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The profits of the Portuguese–Brazilian transatlantic slave trade: challenges and possibilities

ABSTRACT Together, Portugal and Brazil were the second biggest players in the transatlantic slave trade. However, we still know little about the profits generated by the slave trade and by the activities carried out by slaves within the Portuguese Empire – in particular in the Atlantic world. In other words, who were the various groups benefiting from those profits and where was the capital obtained invested and/or reinvested? In this article, we present preliminary estimates of gross profits generated by the Portuguese Brazilian participation in this business and discuss the methodological challenges faced to calculate the net profits of Portuguese–Brazilian participation in the slave trade as well as in assessing the weight of slave-based produce in the economies of Portugal, and Brazil. The first part of our study relies mainly on the data available in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, evidence gathered from several Portuguese archives, and the slave prices’ series built by David Richardson and David Eltis et al for West and West Central Africa and the Brazilian slave prices series built by Laird Bergad. The second part will be based on the vast body of literature and source materials available in Portuguese, English and other languages on the topic.