One of the richest fields of historical research in recent decades has been the economic and social analysis of slavery. This work has not only dealt with such economic issues as the efficiency, profitability, and viability of American slavery, but has also extended into the investigation of slave demography, the nature of slave culture, and the international political struggle to abolish slavery. This research has brought back into focus one of the classic questions about the history of economic development, concerning the role of the slave trade in the growth of modern capitalism. This issue was considered by Adam Smith, it was elevated into greater prominence by Karl Marx, and it was later examined by Alfred Marshall. Still later Eric Williams accorded the slave trade no less than the central role in explaining the origins of the industrial development of Western Europe.

At the heart of this concern with the historical relationship between slavery and modern economic growth has been an interest in the origins of modern market behavior. One of the most striking results of recent research on American slavery in the nineteenth century has been the discovery of the complexity and sophistication of the large competitive markets that characterized the slave economy in its mature form. This discovery in turn has raised new questions about the earlier history of American slavery.