The slave trade and the
Atlantic economies, 1451-1870 *
Joseph E. Inikori
This article deals deals with all the regions of Africa directly affected by the
external slave trade from that continent across the Sahara, the Atlantic ocean,
the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Other territories included are South and
North America, the West Indies and all Europe bordering on the Atlantic,
including those European countries affected by the activities of the Atlantic
countries. In some ways this definition of the scope of this paper is arbitrary.
It excludes some of the slave-receiving economies of the period, in particular,
those of the Middle East.^2 On the other hand, the economies included were not
all affected to the same degree by the slave trade; indeed, some were only
indirectly affected. However, the coverage of the territories mentioned makes
it possible to analyse in one broad sweep the effects of the slave trade on all the
economies most significantly affected.
The slave trade and slavery is a subject on which a great deal has already
been said and written, starting from the eighteenth century and continuing to
the present day.^3
But the existing studies have failed to fit the slave trade as a causal factor,
positive or negative, into a process analysis of economic development in the
major countries or territories that participated in it. This is what this article
tries to do. For that purpose the external slave trade from Africa is viewed as
a form of international trade whose effects on the countries or regions involved
in it, directly or indirectly, are analysed in economic terms. The paper is based
essentially on development as opposed to growth analysis. The distinction
between these two concepts is not always observed by writers. Modern economic
growth is usually defined in terms of a sustained annual increase in income per
head of the entire population in a given economy, over a long period of time,
while economic development relates to the transformation of an economy from
a customary, subsistence, rural and regional stage, to a rational, commercial,
urban and national stage, with appropriate institutions for the efficient mobility
of factors. Often the transformation includes a major structural shift in the
economy, from primarily agricultural to primarily industrial. In the context of
Rostovian analysis, development belongs to the 'pre-condition' and 'take-off'
stages, while growth belongs to the post-take-off stages. The main question