Abstract The British, French and, eventually, the Americans attract a disproportionate share of scholarly attention in the history of the Atlantic World before 1800. The impact of the St. Domingue revolution, British power in the nineteenth century, and the dominance of the American economy in the 20th and 21st centuries have ensured that historians fail to recognize the continued influence of the two Iberian nations in the three centuries after Columbian contact. Until at least 1800 Spanish America was the largest, richest, most heavily populated, as well as the most urbanized European imperial domain in the New World. In the Atlantic Ocean and Africa, the Portuguese had a similar position, not because of conquests, but because of the slave trading system they developed based on their relations with parts of sub-Saharan Africa. They were able to supply slaves to the Americas more efficiently than any other European nation - an advantage that persisted through the whole period of the slave trade.Much of the recent literature - in the US especially - has revived an old argument about how slavery enabled capitalism. But a more accurate picture of the pre-1800 world raises the question of why after three centuries of slavery in the Americas it was northern Europe and North America that first became advanced capitalist societies rather than Iberia and South America. This paper examines the Portuguese system of slave trading and assesses its impact on the transatlantic slave trade and the experiences of the African peoples carried off to the Americas.

O objetivo geral do artigo é propor uma análise quantitativa da etnicidade Iorubá, em suas expressões na diáspora, uma vez que esse grupo não existia inicialmente como um povo, ou etnia, consciente de si mesmo. Trata-se de explorar em que medida as condições criadas no Novo Mundo pelo tráfico de escravos pôde acelerar a constante renovação da formação identitária dos Iorubás. Para tanto, pretende-se apresentar uma estimativa mais sistemática do envolvimento dos Iorubás na dinâmica do tráfico e explorar as implicações dessas descobertas para iluminar questões mais amplas do repovoamento das Américas.

The article is a quantitative analysis of Iorubá ethnicity as expressed in the Diaspora. Initially, the Iorubá did not exist as a distinct people, ethnic group or cultural consciousness. The analysis intends to explore to what degree conditions created by the traffic of east African slaves to the New World accelerated the development of a permanent Iorubás' identity. It is intended to present a more systematic estimate of Iorubá involvement in the dynamics of slave trafficing, to explore the implications of these discoveries, and to illuminate broader questions concerning the re-peopling of the Americas.

O presente artigo analisa as flutuações dos preços dos escravos recém-desembarcados nas Américas, com ênfase especial para as colônias britânicas do Caribe e para os Estados Unidos. Parte-se do suposto de que os preços podem ajudar a determinar aspectos cruciais da história do tráfico negreiro, tais como a interconexão entre os mercados e as determinações estruturais da oferta e da demanda. Seu material empírico provém de uma base de dados publicada pela Cambridge University Press, em 1999.

This article analyzes the fluctuations of the prices of slaves new arrived in America, specially in the british Caribean colonies and in the United States. The analysis supposes that the study of the prices is helpful in order to determinate main aspects of the black slaves trade history, as well as the connexions between markets and the structural determination of offer and demand. The empirical support of the study comes from a database published by Cambridge University Press, in 1999.