade. They sent vessels to Africa for slave cargoes. Slave imports in Virginia and the lower Chesapeake have been reconstructed from surviving records and as a result the extent of that trade and its character are fairly clear. As slavery was introduced in Pennsylvania, it was Philadelphians who dispatched ships first to the islands for blacks and as demand grew and peaked in the early 1760s who then sent ships to Africa. Planters and traders in Maryland acted as agents for the English firms, assuming responsibility for receiving slave cargoes and also arranging for freight, usually tobacco, for the return voyage. An examination of slave imports in colonial Maryland will fill out our knowledge of African immigration to a key continental zone and will permit also comparisons with slave imports in Virginia.
