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Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834

01 Jul 1984-
TL;DR: This paper gave excellent and thorough treatment of major demographic aspects of British Caribbean slavery from abolition of slave trade to slave emancipation, drawing heavily on extensive date available from slave registration returns for various islands to provide comparative perspective of nature of slave life.
Abstract: This book is a reprint of work that originally appeared in 1984. It gives excellent and thorough treatment of major demographic aspects of British Caribbean slavery from abolition of slave trade to slave emancipation. Draws heavily on extensive date available from slave registration returns for various islands to provide comparative perspective of nature of slave life. It is essential for serious scholars of the region.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the importance of the eighteenth-century slave systems to British industrialization was examined and it was shown that sugar cultivation and the slave trade were not particularly large, nor did they have stronger growth-inducing ties with the rest of the British economy.
Abstract: John Stuart Mill's comment that the British Caribbean was really a part of the British domestic economy, because almost all its trade was with British buyers and sellers, is used to make a new assessment of the importance of the eighteenth-century slave systems to British industrialization. If the value added and strategic linkages of the sugar industry are compared to those of other British industries, it is apparent that sugar cultivation and the slave trade were not particularly large, nor did they have stronger growth-inducing ties with the rest of the British economy.

137 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Paul E. Lovejoy1
TL;DR: A review of the literature on the demography of the slave trade provides a context to assess the revisionist interpretation of David Eltis, who has argued recently that slave trade and its suppression were of minor importance in African history as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Recent revisions of estimates for the volume of the trans-Atlantic slave trade suggest that approximately 11,863,000 slaves were exported from Africa during the whole period of the Atlantic slave trade, which is a small upward revision of my 1982 synthesis and still well within the range projected by Curtin in 1969. More accurate studies of the French and British sectors indicate that some revision in the temporal and regional distribution of slave exports is required, especially for the eighteenth century. First, the Bight of Biafra was more important and its involvement in the trade began several decades earlier than previously thought. Secondly, the French and British were more active on the Loango coast than earlier statistics revealed. The southward shift of the trade now appears to have been more gradual and to have begun earlier than I argued in 1982. The greater precision in the regional breakdown of slave shipments is confirmed by new data on the ethnic origins of slaves. The analysis also allows a new assessment of the gender and age profile of the exported population. There was a trend toward greater proportions of males and children. In the seventeenth century, slavers purchased relatively balanced proportions of males and females, and children were under-represented. By the eighteenth century, west-central Africa was exporting twice as many males as females, while West Africa was far from attaining such ratios. In the nineteenth century, by contrast, slavers could achieve those ratios almost anywhere slaves were available for export, and in parts of west-central and south-eastern Africa the percentage of males reached unprecedented levels of 70 per cent or more. Furthermore, increasing numbers of slaves were children, and again west-central Africa led the way in this shift while West Africa lagged behind considerably.This review of the literature on the demography of the slave trade provides a context to assess the revisionist interpretation of David Eltis, who has argued recently that the slave trade and its suppression were of minor importance in African history. It is shown that Eltis' economic arguments, based on an assessment of per capita income and the value of the export trade, are flawed. The demography of the trade involved an absolute loss of population and a large increase in the enslaved population that was retained in Africa. A rough comparison of slave populations in West Africa and the Americas indicates that the scale of slavery in Africa was extremely large.

127 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Abstract: Where did a large-scale Roman slave-owner obtain new slaves? Varro in effect tells us: Ephesus. And the answer would probably have been the same for many generations after his time. But can we work out more systematically and more thoroughly the relative importance of different kinds of sources? The sources which most require consideration are: (1) children born to slave-mothers within the Empire; (2) persons enslaved in provincial or frontier wars; (3) persons imported across the frontiers; (4) the ‘self-enslaved’; and (5) infants abandoned at places within the Empire.Several years ago, I argued on a number of grounds that the last of these sources, child-exposure, was more important than had previously been recognized. Subsequent reconsideration of the problem has led me to suspect that the source-material under-represents the amount of slave-importation across the frontiers, but not to doubt that child-exposure was very widespread or that it made an important contribution to the slave supply. Of the many subsequent discussions, the most original is that of Ramin and Veyne, who, in an article of 1981 too little attended to in the Anglo-Saxon world, made it appear very likely that those who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery were a larger category than scholars usually imagine. More recently, Scheidel has attempted to revive the case, previously propounded by Shtaerman among others, in favour of the self-reproductivity of the slave population.

126 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article showed that natural reproduction made a greater contribution to the Roman slave supply than child exposure, warfare, and the slave trade taken together and was in all probability several times as important as any other single source.
Abstract: The relative importance of different sources of slaves in the Roman Empire during the Principate cannot be gauged from ancient texts. However, simple demographic models show that, for purely statistical reasons, natural reproduction made a greater contribution to the Roman slave supply than child exposure, warfare, and the slave trade taken together and was in all probability several times as important as any other single source. The most plausible projections also suggest that on average the incidence of manumission was rather low. By implication, overall fertility of ex-slaves in general and of freedwomen in particular would be low as well, which must have reduced their chances of acquiring legal privileges that accrued from sexual reproduction.

121 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades.
Abstract: Can part of Africa's current underdevelopment be explained by its slave trades? To explore this question, I use data from shipping records and historical documents reporting slave ethnicities to construct estimates of the number of slaves exported from each country during Africa's slave trades. I find a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance. To better understand if the relationship is causal, I examine the historical evidence on selection into the slave trades, and use instrumental variables. Together the evidence suggests that the slave trades have had an adverse effect on economic development.

121 citations