The Slave Trade: The Formal Demography of a Global System

IF THE BEST-KNOWN aspects of African slavery remain the horrors of the middle passage and the travail of plantation life in the Americas, recent work has nonetheless provided some important reminders of the Old World ramifications of slavery (Miller 1988; Meillassoux 1986; Miers and Roberts 1988; Manning in press-a). Millions of slaves were sent from sub-Saharan Africa to serve in households and plantations in North Africa and the Middle East and suffered heavy casualties on their difficult journey. Millions more, captured in the same net as those sent abroad, were condemned to slavery on the African continent. The mortality of captives in Africa, therefore, included not only losses among those headed for export at the Atlantic coast but the additional losses among those destined for export to the Orient and among those captured and transported to serve African masters. The purpose of this study is to address , at the global level and in analytical terms, the demography of this system of forced labor migration, What was the impact of the slave trade on Africa and on the Orient? How serious was the mortality and the demo-