The transatlantic slave trade played a major role in the development of the modern world. It both gave birth to and resulted from the shift from feudalism into the European Commercial Revolution. James A. Rawley fills a scholarly gap in the historical discussion of the slave trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century by providing one volume covering the economics, demography, epidemiology, and politics of the trade. This revised edition of Rawley's classic, produced with the assistance of Stephen D. Behrendt, includes emended text to reflect the major changes in historiography; current slave trade data tables and accompanying text; updated notes; and the addition of a select bibliography. James A. Rawley is Carl Adolph Happold Professor of History, emeritus, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of several books, including Turning Points of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For, both available in Bison Books editions. Stephen D. Behrendt is a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. He has coauthored a data archive of 27,233 slave voyages, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM.