Financing the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

This project uses a unique historical Trans-Atlantic slave trade to test an important economic theory---how the financing or lack thereof shape the trajectory of an industry. The project uses ship-level data to analyze investor behavior in the transatlantic slave trade. How the slave trade was financed---who, how, structure, and how these changed over time---have not been explored in part because of lack of appropriate data.

Based on rich sources of ship-level data and archival records, it will create the first transnational investor-based dataset of the slave trade. The large detailed and sophisticated nature of these micro-level data allow the researchers to analyze economy wide patterns of investment in the trade. The macro-comparative approach provides a first comprehensive transnational lens on this global business.

The project pays attention to how the trading environment on the African coast impacted investment decisions. The micro-level dataset could be used to assess long-term inter-generational wealth transfers at the individual and family level generated by the slave trade. The results of this research can guide financial policies to increase the efficiency of the economy.

This research project will collect ship-level micro data on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and use it to answer questions about comparative risk-management practices, nationality of investors, principal-agent problems, reinvestment patterns, concentration of investor, female participation in the slave trade, and the role of families in early modern commerce. The project will build on existing public Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, by cleaning investor names in the original database, and adding new investor-related data.

This data will not only allow the PIs to study aspects of financing that were critical to the success of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, it will also allow other researchers to study the financial aspects of the slave trade. The results of this research could answer questions such as whether the way the trans-Atlantic slave trade was financed contributed to the development of modern fiancé and whether it had any impact on inter-generational wealth distribution in contemporary societies.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.