Originally published in 2004, this book contains perspectives from prominent historians of slavery in the Americas.

Part I. Establishing the System: 1. White Atlantic? The choice for African slave labor in the plantation Americas Seymour Drescher; 2. The Dutch and the slave Americas Pieter C. Emmer; Part II. Patterns of Slave Use: 3. Mercantile strategies, credit networks, and labor supply in the colonial Chesapeake in trans-Atlantic perspective Lorena S. Walsh; 4. African slavery in the production of subsistence crops, the case of São Paulo in the nineteenth century Fransisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein; 5. The transition from slavery to freedom through manumission: a life-cycle approach applied to the United States and Guadeloupe Frank D. Lewis; Part III. Productivity Change and Its Implications: 6. Prices of African slaves newly arrived in the Americas, 1673¿1865: new evidence on long-run trends and regional differentials David Eltis and David Richardson; 7. American slave markets during the 1850s: slave price rises in the US, Cuba, and Brazil in comparative perspective Laird W. Bergad; 8. The relative efficiency of free and slave agriculture in the antebellum United States: a stochastic production frontier approach Elizabeth B. Field-Hendrey and Lee A. Craig; Part IV. Implications for Distribution and Growth: 9. Slavery and economic growth in Virginia, 1760¿1860: a view from probate records James R. Irwin; 10. The poor: slaves in early America Philip D. Morgan; 11. The North-South wage gap, before and after the Civil War Robert A. Margo; The writings of Stanley L. Engerman.