Fields of Interest:
My research and teaching interest centers on the evolution of the current global economic order from the 16th century. This interest has developed over time from my study of the global impact of the Atlantic slave economy. I started with the British economy, and subsequently extended my studies to Africa and the Americas. To satisfactorily analyze the impact of the evolving world economy on the units or sub-regions making up the system, I have had to concern myself with the internal socio-political processes within the said sub-regions: the development of market institutions; the evolution of economic, social and political structures; the development of science and technology, etc. My analytical task has been to show how the internal and external factors operated and interacted to shape the structures within the units, at one point, and at another point, the character of the international economy.
These research interests are clearly reflected in the undergraduate and graduate courses I have taught since 1972. For seven years I taught at the undergraduate level a course on comparative industrialization, which included industrialization in Britain, France, Germany, U.S.A., the Soviet Union, and Japan. At the postgraduate level, I taught for several years a course on the evolution of the contemporary world economic order from the 16th century. I am currently teaching the latter course to a mixed class of seniors and graduate students. I have also taught, and continue to teach, courses on Latin America and the Caribbean, and West African Economic history.
Courses Offered (subject to change)
- HIS 203: Economies and Societies in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1492 (AAS 252; ECO 252)
- HIS 272: Africa's Sleeping Giant - Nigeria since The Islamic Revolution of 1804 (AAS 260,ECO 255)
- HIS 356W/456: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Africa, 1650-1850 (AAS 375W; ECO 385W)
- HIS 357W/457: Evolution of the Current World Economic Order from 1500 (AAS 371; AAS 371W; ECO 371; ECO 371W)
Representative Publications:
- Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (2002).
- "Measuring the Unmeasured Hazards of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Documents Relating to the British Trade," Revue Francaise D'Histoire D'Outre-Mer (1996).
- "Slavery in Africa and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade," in Alusine Jalloh and Stephen E. Maizlish (eds.), The African Diaspora (1996).
- The Chaining of a Continent: Export Demand for Captives and the History of Africa South of the Sahara, 1450-1870 (1992).
- The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe, edited with Stanley L. Engerman (1992).
- "Slavery and the Development of Industrial Capitalism in England," Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1987).
- Forced Migration: The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies (1982), edited.
- "Market Structure and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century," Journal of Economic History (1981).
- "The Slave Trade and the Atlantic Economies, 1451-1870," in The African Slave Trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century (1979).
