"And Don't Forget the Guinea Voyage": The Slave Trade of Aaron Lopez of Newport

R ECENT studies of the transatlantic economy in the third quarter of the eighteenth century have indicated that New England merchants played only a minor role in the slave trade to the English colonies. It has even been contended that the so-called triangular trade, of which the commerce in slaves was an important part, is in fact a myth invented by such nineteenth-century historians as George H. Moore and William B. Weeden.' While it is surely true that the notion of the triangular trade was exaggerated by these scholars, the current tendency to regard the trade as mythical overlooks the activities of a prominent Newport, Rhode Island, merchant, Aaron Lopez, who sent fourteen vessels to the slave coast between I76i and I774. These voyages are documented in detail in the Lopez commercial papers. They enable us to begin a more accurate appraisal of the extent and significance of New England's participation in the slave trade.2 Lopez, a Sephardic Jew, emigrated in I752 from Lisbon to Newport,