Who has ever heard of Alexandre Lindo, the meganégrier? Not many people I imagine. Even Hugh Thomas [1] does not seem to know who this Lindo was, since he ranks him among the slavers who are “not very important”.
This is to say if Jewish historians have been very discreet about this yet eminent member of their community. Alex Lindo. Sephardic Jew born in Bordeaux in 1742, the city where he grew up. As a teenager, as was the tradition with the S&P, he toured the slave ports (Amsterdam, London, Bristol) to learn his future trade.His years of training ended, he went to seek his fortune in the Caribbean (1765). Rather than settling in St Domingue, where the position of the Jews remains uncertain, he chooses to put his luggage in Kingston, where he knows he can count on the support of a large Sephardic community.
At first, he made a living by buying back the booty that the corsairs brought back to Kingston, and which he sold at the best price.
Then, in 1775, he entered the slave trade. Lindo becomes a “postman”: he collects the cargoes of kushim when they arrive at the port, then he puts them on sale; 300, 400, 500 slaves at once. An orgy.
Quickly, this activity takes enormous proportions. During the 1780s, it alone absorbed about a quarter of the slaves who landed in Kingston, the main gateway to Jamaica.
In December 1789, he was summoned by the Joint Committee on the Slave Trade to explain the abnormally high mortality recorded on one of his ships, The King Pepple, from Benin. On that day, the Jew deplores the loss of “about 170 negroes”. (He does not remember the exact number.)
Over the next decade (1790 ‘), he teamed up with a Protestant merchant and further increased his market share: nearly a third of the Negroes distributed in Kingston passed through his account books.
Lindo didn’t just sell in the local market; he re-exported part of his kushim to other destinations in the Caribbean, or to North America. For example, in the early 1790s, he shipped several cargoes to the Tiburon peninsula, in Santo Domingo.
The Bordelais is then at the top of his art. At this date, it is probably the most important slave ship in the Caribbean.
Lindo is not just a simple slave trader. He is a real tycoon of the slave trade (he was also nicknamed “the tycoon”). He manages entire wagons of women, men and children. It has its own fleet of ships and its own pier, which bears its name (the Lindo wharf). In fact, he owns almost an entire neighborhood. He had large warehouses built for himself where he stored his arrivals of slaves while waiting to put them up for sale.
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Over the years, it has continued to expand its activities. He bought himself a first plantation, then a second, which he had cultivated by hundreds of slaves. It also owns a rum distillery. Later, in London, he created a bank.
Lindo also had the largest house in all of Kingston built. Not just ostentatiously: he needs room to house the twenty-three children given to him by his two successive wives, and whom he has brought up by about thirty interior Negroes. A dozen horse-drawn vehicles are piled up in his garage.
The Bordelais were part of the top of colonial society; he dined regularly at the governor’s table.
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In 1795, believing that his presence in Jamaica was no longer really necessary, Lindo chose to move to London. From now on it is his son, Abraham, who will manage the family’s affairs in the Jamaican capital.
Alexander was still only fifty-three years old; no question of retiring. From London, he continues to work; he devotes himself to his bank, the Lindo bank. He advances money to shipowners who participate in the trade. He makes sure his son over there in Kingston has no shortage of niggas coming in. He even armed his own slavers from Liverpool in 1800 [2], 1805 and 1807 [1147/1037].
As abolitionist ideas gain ground in England, Lindo is among those who are fighting back. He went so far as to publish a booklet to defend trafficking.
The tycoon was said to be a “zealous Jew [3]”. He will not hesitate to disinherit his eldest daughter, Hannah, because he would not forgive her for having departed by marrying a goy.
Lindo regularly attended the Bevis Marks Synagogue and was one of the community’s most generous donors. Moreover, he will be elected president of the congregation. The London S&P felt, in fact, that his profile as a mega-driver corresponded perfectly to the image they wanted to give of their community.
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It is difficult to say precisely how much Lindo father and son will have sold kushim in their forty-year career (1770–1810). At least 20,000 I would say. During all these years, they will also have owned and exploited several thousand slaves as agricultural workers, servants or dockers.
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Notes:
[1] Hugh Thomas is the author of a voluminous synthesis on the transatlantic slave trade. He compares Alexander Lindo to Philip Hart, a minor slave trader from Charleston. What he’s wrong: Lindo was a major player in the British slave trade.
[2] In 1800, his slave ship — Esther Lindo — delivered his cargo to French Guyana.
[3] James Picciotto (1875). Sketches of Anglo-Jewish history.
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Illustrations:
1. Alexander Lindo, the tycoon
2. A shot of Lindo warehouses in Kingston, where he stored his blacks before putting them up for sale.
3. The descendants of Jamaican slaves are not too resentful: they still have a street named Lindo, where his warehouses once stood. Funny detail: the street overlooks a Marcus Garvey avenue.
Poster Comment:
Jews on Yahoo really hate me, lol.