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The Atlantic Slave Trade

Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe

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Book

Pages: 432

Published: April 1992

Editors: Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman

Contributors: Joseph E. Inikori, Martin A. Klein, Jan Hogendorn, Ronald Bailey, William A. Darity, Johannes Postma, David Barry Gaspar, Kenneth F. Kiple, Thomas W. Wilson, Seymour Drescher, Stanley L. Engerman, Brian T. Higgins, and Clarence E. Grim

Debates over the economic, social, and political meaning of slavery and the slave trade have persisted for over two hundred years. The Atlantic Slave Trade brings clarity and critical insight to the subject. In fourteen essays, leading scholars consider the nature and impact of the transatlantic slave trade and assess its meaning for the people transported and for those who owned them.
Among the questions these essays address are: the social cost to Africa of this forced migration; the role of slavery in the economic development of Europe and the United States; the short-term and long-term effects of the slave trade on black mortality, health, and life in the New World; and the racial and cultural consequences of the abolition of slavery. Some of these essays originally appeared in recent issues of Social Science History; the editors have added new material, along with an introduction placing each essay in the context of current debates.
Based on extensive archival research and detailed historical examination, this collection constitutes an important contribution to the study of an issue of enduring significance. It is sure to become a standard reference on the Atlantic slave trade for years to come.

Contributors. Ralph A. Austen, Ronald Bailey, William Darity, Jr., Seymour Drescher, Stanley L. Engerman, David Barry Gaspar, Clarence Grim, Brian Higgins, Jan S. Hogendorn, Joseph E. Inikori, Kenneth Kiple, Martin A. Klein, Paul E. Lovejoy, Patrick Manning, Joseph C. Miller, Johannes Postma, Woodruff Smith, Thomas Wilson

Praise

"[This volume] will become an important milestone in the investigation of the issue of the extent to which western modern economic growth found its impetus in slavery." - Jay R. Mandle, Colgate University

"This is cutting-edge, state of the art history-economics on the Atlantic slave trade." - Vernon Burton, University of Illinois

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Joseph E. Inikori is Professor of History and Associate Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester.

Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester.

Table Of Contents

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Preface vii

1. Introduction: Gainers and Losers in the Atlantic Slave Trade / Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman 1

Part I. The Social Cost in Africa of Forced Migration

2. The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on the Societies of the Western Sudan / Martin A. Klein 25

3. Keeping Slaves in Place: The Secret Debate on the Slavery Question in Northern Nigeria, 1900–1904 / Jan Hogendorn and Paul E. Lovejoy 49

4. The Numbers, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Angolan Slave Trade / Joseph C. Miller 77

5. The Slave Trade: The Formal Demography of a Global System / Patrick Manning 117

Part II. Atlantic Slavery and the Early Rise of the Western World

6. Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in England / Joseph E. Inikori 145

7. Private Tooth Decay as Public Economic Virtue: The Slave-Sugar Triangle, Consumerism, and European Industrialization / Ralph A. Austen and Woodruff D. Smith 183

8. The Slave(ry) Trade and the Development of Capitalism in the United States: The Textile Industry in New England / Ronald Bailey 205

9. British Industry and the West Indies Plantations / William Darity Jr. 247

Part III. Atlantic Slavery, The World of the Slaves, and Their Enduring Legacies

10. The Dispersal of African Slaves in the West by Dutch Slave Traders, 1630–1803 / Johannes Postma 283

11. Slave Importation, Runaways, and Compensation in Antigua, 1720–1729 / David Barry Gaspar 301

12. Mortality Caused by Dehydration during the Middle Passage / Kenneth F. Kiple and Brian T. Higgins 339

13. The Possible Relationship between the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Hypertension in Blacks Today / Thomas W. Wilson and Clarence E. Grim 339

14. The Ending of the Slave Trade and the Evolution of European Scientific Racism / Seymour Drescher 361

Index 397

Contributors 411

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-1243-7 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-8237-9 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822382379

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