Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2018)
Journal Article
Pearson, R., & Richardson, D. (in press). Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Journal of Economic History,

One important, but overlooked, risk mitigation device that facilitated the growth of the slave trade in the eighteenth century was the increasing availability of insurance for ships and their human cargoes. In this paper we explore, for the first tim... Read More

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (2015)
Book
Eltis, D., & Richardson, D. (2015). Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Yale University Press

Between 1501 and 1867, the transatlantic slave trade claimed an estimated 12.5 million Africans and involved almost every country with an Atlantic coastline. In this extraordinary book, two leading historians have created the first comprehensive, up-... Read More

Involuntary migration in the early modern world, 1500-1800 (2011)
Book Chapter
Richardson, D. (2011). Involuntary migration in the early modern world, 1500-1800. In D. Eltis, & S. L. Engerman (Eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, Volume 3: AD 1420-AD 1804, 563-593. Cambridge University Press (CUP). doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521840682.024

Any investigation of involuntary migration in the early modern period must recognize that trafficking in human beings was an important feature of life in both the New and the Old Worlds in the period 1500-1800. This chapter focuses on involuntary mig... Read More

Cultures of exchange: Atlantic Africa in the era of the slave trade (2009)
Journal Article
Richardson, D. (2009). Cultures of exchange: Atlantic Africa in the era of the slave trade. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 19, (151-179). doi:10.1017/s0080440109990089. ISSN 0080-4401

Cultural factors have often been invoked to explain parliament's decision in 1807 to outlaw slave carrying by British subjects but they have only infrequently been cited in efforts to explain why the Atlantic slave trade itself became so large in the... Read More

Social capital, institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800 (2008)
Journal Article
Pearson, R., & Richardson, D. (2008). Social capital, institutional innovation and Atlantic trade before 1800. Business history, 50(6), (765-780). doi:10.1080/00076790802420336. ISSN 0007-6791

The growth of the Atlantic economy during the eighteenth century has been associated with developments in business networking to mitigate the hazards of communication in long-distance trade. Such social capital-based mechanisms reduced transaction co... Read More

Extending the frontiers: Essays on the new Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (2008)
Book
D. Richardson, & D. Eltis (Eds.), (2008). Extending the frontiers: Essays on the new Transatlantic Slave Trade Database

Since 1999, intensive research efforts have vastly increased what is known about the history of coerced migration of transatlantic slaves. A huge database of slave trade voyages from Columbus’s era to the mid-nineteenth century is now available on an... Read More