During the past two centuries, the slave trade has come to be equated with gross immorality. However, it is often assumed that those who engaged in it must have had very compelling motives. Racial prejudice is often thought to be the principal motive for slave traders, but it is more likely that racism came to the fore as a consequence of the ever-growing and sharper socioeconomic disparity between blacks and whites that arose out of slavery. A more convincing argument for explaining motives for participation in the traffic is the generous profits that it produced. Slave-trade literature has frequently pointed to specific slaving voyages that were extremely profitable. Only recently has the subject of slave-trade profitability been subjected to a systematic evaluation. But before the profits can be assessed a whole array of related financial factors needs to be explored.

Financial configurations in the traffic

The slave trade was a complex business. Not only because it was unusual in that it dealt with human beings as a commodity, but also because it was stretched over a wide area and involved many different societies and cultural and economic systems. It was therefore quite appropriate that one scholarly study labeled it the uncommon market, even though the slave trade was a very common practice in its time.