The study “Aggregate statistics on trafficker-destination relations in the Atlantic slave trade”, by Prof. Philip Hans Franses and Dr Wilco van den Heuvel of Erasmus School of Economics, reveals that of all enslaved people who arrived in Dutch colonies, 37.4 % were transported by the Portuguese, and 12.6 % by the Dutch.
Until recently, it was unknown how many enslaved people, at an aggregate level, were transported to where and by whom. The available aggregated data on the Atlantic trade in enslaved people in between 1519 and 1875 concern the numbers of enslaved people transported by a country and the numbers of enslaved people who arrived at various destinations.
Franses and Van den Heuvel filled in the voids and estimated trends in mortality per transport country, as well as the fraction of enslaved people who went to colonies owned by the transport country or to others.
Results
They found that of all enslaved people who arrived in Dutch colonies, 37.4 % were transported by the Portuguese, and 12.6 % by the Dutch. In addition, of all enslaved people who were transported by the Dutch, 26.0 % went to Portuguese colonies, and 7.4 % to Dutch colonies. The Dutch seafarers had the most casualties, that is, 18.3 % of the enslaved people carried by the Dutch did not make it across the Atlantic.
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The study “Aggregate statistics on trafficker-destination relations in the Atlantic slave trade” was published in the 2019 September issue of International Journal of Maritime History and can be found here.
For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Communications Officer at Erasmus School of Economics, at rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, or +31 6 53 641 846.