ABSTRACT
Since its publication in 1969, Philip D. Curtin’s The Atlantic Slave Trade : A Census has been the subject of a lively debate. On the basis of published material, Curtin estimated that 9,566,100 slaves were imported into the Americas and other parts of the Atlantic basin from 1451 to 1870. A number of Curtin’s 1969 estimates have been revised upwards, some partial figures by substantial amounts, and consequently it is easy to see why Curtin’s global estimate for the total volume of the trans-Atlantic trade has been challenged. Leslie B. Rout Jr. was one of the first scholars to suggest that errors in the calculation of partial totals might indicate that Curtin’s entire census was suspect. In 1973 he questioned ‘the credibility of Curtin’s computations’ for the volume of the slave trade to Spanish America before 1810. The modifications in Curtin’s total for this period require an upward revision of 172,900 in total imports, which translates into 216,100 exports.
