The first French Company which undertook a regular trade with the west coast of Africa was an association of merchants of Dieppe, without authority or privileges.  They settled a little island in the Senegal, which was called St. Louis.  This property soon passed into the hands of a more formal association of Rouen merchants, who carried on the trade till 1664, the date of the establishment of the West-India Company, to which they were obliged to sell their privileges for one hundred and fifty thousand livres.  This great Company managed its African business so badly, that it was withdrawn from their hands in 1673, and made over as a special interest to a Senegal Company.  The trade, in palm-oil, ivory, etc., was principally with France, and negro slaves for the colonies do not yet appear in numbers to attract attention.[B] But in 1679 this Company engaged with the Crown to deliver yearly, for a term of eight years, two thousand negroes, to be distributed among the French Antilles.  This displaced a previous engagement, made in 1675, for the delivery of eight hundred negroes.  The Company had also to furnish as many negroes for the galleys at Marseilles as His Majesty should find convenient.  And the Crown offered a bounty of thirteen livres per head for every negro, to be paid in “pieces of India.”

[Footnote B:  Du Tertre, the missionary historian of the Antilles, proudly says, previously to this date, that the opinion of France in favor of personal liberty still shielded a French deck from the traffic:  “Selon les lois de la France, qui abhorre la servitude sur toutes les nations du monde, et ou tous les esclaves recouvrent heureusement la liberte perdue, sitost qu’ils y abordent, et qu’ils en touchent la terre.”]

This is a famous phrase in the early annals of the slave-trade.  Reckoning by “pieces” was customary in the transaction of business upon the coast of Africa.  Merchandise, provisions, and presents to the native princes had their value thus expressed, as well as slaves.  If the negro merchant asked ten pieces for a slave, the European trader offered his wares divided into ten portions, each portion being regarded as a “piece,” without counting the parts which made it up.  Thus, ten coarse blankets made one piece, a musket one piece, a keg of powder weighing ten pounds was one, a piece of East-India blue calico four pieces, ten copper kettles one piece, one piece of chintz two pieces, which made the ten for which the slave was exchangeable:  and at length he became commercially known as a “piece of India.”  The bounty of thirteen livres was computed in France upon the wholesale value of the trinkets and notions which were used in trade with Africa.

The traffic by pieces is as old as the age of Herodotus;[C] it was originally a dumb show of goods between two trading parties ignorant of each other’s language, but at length it represented a transaction which the parties should have been ashamed to mention.