Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System

The essays in this book place slavery in the mainstream of modern history. They describe the transfer of slavery form the Old World, its role in forging the interdependence of the economies bordering the Atlantic, its effect on the empires of Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain, and its impact on Africa.

The inclusion of the New World in the international economy, among the most important events in modern history, was based on slavery. Europeans brought at least eight million black men, women and children out of Africa to the Western Hemisphere between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, and slavery transformed the Atlantic into a complex trading area. This trade united North and South America, Europe, and Africa through the movement of peoples, goods and services, credit and capital. The essays in this book place slavery in the mainstream of modern history. They describe the transfer of slavery from the Old World, its role in forging the interdependence of the economies bordering the Atlantic, its effect on the empires of Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain, and its impact on Africa.

Preface; Introduction Barbara L. Solow; 1. Slacery and colonization Barbara L. Solow; 2. The Old World background of slavery in the Americas William D. Phillips, Jr.; 3. Slavery and lagging capitalism in the Spanish and Portuguese American empires, 1492–1713 Franklin W. Knight; 4. The Cutch and the making of the second Atlantic system P. C. Emmer; 5. Precolonial western Africa and the Atlantic economy David Eltis; 6. A marginal institution on the margin of the Atlantic system: The Portufuese southern Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century Joseph C. Miller; 7. The apprenticeship of colonization Luiz Felipe de Alencastro; 8. Exports and the growth of the British economy from the Glorious Revolution to the Peace of Amiens P. K. O'Brien and S. L. Engerman; 9. The slave and colonial trade in France just before the Revolution Patrick Villiers; 10. Slavery, trade, and economic growth in eighteenth-century New England David Richardson; 11. Economic aaspects of the growth of slavery in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake David W. Galenson; 12. Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies Jacob M. Price; Index.

Placing slavery in the mainstream of modern history, the essays in this survey describe its transfer from the Old World and subsequent role in forging the interdependence of the economies bordering the Atlantic, as well as its effect on Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Great Britain and Africa.