Despite its central importance in the economic and social history of Western expansion, its fundamental role in the history of America, and its profound impact on African society, the Atlantic slave trade remained one of the least studied areas in modern Western historiography until the past quarter century. This late start was not due to any lack of sources, for the materials available for its study were abundant from the very beginning. Rather, it was ignored because of its close association with European imperialism and a resulting lack of interest in a morally difficult problem, and because of a lack of tools with which to analyze the complex quantitative data.

Even today, despite a quarter century of sophisticated multinational studies, the gap between popular understanding and scholarly knowledge remains as profound as when the trade was first under discussion in literate European circles in the eighteenth century. For a variety of political and intellectual reasons having a great deal to do with the nature of contemporary North American politics, the scholarly research is largely ignored as a society riven by racial conflict finds the trade a topic too difficult to treat in a rational manner. Yet, in the heat of the debate it is this rationality that is most needed.