The conduct of the early Atlantic slave trade

This study has provided strong evidence of diligent and systematic behavior aimed at profit maximization by English slave traders and West Indian sugar planters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. These traders and planters were hindered by severe handicaps, yet the evidence shows that they responded to these energetically and intelligently. The evidence of rational responses to market stimuli comes from both quantitative evidence on aggregate outcomes in the slave trade and qualitative evidence that affords a rare glimpse into the internal operation of a large company operating in the late seventeenth century. What emerges overall is a picture of a series of closely connected competitive economic markets, in Africa and America, in which large numbers of traders and planters responded promptly and shrewdly to economic incentives.

The primary purpose of the Royal African Company was to earn profits by transporting slaves from West Africa to the English West Indies, and a variety of evidence indicates that the company pursued this goal carefully and intelligently in the presence of severe constraints. Company factors in West Africa selected cargoes of slaves in ways that were dictated by the concern of earning profits. Company agents in London and America kept the factors informed about transatlantic shipping costs and the preferences of West Indian planters, and they paid careful attention to these in determining the age and sex composition of the slaves to be shipped to America.