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Deaths of Slaves in the Middle Passage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Raymond L. Cohn
Raymond L. Cohn
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois 61761.
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Abstract

It is widely accepted by students of the slave trade that slave mortality during the Middle Passage fell between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first person to make the claim of declining mortality was Philip Curtin, who reopened research on slave mortality in his book The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Curtin examined a number of sources, and his conclusion was that “… there is a decreasing rate of loss over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Curtin's book stimulated a great deal of further research, much of it by Herbert Klein. Klein's conclusion was the same as Curtin's: “it is undoubtedly true that over the whole of the 18th century, mortality in the Middle Passage was on the decline.” This result has since been repeated in a number of places. Riley has recently summed up the consensus view on the subject: “Most students of this question report that mortality declined over time, but the available data are sporadic in time and place.” The only dissenting view has come from Postma who found “no discernible trend toward decrease or increase in the overall pattern” in the Dutch trade.

Type
A Symposium on the Atlantic Slave Trade
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1985 , pp. 685 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 Curtin, Philip C., The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, Wisc., 1969), pp. 276–77.Google Scholar

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19 The equation is not as simple and direct as it seems. The mortality rate obtained by dividing loss in transit by length of voyage is not exactly the mortality rate that would be preferred. A great deal of confusion exists in exactly how to calculate mortality rates from ship-specific or sample-specific data. See Raymond L. Cohn, “Methods of Calculating Slave Mortality and Loss-in-Transit Rates” (unpublished manuscript) for a discussion of the various problems involved in calculating these rates. Alternatively, voyage length could be given in days rather than months. The use of days for voyage length would, however, lead to mortality rates being given in deaths per day. Since daily mortality rates are fairly small, it is difficult to appreciate differences in size; hence, monthly rates are presented in the paper. No loss of accuracy occurs, of course, from the use of monthly rather than daily mortality rates.Google Scholar

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22 Klein, The Middle Passage, p. 174. Rawley, Transatlantic Slave Trade, p. 256, also mentions copper sheathing.Google Scholar

23 Klein, The Middle Passage, pp. 86, 198;Google ScholarCohn, Raymond L. and Jensen, Richard A., “Comment and Controversy: Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Statistical Evidence on Causality,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 43 (Autumn 1982), pp. 317–29,Google Scholar and “The Determinants of Slave Mortality Rates on the Middle Passage,” Explorations in Economic History, 19 (07 1982), pp. 269–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Eltis, “Mortality,” has found no significant relationship between mortality rates and voyage length for particular routes. The effect of famines, epidemics, and other disasters is assessed in a number of these studies, especially in Eltis.

24 It should be noted that even these “low” rates were still substantially above those experienced in Western Europe or on the Europe-to-America immigrant trade. See Cohn, Raymond L., “Mortality on Immigrant Ships to New York, 1836–1853,” this JOURNAL, 44 (06 1984), pp. 289–300.Google Scholar

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31 Harris, The Copper King, p. 50.Google Scholar

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