Measuring the Immeasurable: The Atlantic Slave Trade, West African Population and the Pyrrhonian Critic

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Periodical article

Title:	Measuring the Immeasurable: The Atlantic Slave Trade, West African Population and the Pyrrhonian Critic
Author:	Henige, David P.
Year:	1986
Periodical:	The Journal of African History
Volume:	27
Issue:	2
Pages:	295-313
Language:	English
Geographic term:	West Africa
Subjects:	population slave trade History and Exploration
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/181137
Abstract:	Current scholarly debate concerning the slave trade tends to concentrate on its economic and political aspects, particularly on its magnitude and regional characteristics. In the past statistical manipulations have supplied more evidence, but it has been concentrated on the number of slaves who arrived in the New World. Dearth of evidence regarding the other components of the trade has not discouraged efforts to arrive at global figures and, by extension, to determine the slave trade's effects on African societies. This paper wonders how any conclusions can be reached about almost any facet of the slave trade that can go beyond ideology or truism. No global estimate of the slave trade, or of any underdevelopment or underpopulation it may have caused, is possible, though limited answers may be provided by micro-studies. Notes, sum.