Human Capital

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 928 pp., $37.50)

ALL known human societies have acknowledged some forms of inequality. Nobles, elders, chiefs, great warriors, and shamans have exercised power over lesser people, and men everywhere have asserted some kinds of dominance over women. But the ultimate in human inequality is represented by slavery, an institution that has taken root in many parts of the world, including some small-scale societies in, e.g., the northwest of what is now the United States and the forests of South America. By 1000 B.C., slavery was entrenched in Europe. Greeks and Romans captured Germans and Africans alike, Egyptians enslaved Nubians and Ethiopians, and soon the Chinese would take slaves from East Africa to Canton, while others found their way to India and Java. Later, Arabs would take slaves from much of Africa and most of Western Europe, while Turks took Greeks, Africans, and sundry Eastern Europeans into captivity.

The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870, by Hugh Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 928 pp., $37.50)

ALL known human societies have acknowledged some forms of inequality. Nobles, elders, chiefs, great warriors, and shamans have exercised power over lesser people, and men everywhere have asserted some kinds of dominance over women. But the ultimate in human inequality is represented by slavery, an institution that has taken root in many parts of the world, including some small-scale societies in, e.g., the northwest of what is now the United States and the forests of South America. By 1000 B.C., slavery was entrenched in Europe. Greeks and Romans captured Germans and Africans alike, Egyptians enslaved Nubians and Ethiopians, and soon the Chinese would take slaves from East Africa to Canton, while others found their way to India and Java. Later, Arabs would take slaves from much of Africa and most of Western Europe, while Turks took Greeks, Africans, and sundry Eastern Europeans into captivity.