Open research questions in Colonialism, slavery, and trade

What the literature leaves open

• Further research is needed to assess the impact of Portuguese rulers on the fate of migrants in host societies. For reasons that remain uncertain, Madeirans in Demerara soon came to dominate the small retail and huckster trade, pushing emancipated workers and the Creole population out of this commercial sector.

  At the Crossroads of Empires: Azoreans and Madeirans in Brazil and the West Indies in the Mid-Nineteenth Century · 2026 · DOI

• As a result, the limited information that survives about his ownership and treatment of enslaved people is heavily shaped by the professional and personal forces that conditioned his practices of writing and archive-making.

  Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689 · 2026 · DOI

• The need to consider the historical context and the perspectives of the writers. The difficulty of understanding the experiences of enslaved people through written testimonies.

  Another Surinam Witness: John Gabriel Stedman's Careful Testimony · 2026 · DOI

• