Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America

Cambridge/ New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hardcover. VG-/VG- (ex-library with labels and stamps on spine, block, inside front and rear covers and title page verso. Pages are clean and clear.). Navy cloth boards with silver spine lettering; navy dj with white and gray lettering, mylar cover; xiv, 230 pp, bw illustrations. "The explosive growth of the Atlantic slave trade in the second half of the seventeenth century made the international trade of Africans one of the world's largest industries. This book explores the operation of that industry in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, focusing on the market behavior of the Royal African Company -- the largest English company engaged in the slave trade ... It was in the late seventeenth century that slaves became a majority of the population of the English West Indies, and when large-scale use of black slaves first occurred in the southern colonies of mainland North America ... In revealing the existence of sophisticated and complex market behavior in this early period of black slavery in the New World, the book adds to our understanding of the development of large-scale competitive markets, as well as to our knowledge of the efficiency of resource allocation in early English America" -- Book jacket.