This is the original manuscript version of Snelgrave’s ‘New Account of some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade’ (1734). Snelgrave made a number of voyages to the West African coast for a variety of employers, the most important being Humphrey Morice (circa 1679–1731), governor of the Bank of England. Snelgrave made at least six successful voyages for Morice. In all, he seems to have carried at least 2718 Africans to the Americas, of whom 402 died en route. On his return he published his book, which is part justification for the slave trade, part instruction manual for slave-ship captains, part political history and part adventure story. This manuscript version contains drafts of two of the three sections of that publication: one is on the series of mutinies he witnessed and the ‘reasonableness’ of the slave trade; the other is an account of the invasion of Ouidah by the Kingdom of Dahomey. A third published section, on Snelgrave’s capture by pirates, was written separately.

Although Snelgrave was a slave trader, he provides an insight into the different ways in which Africans were involved in the slave trade – as the enslaved, as traders and as interpreters, but also as those who resisted Europeans, either by political means or by insurrection on board slave ships. His book was reprinted many times and was attacked by abolitionists many years after his death, as well as being influential in the work of the anti-abolitionists, most notably in Archibald Dalzel’s 'History of Dahomy' (1793).