Introduction: Gainers and Losers in the Atlantic Slave Trade

JOSEPH E. INIKORI AND STANLEY L. ENGERMAN

SINCE THE DEBATE in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between the proslavery interests in Europe and the Americas—the slave traders and slaveholders—and the abolitionist movements, conflicting arguments have been presented on a host of issues relating to slavery and the slave trade. These often center on questions of who were gainers and who were losers. The issues fall into three broad groups: (1) the social cost in Africa of forced migration; (2) Atlantic slavery and the rise of the Western world; and (3) Atlantic slavery, the world of the slaves, and their enduring legacies. Debate over these issues has become more and more frequent in the last two decades. Several conferences have been organized on some or all of these issues. Currently, the literature is growing so fast that a critical bibliographical essay is badly needed. While we are unable to do that here, we can at least highlight some of the main areas of contention and locate within them the papers in this volume.

THE SOCIAL COST IN AFRICA OF FORCED MIGRATION

The literature on the costs and benefits of the Atlantic slave trade for Africa generally distinguishes between private and social costs and benefits (Inikori 1982: 51–52). It is generally agreed that those who raided and took captives, and the African traders who bought and sold the captives, all realized private gains. No quantifiable evidence exists for detailed measurement of the private gains and losses. But one can argue on the basis of human rationality that the raiders and traders would not have sustained the captive business for centuries if there had been no private gains. Given the low prices at which the captives were sold for export, the questions have been raised of why it was not privately more profitable for hegemonic African states to accept tribute from potential captives rather than capturing and selling them; and why it was not privately more profitable for African slaveholders to employ the captives to produce goods and services for the domestic markets rather than selling the captives for export (Gemery and Hogendorn 1974; Fenoaltea 1988). The question is answered in the literature by pointing to the economic and political situation that existed in tropical Africa in the fifteenth century, which was reproduced and further worsened by the social cost of the Atlantic trade (Inikori 1990b).

It is generally accepted that the export centers on the African coast benefited economically and demographically from the trade. Where they succeeded in insulating themselves from the socio-political upheavals provoked by the trade in their hinterlands, these port towns (or city-states) realized short-term benefits that have been equated with private gains (Inikori 1982: 51). Market production of agricultural commodities to meet the limited needs of the slave ships for foodstuffs was stimulated, their populations expanded as the coastal traders retained some of the captives for their business needs and for the production of their subsistence products, and so on. These port towns or city-states typically grew as enclave economies.

Some historians believe that these private and short-term micro-regional gains were also social or macroregional benefits (Fage 1969; Northrup 1978; Miller 1988). This view has been criticized for its failure to take into account the devastating consequences of the trade for the much larger regions from which the captives were violently procured (van Dantzig 1975). Other researchers, employing structural analysis and discussing opportunity costs, describe far-reaching social costs of the trade for African societies. It has been argued, for example, that the Atlantic slave trade transferred to the New World part of Africa's relative advantage in the production of commodities for the evolving world market, and that this retarded the growth and development of commodity production for international trade in Africa. In turn, this helped to delay the development of market institutions and the general commercialization of economic activities in Africa (Inikori 1982, 1986; Inikori et al. 1986; Rodney 1969).

It has also been argued that the slave trade helped to structure African societies in ways that were inimical to capitalist development in Africa. The growth of chattel slavery in Africa has been linked specifically to the Atlantic slave trade (Klein and Lovejoy 1979; Meillassoux 1982), as has been the phenomenon of political fragmentation in nineteenth-century Africa. This phenomenon was characterized by the existence of systems of small-sized states, limited in geographical extent and population and dominated by military aristocracies. It is argued that politically the size and class structure of these state systems (which were a function of the Atlantic trade) were unfavorable to capitalist development (Inikori et al. 1986).

The controversy surrounding the structural analysis, as it relates to the societies of the Western Sudan, is discussed in this volume in the chapter by Martin Klein. Klein shows that the debate originated from the critical response of Senegalese and French historians to the arguments of Philip Curtin (1975). According to Klein, Curtin treated the slave trade in Senegambia as having developed much like any other type of trade. He did not address the issue of the structural impact of the slave trade on Senegalese societies. The Senegalese and French historians, in their efforts to demonstrate the historical origins of contemporary societal problems in Senegambia, reacted by detailing the structural impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Senegambian societies. The...