28 S. U. AbramovaW. B. Dubois in The Negro.M Historians are well acquainted with Dubois's
works, esteem him as a person and scholar, and highly value his work for the
welfare of Africa. Unfortunately, Dunbar's materials were probably not
critically analysed by the scholar.
Now, however, there is another extreme. New works on the history of
the slave trade and among them Curtin's book^30 give 'new' calculations of
Africans exported from Africa, and particularly of those imported to the New
World. Africanists know that there were, are and will be no exact statistics
on the'subject. All figures were always approximate. The figures showing the
number of slaves exported from Africa and imported into the New World
are contradictory and are rarely founded on official documents ; in most cases
they have been deliberately falsified. That is why all attempts to undertake a
complete revision of the numerical aspect of the slave trade without adducing
any new sources are highly surprising. Probably the truth lies somewhere in
between the figures quoted by Dunbar and the 'new' calculations.
Alongside new works on the history of Africa, new editions are appearing
of works on the history of the slave trade by its contemporaries and prominent
scholars of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Books by T. Clark-
son, A. Benezet, W. Wilberforce and T. F. Buxton, and Mathieson's trilogy
have already come out.
One can say that the history of the Atlantic slave trade has not been
studied exhaustively. New studies are being made, new materials are added to
the scientific fund. It will also be useful to give a new reading to the works
dating from the time of the slave trade. Those who lived in those times saw
what the slave trade had done to the African peoples and were quite aware of
the true reasons that had engendered and promoted it. A serious unbiased
discussion of the basic problems of the slave trade will enable a better inves-
tigation to be made of those aspects of its history that until now have been
approached by historians of different countries from different standpoints.
Notes- T. O. Ranger (ed.), Emerging Themes of African History. Proceedings of the Inter-
national Congress of African History held at University College, Dar es Salaam,
October 1965, p. 134, Dar es Salaam, 1968. - G. E. Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, Vols. 1-2,
p. 57, London, 1896-99 (works issued by the Halkuyt Society No. 95,100). - D. Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, p. 101, 195, 106, London, 1937 (works
issued by the Halkuyt Society, 2nd ser., No. 79). - A. Brasio, Monumento Missionaria, Vol. VI, Lisbon, Agencia Geral do Ultramar,
Ministerio da Ultramar, 1955, d. 132; J. Cuvelier and L. Jadin, L'Ancien Congo,
Brussels, 1954, d. XIV (Académie Royale des Sciences Coloniales, Section des
Sciences Morales et Politiques. Mémoires).