Transatlantic Trade Slave

Let's look at what is told about the transatlantic trade slave in the essay "Atlantic Slavery’s Impact on European and British Economic Development" by Ellora Derenoncourt.

This study is about how the slave trade in the Atlantic affected Europe. The author thinks that slavery might have helped Europe grow economically. She uses information about how much Europe was involved in the slave trade and finds that places with more involvement had bigger cities between 1600 and 1850. For example, if the number of slaving voyages goes up by 10%, the population of port cities increases by about 1.2%.

In the Introduction part, she examines how the slave trade within the Atlantic Sea influenced Europe. The author is attempting to determine if being included in the slave trade made a difference in European cities growing between 1600 and 1850. They are testing a thought called the Williams hypothesis, which says that money from the slave trade made a difference in the British Industrial Revolution. The author finds that European cities connected to the slave trade developed faster. Indeed after considering other factors, a 10% increase in the slave trade is associated with almost a 1.2% increase in the city population. This study includes a discussion of how important slavery was for Europe's financial development. The author uses point-by-point records about the slave trade to include cities from different European nations within the examination.

In the Historical Background, Europe, and Slave Trade part, she talks about the time when 200 slaves came to Portugal from West Africa. France, England, and Holland created a triangular trade. They sent some stuff to Africa and bought slaves, then, those slaves were taken to America and sold, and in return, Europe took the crops that slaves worked on the plantation. Also, she implies that this trade way hit its peak in the late 18th century.

By the 1770s, some people in England start to not like the slavery method. They understood that this trade job was wrong. And in 1807, England stopped the trade and told other countries to stop it. They tried to make it from Liverpool but the government did not allow it. The author says the countries that did this trading job grew faster than the other countries that had the non-trade job.

Then, the author made her second subheading “Data” and made it into 3 parts;

The first one is The Atlantic Slave Trade, she tries to understand how much European cities are involved in the Atlantic slave trade and she says she used information from The Trans-Atlantic Slaves Trade Database. This database shows where slave voyages started. She makes a comparison between the coastal cities that had slave trade and not.

In the second part, The British Port Books, she talks about creating a new dataset about trade in the UK from 1565 to 1799. They are using old records from the British National Archives called port books, which tell about ships and goods coming in and out of British ports. Some books are damaged or missing, but the author uses online information about the number of pages in each book as a way to guess how much trade happened. She looks at trade both with other countries and along the coast, groups the data by centuries, and uses a special math trick in their analysis. Her goal is to learn more about how trade developed in the past.

The third part is called Historical City Population for Europe. The study looks at how big cities were in Europe a long time ago, from 1000 to 1850. They got this information from a study by Nunn and Qian, who used data from other researchers. They focus on cities with at least a thousand people, and there are 2206 cities in total. The study uses how much the cities grew over time to figure out how well they were doing economically. They look specifically at the years 1600-1850 when the slave trade was happening. In a table, they compare the average size of cities in Europe, the UK, and British outports. They separated them into cities involved in the slave trade and those that were not. They found that cities in the slave trade tended to be bigger. Instead of just looking at this, the study plans to go deeper by looking at how cities changed over time to understand how the slave trade might have affected their growth.

The author made her fourth subheading “Empirical Strategy & Results”; In this part, she tries to understand how the slave trade influenced the growth of cities in Europe a long time ago. They use fancy math to look at when cities joined the slave trade and how much they were involved. The results show that cities that were more into the slave trade tended to become bigger. They also look at smaller towns in the UK that were not as famous for the slave trade, like London or Liverpool. In these smaller places, being part of the slave trade might not be the only reason they grew. But, even after considering other things, the study still finds that the slave trade had a role in making cities grow.

The last part is called “Discussion”, she says the slave trade helped Europe grow by making its cities more populated. A long time ago, a smart person named Eric Williams said the money from the slave trade helped England's Industrial Revolution. Some people argued about how much money was made, but others, like Barbara Solow, still thought it had a big impact on Europe's money and investments. Apart from making money, the study also looks at other ways the slave trade affected the economy. For example, it influenced credit markets, money tools, and the insurance industry, which were important for making the economy grow. Also, industries related to the slave trade, like making cotton clothes, got better and helped with the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Another idea is that being part of the slave trade helped European ports connect with markets in the New World. This made more people want goods made in Europe. For example, when smaller British towns joined the "African trade," it opened up new markets for them. This kind of market growth is seen as a big reason why the Industrial Revolution happened in places like Liverpool.