Battles in Atlantic History: the Historiography of Joseph E. Inikori

Abstract

This article investigates Joseph E. Inikori’s historical writings, highlighting his approach to three classical subjects of modern Atlantic history: the quantitative features of the transatlantic slave trade, its consequences on African societies, and the relation between capitalism and modern slavery. It introduces Inikori’s approaches as opposed to other perspectives, here identified as “revisionist”, in order to underscore the major points of disagreement that have been pervasive in this field of scholarly debates, as well as Inikori’s standpoint in them. Finally, the article argues that Inikori’s analyses comprise an encompassing thesis on the making of Atlantic world from the sixteenth century to the Industrial Revolution.