Following, it will explore what occurred in the period between the capture of the slaves and the ships’ departure to the colonies, looking at slave traders’ strategies to maintaining the slaves, organizing and loading them onto the ships. Third, we will look in depth at the factors that influenced the voyage, its costs and risks. Due to the distance and length of the voyages, death, riots, epidemics and slave attacks on staff were constant risks faced by the trading company. Looking at these factors will provide some insight into just how profitable the trade was, given such high risks, and how the industry internalized them. Finally, we will look at how the sale of the slaves worked, what were companies’ selling strategies and what were the factors that affected the final price of slaves in the …show more content…
At the time, the British Empire dominated the slave trade. British ships carried 52% of all the slaves that were transported, and British colonies that employed the slaves produced 55% of the world’s supply in sugar (Kauffmann and Pope , 1999). The sheer size of the trade, from the number of firms involved to the quantity of goods shipped, is evident when one considers the fact that slave trade represented over 80% of the transatlantic movement of people (Eltis, Lewis & McIntyre, 2010). Figure 1 clearly shows the size of the trade, which was at its peak from the 1750s to 1850s. There were great companies such as the Royal African Company (RAC) that exported a large fraction of slaves, as well as many small businesses that also took part in the trade during specific points, if not during the entire process. Due to the ease of entry, there were a large number of firms operating, and slave trade was very competitive (Eltis et al., 2010). Following normal assumptions from current competitive markets, implies that profit margins for the firms involved were low to normal, but enough to encourage entry into the