David Eltis

Eltis's work focuses primarily on the social and, secondarily, the economic reasons that the slave trade developed in the New World. He focuses on the English, and to a lesser extent the Dutch, because of this paradox: why is it that the two states with the most respect for the individual and with the most political freedoms, England and the Netherlands, are complicit in the rise of African slavery? Eltis makes an attempt through economic and statistics, noting that social reasons kept Europeans from enslaving their peers, and showing that African states had some power and agency in determining who was enslaved and sold to the Europeans. He does a fine job. The footnotes are excellent, the tables annoying, and the maps useless. Recommended.… (more)