EVENT: Roundtable discussion on Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development, an award-winning book by Joseph Inikori, University of Rochester professor of history.

University of Rochester Professor of History Joseph Inikori’s prize-winning book Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development, will be the subject of a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester. The event, which will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 17, in the Welles-Brown Room of Rush Rhees Library on the University’s River Campus, is free and open to the public.

The discussion will feature guests William A. Darity, Jr., the Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Economics and director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina; Javier Cuenca, professor of economics at the University of Waterloo; and Stanley Engerman, John Munro Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester, with whom Inikori edited the book The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economics, Societies and Peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe.

Inikori’s book Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England is considered a groundbreaking study and has received widespread attention from the academic community for its exploration of the impact of the slave-based Atlantic economy on such areas as shipping, financial institutions, the supply of African-produced raw materials, and the growth of markets for English manufactures. It is the first detailed study of the critical role of overseas trade in the Industrial Revolution, showing how the Atlantic trade involving Africa, the Americas, and Europe was central to England’s industrialization.

In 2003, Africans and the Industrial Revolution was honored with the American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy Award for “the most outstanding work in English on any aspect of the field of 17th and 18th century western European history.” Among other honors, the book also won the 2003 African Studies Association Herskovits Prize for the most important scholarly work in African studies. Nuffield College, Oxford University, selected the work for its 2003 annual conference on newly published books in economic history “that are original, important, and have a broad sweep that will appeal to a wide range of social scientists and historians.”

Inikori is an economic historian, specializing in international trade and economic development. He received his undergraduate and graduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, where he also held a faculty position. He has had fellowships at the London School of Economics and the University of Birmingham in England and taught at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, becoming chair of its history department. He joined the University of Rochester’s faculty in 1988.

For more information, contact the Frederick Douglass Institute at (585) 275-7235.