The Historiographical Significance Of Philip Curtin`s 1969 `the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census`.

Curtin`s `The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census`, is succeeded by a curious and controversial legacy. Though it is perhaps self-evident that controversy abounds wherever a subject matter is widely and consistently, not to say profoundly emotive, nonetheless those contentions which have arisen in response to Curtin`s work are sufficiently complex in their significance to be worthy of exploration, and in spite of J. D. Fage`s caveat that they have, in fact, `rather little to do with scholarship`. The rub in this instance, what has provoked the ire of historians such as Joseph Inikori and Enriqueta Vila Vilar, is Curtin`s cumulative total for the volume of the Atlantic slave trade of 9, 566, 100 - a figure much lower than previously accepted standards, which have ranged from fifteen to as high as fifty million. The critically minded might venture to attribute Inikori`s rejection of Curtin`s figure to the kind of cavilling that evolves wherever agendas are frustrated and resources that might be turned towards their defence are thin. In Inikori`s case, the agenda at work, or rather the analytical objective (one pertaining to an economic model of Inikori`s own creation), is, in his own words, `to identify the central factors in the historical process that produced the hierarchical character of our contemporary world economic order`, which objective might alternatively be read as an attempt to retrospectively write a causal thread into the world`s collective history for the sake of a satisfying, though ersatz, explanation of why things are the way they are. The dangers inherent in an approach which so demonstrably puts the cart before the horse are sufficiently well known as to spare us from having to delve too deeply into their character and consequences here. Suffice it to say that the distortion bred by this kind of teleology-in-reverse runs counter to the grain of nearly all scholarly principles and must be handled with no small care. Inikori`s thesis requires that the economic and demographic implications of the Atlantic slave trade be understood as being nothing short of relentlessly and uniformly catastrophic for the African continent as a whole, and, more than any other factor, responsible for the damage visited upon Africa`s economic development, the vestiges of which are yet manifest today in the twenty first century. As such, any assessment of the Atlantic slave trade which - like Curtin`s - returns a lower figure for the total volume of said trade and thus could be said to imply the existence of competing factors with an equal or greater bearing on Africa`s development beyond that of the export sector represents a palpable challenge to that thesis, and must either be countered or rejected out of hand. In any event, Inikori has tried his hand at both. His adjustment to Curtin`s global figure as presented in the Census amounts to an increase of 4, 400, 000, though Paul E. Lovejoy has called the methodology by which Inikori was led to this figure into serious question. According to Lovejoy, Inikori is guilty of a (presumably deliberate as well as consistent) `manipulation of statistics` - an accusation which Lovejoy is able to ratify to a more than satisfactory degree, detailing the frequent overlapping of data and unsubstantiated, anonymous `corrections` to Curtin`s statistical theory which abound in Inikori`s work. The criticism that Curtin`s work has sustained at Inikori`s hands has other implications, with a further and perhaps more important bearing on the wider historiographical significance of the Census. Aside from its being among the first attempts to empirically quantify the slave trade and bring the full force of statistical theory to bear on the study of same, the debate engendered by Curtin`s work involves a number of issues relating to the overall impact of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa itself, all of them more meaningful and of far greater historical interest than what Lovejoy has characterised as appearing at first glance to be `a quibble over numbers`. Though slavery is undoubtedly a feature central to African history, the Atlantic trade is only one of many influences that conspired to bring about African society`s particular evolution. This is, in a sense, the nexus of Curtin`s contribution to scholarship on the subject. To say nothing for the moment of the previously unparalleled precision and seriousness with which Curtin set about compiling his statistics (it is widely held that in spite of the upward revisions that have been made to individual sections of Curtin`s total figure of 9, 566, 100, his declared margin of error of twenty percent encompasses most approximations to the agreed-upon reality), the Census has facilitated and even encouraged enquiry as to the relative importance to Africa of the Atlantic trade. While some historians, notably David Eltis, have somewhat overstepped the mark, arguing that the impact of the slave trade on Africa`s social evolution was negligible, we would be equally remiss in allowing the Atlantic trade to subsume all other considerations. His more exuberant claims notwithstanding, Eltis` work is of some interest to the student of African history. He too attaches no small importance to Curtin`s Census, describing the figures contained therein as the `benchmark`, which remains preeminent in spite of minor revisions; `the starting point for most calculations of the volume of the traffic`. In point of fact, it was the figures presented in the Census that prompted Eltis` reassessment of nineteenth century trade; a reassessment which has won the author some praise - though not unreserved - from Lovejoy, amongst others. However, it is worth noting here that logical inconsistencies and outright