Simulating the African Slave Trade

Abstract

Patrick Manning has long been one of the ablest scholars working on the history of the slave trade. In particular, he has been in the forefront of efforts to use computers and modern statistical methods to make sense of a confusing array of data. His book, Slavery and African Life: Occidental and African Slave Trades, is an introduction to the trade, the way it shaped African life, and a computer simulation of the trade. Manning presents the reader with a series of simple questions: why were Africans enslaved in such large numbers and why did the laborers have to be slaves? What effect did the Atlantic and Oriental slave trades have on Africa, and what was the difference in the structure of the two trades? Why did Africans supply slaves in such massive numbers? What were the links between Atlantic capitalism and slavery? Building on an analysis of demographic change and prices, Manning describes how the system evolved to produce and market huge numbers of slaves. In the early years, slaves came from areas very close to the coast. Driven by the demand for trade goods and increasingly higher prices, the system created both slave-producing social formations and a distribution network capable of draining slaves from the far interior. Manning then looks at the way the trade reinforced both patriarchy and the domination of a ruling class.