1. The Mediterranean origins. --2. Sugar planting: from Cyprus to the Atllantic islands. --3. Africa and the slave trade. --4. Capitalism, feudalism, and sugar planting in Brazil. --5. Bureaucrats and free lances in Spanish America. --6. The sugar revolution and the settlement of the Caribbean. --7. Anarchy and imperial control. --8. Slave societies on the periphery. --9. The slave trade and the West African economy in the eighteenth century. --10. Atlantic commerce in the eighteenth century. --11. The democratic revolution in the Atlantic basin. --12. Revolution in the French Antilles. --13. Readjustments in the nineteenth century. --14. The end of slavery in the Americas
Summary
Curtin approaches African slavery as part of a complex system of trading, slavery, and European socioeconomic control aimed at deriving profit from the rich lands of central and north America