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date: 16 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This article examines issues of traditional concern to economic historians of slavery: the origins of and motivations/rationales for slavery; pattern and variation in the institution both across space and over time; questions relating to slavery's profitability; the developmental effects of slavery; and the reasons for its demise. The focus is on slavery in the Western hemisphere, and, only then, on slavery in societies established therein by European colonizers beginning in the late fifteenth century.

Keywords: economic history, slaves, slave trade, Western hemisphere

Peter Coclanis

Peter Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he also serves as Associate Provost for International Affairs.

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