Title: The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census
Author: Philip D. Curtin
Year of Publication: 1969
Thesis:
Surveys literature on the fundamental questions of who, how many, etc. in the Atlantic Slave Trade, revising down previous estimates to around ten million from fifteen or twenty. Also desribes his estimates as exactly that: estimates.
Time: 15th-17th centuries
Geography: Atlantic Slave Trade
Organization:
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
- Argues that historians have treated the development of the Americas in an ethnocentric way.
1. The Slave Trade and the Numbers Game: A Review of the Literature
2. Distribution in Space: The Hispanic Trade
3. Distribution in Space: The Colonies of the North Europeans
4. Distribution through Time: The Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries
5. The English Slave Trade of the Eighteenth Century
6. The French Slave Trade of the Eighteenth Century
7. Main Currents of the Eighteenth Century Slave Trade
8. The Slave Trade of the Nineteenth Century
9. Major Trends
10. A Postscript on Mortality
Appendix: Koele's Linguistic Inventory
Bibliography
Index
Type: Social
Methods: Anticipates Ira Berlin’s “Time and Space” article (1980) by a decade in organizing his study by space and time.
Sources: Secondary research supplemented by primary data on exports of enslaved people.
Historiography:
I can see a connection between Curtin's work and David Eltis', et. al.'s development of the Slave Trade Database. However, I see now it is necessary to look much deeper and wider into its roots.
Keywords:
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"Its central aim is to bring to- gether bits and pieces of incommensurate information already published, and to do this for only one aspect of the trade-the measurable number of people brought across the Atlantic. How many? When? From what parts of Africa? To what destinations in the New World?" (xvi)
Notes:
This is the first book in which I discovered that most traffic in enslaved people went to Brazil. I'm realizing that information was well known way before Curtin came along, but somehow it was left out of my own education.
In 1995, Philip Curtin published a piece entitled "Ghettoizin African History" that provoked quite an uproar. His first sentence began, "I am troubled by increasing evidence of the use of racial criteria in filling faculty posts in the field of African history." He goes on for several pages, and to explore all the problems with it would take quite some time. Plus, his article is reprinted under a bulletin and subsequent arguments by the Association of Concerned African Scholars against it. Curtin essentially rails against creating equitable opportunities (Affirmative Action) and intimates a conspiracy to box qualified white candidates out of the quickly "ghettoizing" field of African history. The energy devoted to dealing with Curtin is admirable and maddening. He met several opportunities to recognize his error, even to acknowledge the fact that his comments were harmful, with continued obstinance. 32-130-1EE9-84-ACAS Bulletin Winter 96 opt.pdf