The slave trade
and the Atlantic economies 1451-187059system. Its function was limited to the acquisition and sale of slave labour. On
the whole, of all the territories under review, only the north-eastern states of
North America performed economic functions closely resembling those per-
formed by Western Europe in the Atlantic system.
The character of functions performed by a given territory in the Atlantic
system was a crucial factor explaining the type of developmental effect which
the system produced in that territory. Trade, finance, shipping, manufacturing,
and commercial foodstuff production in medium-sized freehold farms tended
to produce much greater positive developmental effects than plantation agri-
culture. However, the character of the functions does not fully explain the
differing developmental effects. It is significant that the territories which were
engaged mostly in plantation agriculture were also those in which 'foreign
factors of production' were most largely employed, using this concept in
Jonathan Levin's sense.^10 As a consequence, a very large proportion of the total
income produced in the Atlantic sectors of these economies was remitted
abroad. This was particularly so for the West Indian islands. This, together
with the character of the functions performed, left little or no room for a self-
sustained internal development to accompany the growth of activities in pro-
duction for an international market. In the Latin American territories the
operation of some internal factors, partly connected with the character of the
European colonists and the institutions they brought with them, further reduced
the overall positive effects of the Atlantic system for the internal development
of those economies. For these various reasons, the positive developmental
effects of the Atlantic system were largely concentrated in Western Europe and
North America.
The buying and shipping of slaves to the Americas formed one of the
most important functions fulfilled by Western Europe in the Atlantic system.
This proved to be a very demanding task, requiring considerable mercantile
skills, highly sophisticated financial arrangements, refinements in shipbuilding
technology, and production of new types of goods demanded by the slave-
producing regions of tropical Africa. The creative response of the economies
of Atlantic Europe to the requirements of this function formed an important
part of the development process in those economies. Unfortunately, a detailed
study of the character of this response and an assessment of its place in the
process of economic development in Western Europe is only just receiving the
attention of scholars employing the analytical tools of development economics.
The first of such studies, which has been made on the British economy for the
period 1750-1807,^11 shows that during this period of about sixty years when
Great Britain dominated the buying and shipping of slaves to the Americas, the
peculiar requirements of this function stimulated important developments in
key sectors and regions of the British economy. The slave merchants were
constantly exposed to considerable risks and so their regular and growing