Extending the Frontiers of Transatlantic Slavery, Partially

• Published in: The Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 40; no. 1; pp. 57 - 70
• Main Author: Lovejoy, Paul E.
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 238 Main St., Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-1046, USA MIT Press 01-07-2009; The MIT Press; MIT Press Journals, The
• Subjects: Eltis, David; Essays; Migration; Nonfiction; Review Essay; Richardson, David; Slave trade
• ISSN: 0022-1953; 1530-9169
• DOI: 10.1162/jinh.2009.40.1.57

Eltis and Richardson's Extending the Frontiers is the first volume to analyze the latest, monumental, installment of their slave-voyage database. However, despite the volume's laudable synthesis of primary and secondary data about intra-Caribbean enslaved migration, its considerable contribution to scholarship about the operations of slaving ships from specific countries, and its important findings from the raw data concerning the scale and direction of the enforced migration, the volume has one fundamental shortcoming. It fails to engage experts who might have helped to explain significant implications concerning the people who were actually enslaved and the merchants and political authorities in Africa who were involved in enslaving them.