Jean Barbot, who served as a commercial agent on French slave-trading voyages to West Africa in 1678-9 and 1681-2, in 1683 began an account of the Guinea coast, based partly on his voyage journals (only one of which is extant) and partly on previous printed sources. The work was interrupted by his flight to England, as a Huguenot refugee, in 1685, and not finished until 1688. When Barbot found that his lengthy French account could not be published,...