Keeping 'the wheel in motion' : Trans-Atlantic Credit Terms, Slave Prices, and the Geography of Slavery in the British Americas, 1755–1807

Radburn, Nicholas (2015) Keeping 'the wheel in motion' : Trans-Atlantic Credit Terms, Slave Prices, and the Geography of Slavery in the British Americas, 1755–1807. Journal of Economic History, 75 (3). pp. 660-689. ISSN 0022-0507

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Abstract

This article uses a new dataset of 330 slaving voyages to examine terms of credit issued for British American slave sales between 1755 and 1807. It shows that credit terms consistently varied between American colonies, and that slave ship captains considered these differences when electing where to land enslaved Africans. Our dataset also shows that credit terms were highly erratic, especially in the last quarter of the century, contributing to both surges and collapses in the slave trade to individual colonies, and in the trade as a whole. Four such instances are examined in detail to show that instability in credit terms played an important and hitherto unacknowledged role in the volume and direction of Britain’s transAtlantic slave trade in the second one-half of the eighteenth century

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Economic History
Additional Information:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/keeping-the-wheel-in-motion-transatlantic-credit-terms-slave-prices-and-the-geography-of-slavery-in-the-british-americas-17551807/0E22287ECE02D4CB1DCF906BF60A5E01 The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, The Journal of Economic History, 75 (3), pp 660-689 2015, © 2015 Cambridge University Press.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1202
Subjects:
?? historyeconomics and econometricseconomics, econometrics and finance (miscellaneous) ??
ID Code:
88418
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
26 Oct 2017 08:06
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Dec 2023 01:48