Risk and risk management in the Liverpool slave trade

Sheryllynne Haggerty

Business History, 2009, vol. 51, issue 6, 817-834

Abstract: The profits of the Liverpool slave trade are infamous, if somewhat more realistically represented in recent literature. Contemporaries and historians have posited that these higher profits were required to entice merchants into the trade because of the higher risks. However, there is very little work which investigates whether the risks of the slave trade really were higher than other similar opportunities. This article uses the case study of Liverpool slave traders to investigate the risks within the slave trade compared to other Atlantic ventures, and how Liverpool merchants managed those risks. It will argue that the slave trade was indeed a relatively risky trade in comparison with other Atlantic ventures, but that Liverpool merchants not only understood these risks, but actively embraced them, allowing them to manage them extremely well.

Keywords: risk; risk management; Liverpool; Atlantic; slave trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/00076790903266844

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