This book deals with one aspect of the Atlantic economy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: the transatlantic slave trade to the early English West Indies. It uses an important body of quantitative evidence that has not previously been systematically analyzed in order to draw a series of conclusions about the conduct of the slave trade and the history of early English settlement in the Caribbean. Yet the book also addresses a set of issues that transcend the boundaries of both the West Indies and the early colonial era. These issues lie at the heart of current controversies concerning the origins of modern capitalism and the usefulness of modern economic theory in understanding long stretches of the past.

There is still much to be learned about how and when large-scale competitive markets first began to operate. Although a study of the early slave trade cannot solve that problem, it does reveal that such markets existed and functioned continuously and routinely more than 300 years ago. The participants in these markets were sophisticated traders who, though severely hampered by the lack of modern computers and methods of communication, sought to respond to changes in market prices by adjusting the composition of their cargoes to maximize their profits from trading. They also designed complicated auctions to increase their revenues, developed an extensive network of credit financing, and devised institutional arrangements that allowed risk sharing, not only among partners, but also with employees and purchasers.