Primary Source number two, Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal 1694-4

By Nicholas Melson

The story told in the journal written by Thomas Phillips enriches and expands in detail what Trading Tastes introduces in its brief pages. The excerpts from the journal mention many main historical locations such as Sao Tome that the book focuses on.  Phillips writes that he is practically forced to buy the slaves of kings and other high ranking nobles first. This emphasizes that the highest ranking members of society where profiting from the brutal act of participating in the slave trade first hand, and further more they took protectionist measures towards the selling slaves in order to ensure they themselves were profiting the most from it.

 It is also very peculiar that Thomas Phillips writes that he has no ill will towards these African slaves, and does not agree and any one ethnic group is superior based on their skin color. Phillips even takes it on step further by stating that their skin color has the advantage in the hot tropical regions of the world. It is remarkable that a man that is dealing with slaves actually is on some levels understandable of their plight. These commits also show an even darker side to the slave trade, those participating in it hardly even saw captive slaves  suffering, what they saw was human commodities and their monetary values.

This primary source also coincides with the book in the small ratio of white settlers controlling the slave population. It mentions just as the book did how disease was rampant among the whites and how they were having a difficult time adapting to the climate. Overall I would say that the Journal was very close to what the book was saying about the slave trade. However, reading something that was written by someone who was there has a much greater impact, then simply reading about that time.