“The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade”, 1974-12 ():
[Davis Kedrosky summary: 1974 devised a third and final approach to minimizing the profits of the Atlantic slave trade, which was to theoretically examine the market structure of each stage in the transport of slaves from Africa to America.]
This chapter examines nature of the system of property rights in Africa, similar to the organizations of a contemporary high seas fishery, probably caused much of those profits to be dissipated or wasted. The fishers of men were almost always African and the exporters usually were African. The African end of the slave trade, it must be pointed out, was particularly complicated, with traditions, institutions and conditions often varying substantially from area to area and over time in each area. Black slaves came to the Americas on the heels of Columbus. From the first most of these slaves were used in the tropical lowlands—the Greater Antilles and the coastal areas of Central and South America. In the British plantations there were 3 forms of labor available: unbound labor, indentured Europeans, and African slaves. The planters in British-America could obtain additional slaves either from traders selling blacks directly from Africa or from persons who had reared slaves in the New World.
Historians of slavery and the slave trade have often left us with the impression that the slave trade was fantastically profitable. The view that it was the profits from the slave trade which financed the British Industrial Revolution and the first industrialization of the United States appears to be gaining adherents. These interpretations seem plausible enough on the surface; indeed, the latter provides part of the historical foundation for the claim by black militants for reparations. Black slaves, whether shipped directly from Africa, or born in the New World into slavery, served their masters against their wills in return for the subsistence allowed them. Surely there was a substantial difference between the value of what they produced and the value of the consumption goods allotted to them to allow survival.