The British slave trade, 1785-1807: Volume, profitability, and mortality

Based on information contained in a new data-set of 2,990 British slave voyages, this thesis examines three principal areas of scholarship and debate in the historiography of the late British slave trade. In chapter one I estimate that British slave voyages that sailed to Africa from 1785 to 1807 disembarked 717,157-737,685 slaves in the Americas, lowering previous volume estimates by a range from ten to fifty percent. These new figures take into account the fact that between nine and twelve percent of all British voyages were lost before slaving on the African coast.;In chapter two I assess whether the British slave trade was a competitive industry that earned profits equal to the next best alternative investment or was a non-competitive industry in which major firms controlled prices to earn greater "economic" profits. Using new tonnage and volume data I conclude that a cost-revenue analysis of the British slave trading industry yields profitability levels of about seven to eight percent from 1785 to 1807. Analysis of the market structure of the late British trade supports these results. Low to low-moderate firm concentration characterized the structure of the British slave trading industry from 1785 to 1796 and low firm concentration and atomistic competition characterized the market structure of the British trade in the decade before Abolition.;In chapter three I examine the slave trade regulation acts--which reduced crowding and placed certified surgeons on board ship--in the context of contemporary medical opinion on disease and mortality. I argue that Parliament regulated the British slave trade to reduce the possibility that contagion would be generated below deck and to improve the disease environment in the British colonies. Evidence suggests that the regulations contributed to the reduced mortality of slaves and crew during the final years of the British slave trade. Issues of disease and mortality shaped the regulation acts and may have influenced the abolition of the trade in 1807.