From: glhewitt@bathe.Princeton.EDU (Gary Livingston Hewitt)
Subject: Re: Columbus/Slaves
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 20:20:15 GMT

In article <1993Jan15.170549.25027@anasazi.com> briand@anasazi.com (Brian Douglass) writes:
>In article <1993Jan13.190716.15115@cbnewse.cb.att.com> ronaldd@cbnewse.cb.att.com (ronald.h.davis) writes:
>>there apparently *is* something to claims of 30-60 million africans
>>dying as a result of the enslavement [and attempts thereof].  in
>>fact, i saw some estimates of population in africa during the period
>>when people were forcably dislocated to the west, the population
>>*actually* decreased.  as i recall the estimates, populations in
>
>Again, lets see some hard references.  I looked this up last night in an
>issue of National Geographic that had an article on slavery from about 4 
>months ago.  The author, states that most scholars believe 10-12 million 
>Africans were imported into the New World.  This covers the time from the very 
>first slave ship after Columbus' discovery to the end of the trade in 1870.  
...
>The author also mentions a contract by the Spanish in the 1500s with 1 trader 
>calling for 38,000 slaves over 9 years, of which 31,500 had to arrive alive.
>This is a 17% attrition rate at the time of the worst conditions for
>slaves.  If this rate is any judge, then about 2 million slaves could 
>died in transport.

There are a number of places where slave mortality struck:  during wars
of enslavement/conquest, during the voyage from the interior to the
trading forts on the African coast, during the "Middle Passage," and
during the first month or two in the Americas.  The "first passage," so
to speak, probably had nearly as high mortality as the more famous
"middle passage," and the "final passage" (?) probably came in a close
second.  The demographic results of the wars of enslavement are pretty
obscure -- at least to me.  You have to consider the number killed
directly, plus the number killed because of famine/etc. Some say that
African demography has only in the last century caught up with the
effects of the slave trade (and the particular nastiness of 1870-1950 or so).

My sense is that the large 60-plus million figures are not trying to
account for mortality _per_se, but the demographic loss to the African
Continent.  In this case, the point is not how many slaves died here or
there, but how many people were _removed_ from the African Continent
(either through death or emigration) as a result of the slave trade.  In
this case, what you have to add is (1) the obscure number of deaths
created by wars spurred by demand for slaves to (2) the number of slaves
dying in transport to the coast, to (3) the number of slaves actually
loaded onto slave ships.  I'd say that a factor of 2 to 3 probably could
account for this, giving us maybe 20-30 million removed from Africa at
the bottom.  This is rough, of course.  But wait, it gets better....

>In addition, the author states that only about 500,000 slaves were
>transported to N.A., 3-4 million to Brazil, and the remainder into the
>Carribean basin.  Given numbers such as these, this 30-60 million figure of 
>dead seems totally outlandish.  

You can multiply all these numbers by two to account for the East
African slave trade, carried across the Indian Ocean rather than the
Atlantic.  The scope of the trade, to some accounts, was as high or
higher than that of the Atlantic trade.
>
>The only thing I can surmise, having not read any material
>in support of this number, is that it is a caclulation of every African or
>descendant who died before emancipation.  Slaves that died of old age would
>be included in this figure just as slaves who died in transit due to
>typhus.  And given centurys of slavery, ~1500 to 1870, you could have 30-60
>million Africans dieing in captivity.  Taking a figure of 60 million, that
>would be 171,428.57 Africans who died each year of all causes in the New
>World.

Well -- if you look at it this way, then you can say that slavery killed
millions of European slaveholders, too....

The way I look at it, around 10-12 million slaves arrived in the New
World, alive and healthy.  Backfiguring, I'd say around 16 million or so
left Africa.  Backfiguring, I'd say around 20-25 million were captured
in the African interior.  Backfiguring, I'd say around 30-60 million
dead sounds pretty "inlandish."

Gary
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