Nutritional Trends in Africa and the Americas: Heights of Africans, 1819-1839

Nutritional Trends in Africa and the Americas: Heights of Africans, I8I9-I839 Recent attempts to understand differences in the development of slave societies in the Americas have generated a number of studies on the growth patterns and stature of the progenitors of modern Afro-Americans. Such work provides important insights into the living conditions, demographic performances, and, through these, the basic cultural parameters of black and racially mixed societies. Some recent studies have pointed to significant differences between African-born slaves and Creoles, and data from some of the British colonies are sufficiently detailed to permit a breakdown of African-born slaves by region of embarkation. The focus of this work, however, has necessarily been on the Americas. Many in the African-born groups would have crossed the Atlantic as children or adolescents and, in consequence, their growth patterns and even their final stature may have been influenced by their new environments. The literature has long recognized the importance of both genetic and environmental factors on human growth, acknowledging that the interaction between the two is complex and imperfectly understood. As part of a long campaign to suppress the slave trade, the British negotiated treaties with several foreign countries to provide for the establishment of courts of mixed commission to adjudicate cases involving suspected slave ships. The data for this study come from copies of the records of the courts at Sierra Leone deposited at the Public Record Office in London. Between I819 and I845 British cruisers landed almost 60,000 Africans at Sierra Leone, most of whom had been recaptured while en route to the Americas or to islands off the African coast. The age,