First Published in 1990. American slavery began in Africa. An understanding of slavery begins with the African slave trade and the domestic slave trade. Both were indispensable to the creation of the New World slave societies, including the colonies that became the United States. This book is part of a eighteen volume series collecting nearly four hundred of the most important articles on slavery in the United States. Volume 2 looks at the domestic and foreign slave trade and migration and includes pioneering articles in the history of slavery, important break-throughs in research and methodology, and articles that offer major historiographical interpretations.

Looks at what life was like for Africans forced into slavery and discusses how these enslaved immigrants held on to their dignity and traditions against all odds.

This book sheds new light on domestic forced migration by examining the experiences of American-born slave migrants from a comparative perspective. It analyzes how different migrant groups anticipated, reacted to, and experienced forced removal, as well as how they adapted to their new homes.

This survey is a synthesis of the economic, social, cultural, and political history of the Atlantic slave trade, providing the general reader with a basic understanding of the current state of scholarly knowledge of forced African migration and compares this knowledge to popular beliefs. The Atlantic Slave Trade examines the four hundred years of Atlantic slave trade, covering the West and East African experiences, as well as all the American colonies and republics that obtained slaves from Africa. It outlines both the common features of this trade and the local differences that developed. It discusses the slave trade's economics, politics, demographic impact, and cultural implications in relationship to Africa as well as America. Finally, it places the slave trade in the context of world trade and examines the role it played in the growing relationship between Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. This new edition incorporates the latest findings of the last decade in slave trade studies carried out in Europe and America. It also includes new data on the slave trade voyages which have just recently been made available to the public.

In 2006, the United Nations reported on the “feminization” of migration, noting that the number of female migrants had doubled over the last five decades. Likewise, global awareness of issues like human trafficking and the exploitation of immigrant domestic workers has increased attention to the gender makeup of migrants. But are women really more likely to migrate today than they were in earlier times? In Gender and International Migration, sociologist and demographer Katharine Donato and historian Donna Gabaccia evaluate the historical evidence to show that women have been a significant part of migration flows for centuries. The first scholarly analysis of gender and migration over the centuries, Gender and International Migration demonstrates that variation in the gender composition of migration reflect not only the movements of women relative to men, but larger shifts in immigration policies and gender relations in the changing global economy. While most research has focused on women migrants after 1960, Donato and Gabaccia begin their analysis with the fifteenth century, when European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade led to large-scale forced migration, including the transport of prisoners and indentured servants to the Americas and Australia from Africa and Europe. Contrary to the popular conception that most of these migrants were male, the authors show that a significant portion were women. The gender composition of migrants was driven by regional labor markets and local beliefs of the sending countries. For example, while coastal ports of western Africa traded mostly male slaves to Europeans, most slaves exiting east Africa for the Middle East were women due to this region’s demand for female reproductive labor. Donato and Gabaccia show how the changing immigration policies of receiving countries affect the gender composition of global migration. Nineteenth-century immigration restrictions based on race, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, limited male labor migration. But as these policies were replaced by regulated migration based on categories such as employment and marriage, the balance of men and women became more equal – both in large immigrant-receiving nations such as the United States, Canada, and Israel, and in nations with small immigrant populations such as South Africa, the Philippines, and Argentina. The gender composition of today’s migrants reflects a much stronger demand for female labor than in the past. The authors conclude that gender imbalance in migration is most likely to occur when coercive systems of labor recruitment exist, whether in the slave trade of the early modern era or in recent guest-worker programs. Using methods and insights from history, gender studies, demography, and other social sciences, Gender and International Migration shows that feminization is better characterized as a gradual and ongoing shift toward gender balance in migrant populations worldwide. This groundbreaking demographic and historical analysis provides an important foundation for future migration research.

This handbook provides an authoritative multidisciplinary overview of contemporary African international migration. It endeavours to present a single source of reference on issues such as migration history, trends, migrant profiles, narratives, migration-development nexus, migration governance, diasporas, impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. The handbook assembles a multidisciplinary contributor team of distinguished and upcoming Africanist scholars, practitioners, researchers, and policy experts both inside and outside Africa to contribute their perspectives on contemporary African migration. It attempts to address some of the following pertinent questions: What drives contemporary migration in Africa? How are its patterns and trends evolving? What is the architecture of migration governance in Africa? How do migration, diaspora engagement and development play out in Africa? What are the future trajectories of African migration? The handbook is a valuable resource for practitioners, politicians, researchers, university students, and academics interested in studying and understanding contemporary African migration.

This watershed study is the first to consider in concrete terms the consequences of Britain's abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Why did Britain pull out of the slave trade just when it was becoming important for the world economy and the demand for labor around the world was high? Caught between the incentives offered by the world economy for continuing trade at full tilt and the ideological and political pressures from its domestic abolitionist movement, Britain chose to withdraw, believing, in part, that freed slaves would work for low pay which in turn would lead to greater and cheaper products. In a provocative new thesis, historian David Eltis here contends that this move did not bolster the British economy; rather, it vastly hindered economic expansion as the empire's control of the slave trade and its great reliance on slave labor had played a major role in its rise to world economic dominance. Thus, for sixty years after Britain pulled out, the slave economies of Africa and the Americas flourished and these powers became the dominant exporters in many markets formerly controlled by Britain. Addressing still-volatile issues arising from the clash between economic and ideological goals, this global study illustrates how British abolitionism changed the tide of economic and human history on three continents.

Humans have been on the move for millennia. They have done so slowly as well as quickly, sometimes involuntarily, sometimes transported by force, often relocated at great cost in lives, but they have always moved. Over the centuries, improved transportation has eased the movement, even in the face of man-made or natural obstacles. But in modern times, migration has accelerated and its reach has become truly global.Whether it is Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany, Japanese Nisei in Seattle, Filipinos in Kuwait, or Haitians in Brooklyn, the costs and benefits of human mobility on such a wide and rapid scale are hotly debated. Global History and Migrations, the second volume of the Global History Series, explores the historical background of this issue by focusing on recent history, a time when human movements have been at their most dynamic. This book provides a rich, cross-cultural foundation for a more enlightened understanding of migration and its role in the unfolding shape of global history.

This book uses primary sources to capture the ways Africans experienced and were influenced by the slave trade.

Originating with the birth of the nation itself, in many respects, the story of the domestic slave trade is also the story of the early United States. While an external traffic in slaves had always been present, following the American Revolution this was replaced by a far more vibrant internal trade. Most importantly, an interregional commerce in slaves developed that turned human property into one of the most valuable forms of investment in the country, second only to land. In fact, this form of property became so valuable that when threatened with its ultimate extinction in 1860, southern slave owners believed they had little alternative but to leave the Union. Therefore, while the interregional trade produced great wealth for many people, and the nation, it also helped to tear the country apart. The domestic slave trade likewise played a fundamental role in antebellum American society. Led by professional traders, who greatly resembled northern entrepreneurs, this traffic was a central component in the market revolution of the early nineteenth century. In addition, the development of an extensive local trade meant that the domestic trade, in all its configurations, was a prominent feature in southern life. Yet, this indispensable part of the slave system also raised many troubling questions. For those outside the South, it affected their impression of both the region and the new nation. For slaveholders, it proved to be the most difficult part of their institution to defend. And for those who found themselves commodities in this trade, it was something that needed to be resisted at all costs. Carry Me Back restores the domestic slave trade to the prominent place that it deserves in early American history, exposing the many complexities of southern slavery and antebellum American life.