The Atlantic Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade is an important part of history of several nations: great part of Africa of course, the nations in America who were immmersed in this trade as buyers and those European countries who had control of the trade to its colonies. One important question that I had in my mind before reading this book was "why Africans were enslaved", curiously the first words of chapter 1, and why in this New World, the American Indians were not used as workers? Seems that everything conspired for this trading to flourish, in particular the decline of native population and because those native became new Christians. But seems there is another reason, not named in this book, and is that those native american were not that productive than Africans or Chinese. This is a short book and the author provide an insightful introduction, focusing especially in the economic side of this trade and its organization, showing a great deal of statistical information. There is not much of the people side of events -- I am referring to the sufferings stories of the Africans, but it does name the story of Igbo Equiano, an African slave that wrote a book about his experiences and I'm eager to know more about it.