'Atlas' maps scope, cost of slavery ATLAS OF THE TRANSATLANTIC
SLAVE TRADE. Edited by David Eltis, David Richardson. 336 pages.
Yale University Press. $50. It is very difficult to comprehend
the cruelty, the magnitude of the deprivation, the crazy
justifications and hard-hearted enforcement of what was
essentially the largest global, unregulated free market system
ever established during the pre-high-tech age: slavery. The
subject is fraught with challenges, not the least of which is
conceptual. A new "Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade" and
companion website, slavevoyages.org, reveal better than ever
before the full scope of this international market system. The
trade, which began in 1501 and lasted until 1867, was the cause
of the largest forced population displacement on record. More
than 12.5 million captive Africans were transported to the New
World, and several million more were relocated to other parts of
the globe. Within Africa, entire tribes were decimated, betrayed
by African slave traders whos