'extensive study ... David Eltis has written an excellent book that will be a landmark for some time to come.' P.C. Emmer, Centre for the History of European Expansion, Leiden, International Journal of Maritime History 'Eltis has good answers, but not crude or simplistic ones, that challenge a good many traditional assumptions that historians and economists have held about the place of the slave trade in the world economy. His book will be a landmark for a very long time.' David Brion Davis; Yale University 'for light on slavery and the slave-trade - the latest, strongest light - it is necessary to turn to the formidable treatise by David Eltis ... The analysis, supported at every step by graphs, citations, tables and whatever else is required is rigorously economic. ELtis never allows his readers to lose sight of the fact that slavery was above all an economic institution.' Times Literary Supplement