Description: In this revisionist study of the consequences of Britain's abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, historian David Eltis here contends that the move did not bolster British economy; rather, it vastly hindered economic expansion just as its earlier great reliance on slave labor had played a role in its rise to world economic dominance.
Review Quotes: "Eltis's magisterial reconstruction of the last, and most dynamic, century of the slave trade and the Atlantic slave economy...should command our attention. In its depth of documentation, its systematic treatment of alternatives, and in its geographical scope, it is a landmark in the history of the slave trade."--Journal of Social History
"A work of prodigious and meticulous scholarship, Eltis's book will be studied and debated well into the next century...Eltis's provocative arguments will require historians to reconsider the entire Anglo-American antislavery movement as well as the place of coerced labor in an emerging industrial and free market Atlantic world."--David Brion Davis, The New York Review of Books"A provocative book that promises to long be required reading."--Library Journal"A remarkable book, erudite, breathtaking in sweep of research, original in thought, and masterful in language. It is a landmark in the literature on the transatlantic slave trade."--Journal of Southern History"Critical to a better understanding of the contribution of the slave trade to Atlantic economic growth."--Journal of American History"For light on slavery and the slave-trade--the latest, strongest light--it is necessary to turn to the formidable treatise by David Eltis."--Times Literary Supplement"Eltis has good answers...[T]hat challenge a good many traditional assumptions that historians and economists have held about the place of the slave trade in the world economy. His book will be a landmark for a very long time."--David Brion Davis, Yale University"A major book and an important contribution to the literature on slavery. It will become the standard work on the impact of slave-trade abolition in the Americas, [and] the operation of the trade during the abolition era...There is much that is new and exciting."--Albion"Eltis has produced a landmark study in the history of Atlantic slave trade. He combines a mastery of the sources with a critical and encyclopedic grasp of the extensive historiography on the subject."--Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh"Should immediately attain the status of a standard work...It is carefully done, comprehensive, rich in counterfactuals, and its footnote references are exhaustive...[A] landmark."--International Journal of African Historical Studies"A monumental work of research, analysis, and scholarly synthesis. Combining extensive statistical material with an encyclopedic mastery of secondary literature, Eltis assesses Britain's efforts to end the trafficking in human cargo...His provocative arguments will challenge specialists in the histories of four continents, at the same time that his fascinating and original data will provide them with evidence for their own studies."--Citation for the 1988 John Ben Snow Foundation Prize (Honorable Mention)