contradictions are rife within Eltis` oeuvre. By virtue of what we might call a somewhat overextended inference, Eltis argues that the impact of the Atlantic trade on the African economy was of, if not minimal, then no overwhelmingly great consequence. However, in his Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era, written in conjunction with Lawrence C. Jennings, Eltis describes the slave trade as `the vital or dynamic component` in African trade, without which the continent was unable to sustain its relative position internationally. The authors offer in support of this conclusion the fact that the African commodity export sector was unable, from the nineteenth century onwards, to effectively compensate for the sloughing off of trade with the Atlantic littoral that came about by degrees once trade in slaves was abolished, and, more importantly, once this abolition began to be seriously enforced. Reconciling these two diametrically opposed and mutually contradictory views is, needless to say, no easy task and ought perhaps to be taken as illustrative of the inherent complexities associated with a subject, such as this one, of a scale from which the mind instinctively recoils, seeking refuge in convenient shorthands, which, while seeming to work for clarity`s sake, in actual fact often do quite the reverse. However, not wishing to either entirely or unduly exonerate Eltis and Jennings from the charge of negligence, it is worth mentioning that they fail to furnish adequate proofs that the relationship between the decrease in the trading of slaves and Africa`s inability to sustain its relative global position is causative rather than correlative. Of perhaps no more than tangential relevance here is J. D. Fage`s African Societies and the Atlantic Slave Trade, in which the author makes the valid, if unsatisfying, point that when it comes to any attempt to assess or quantify the damage inflicted by the slave trade on the world of contemporary African demographics, the only appropriate answer is that `we do not know`, and that `general hypotheses` must take the place of reasoned, credible conclusions. This absence of demographic data is the backdrop against which all historical debate on the subject plays out, and must be borne in mind when seeking to undertake any evaluation of the relevant historiography. It is, furthermore, part of the reason Curtin`s work has been accorded praise in the first place. This informational void represents the odds ranged against his attempt (by his own admission it is no more than an attempt; in no way final, in no way definitive) to quantify the impact on African demographics of the Atlantic slave trade. As an illustrative example of the natural limits imposed on this area of inquiry, one may take the fact that while figures do exist detailing the volume of the business of slave trading on the West African coast, no record survives of the individual ethnicity of the traded slaves in question. The historian`s hands are, to a certain extent, tied in this matter; and unappealing though the fact may be, it is not easily got around. Extrapolation and guesswork play a far more significant role here than is usual. Another point of some relevance within Fage`s essay is his discussion of the intra-African trading of slaves and the importance that slaves had as members (albeit peripheral members) of local kinship structures. According to Fage, the export of slaves to the Atlantic ought properly to be understood as simply one constituent part of a much larger network or structure of slavery; `no more than links at the very end of African chains`. The bearing this has on Curtin`s work and the debate that surrounds it, though it may seem tenuous at first, has in it something of the relation borne by one side of a coin to its partner: what Curtin tells us about the volume of the Atlantic slave trade - namely that it was a significantly smaller thing than had hitherto been assumed - is taken up by Fage, and in particular by his insistence on the importance to slave-owning elites of keeping slaves as indentured dependents relative to their value as an export commodity. This is not to say that this dovetailing of theses approximates in any way to proof, simply that where no conclusive or comprehensive data exists, a greater weight must of necessity be given to conviction. In summation, the historiographical significance of Curtin`s Census is multivalent. To some it is the standard, not only in terms of its overall accuracy, but also in the diligence of the author`s approach, in his care, in his precision, and in his successful avoidance of the many traps which make the statistician`s way hazardous. Curtin has earned the praise of Eltis, Lovejoy and Fage alike for keeping his focus on shipping data rather than looking to current population figures from which to extrapolate an estimated figure for the volume of trade, which is but one example of the manifest though not universal esteem in which he is held. The frequent upward revisions which have been made to Curtin`s original figures by various scholars as new data become available do not, in my opinion, amount to a wholesale rejection of Curtin`s work or even call its accuracy seriously into question. Rather they represent precisely the challenge and qualification that Curtin called for in the Census` preface. In an area of study where comparatively little is known, at least as far as raw demographic data are concerned, and in which, perhaps ironically enough, the `blind spots`, the oblique hinterlands beyond the reach of our knowledge elicit the most virulent debate, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, though it has certainly been refined again and again by the work of others, has yet, more than forty years on, to be roundly, unequivocally and comprehensively bettered, in spite of the author`s avowed wish that this should one day be the case.