Day 5/28 — The Procurement Ranking: Windward Coast vs Angola (Charles Town, 9 Nov 1756)
Amadu Massally
Hello all,
Attached is Day 5/28 of the Black History Month series (America@250): a 1756 Charles Town letter that explicitly ranks “Windward Coast/Gambia” cargoes above “Angola” in local esteem. Read the document first; the note below is deliberately brief and evidence-led.
Facsimile (attached): Charles Town correspondence, 9 Nov. 1756 (Windward Coast/Gambia vs Angola).
Evidence → Mechanism
• Evidence: the writers state that Windward Coast/Gambia cargoes are “better esteem’d” than Angola’s, then frame this in market terms (price, timing, condition/risk).
• Mechanism: “origin” operates as a procurement category—an internal grading system that guides buying, routing, and pricing, not a neutral descriptor.
• Why it matters: this preference logic is a paper trace of targeted extraction—markets learning what “performs” for Carolina production systems and paying accordingly.
Question: When a merchant record ranks one “coast” over another, what is being priced: body, survivability, or capability?
Source (single): The Papers of Henry Laurens, vol. 2 (USC Press, 1970), Charles Town correspondence dated 9 Nov. 1756 (facsimile attached).
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