A commentary on the slave trade
1Joseph. E. Harris
A major problem the historian confronts in assessing the scope and impact
of the slave trade is the quantitative factor which of course relates to the scope
and qualitative impact. Joseph E. Inikori,^2 among others, has commented in
several places on this critical issue, focusing particularly on efforts to quantify
the Atlantic slave trade. His criticisms of the pioneer book, The Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census, by Philip Curtin, seem to be basically sound and underscore
the dilemma historians of the slave trade face, namely, the need to develop
numerical guidelines or parameters while at the same time guarding against
presenting unjustified figures.
Whatever one may think or say against existing estimates for the Atlantic
slave trade, and there are grounds for scepticism, such figures do serve the vital
function of providing a basis for critique which should clarify problems so that
additional research might bring us closer to truth.
It seems to me that such a point might now have been reached for the
Atlantic slave trade so that within a few years there should be a greater
consensus. However, estimates for the trans-Sahara, Red Sea and Indian Ocean
trades still lack the documentation even to propose a base figure which would
very likely assume undue acceptance as authoritative. The data for those
areas are just too scattered and insufficient to warrant an overall estimate at
this time. Simply to conclude that the likely underestimation or overestimation
may be compensated for by some other more plausible, but still unsure, factor
should be undertaken with great caution, especially in publications.
The preferred data for estimates are records of companies, government
customs and census bureaux. Up to the nineteenth century, these kinds of evid-
ence hardly exist for the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and Mediterranean trades.
After 1800, there are still virtually no company records; and census data for
recipient countries do not seem to be much better. However, European observers
recorded some customs returns of a few African and Arabian ports, and some
counts have been made of slaves on captured vessels. But this still leaves us
with very little direct evidence for the Indian Ocean and Red Sea trade. This
has not, however, prevented a controversy over the scale of the trade.
For the Red Sea area, estimates have been made by Richard Pankhurst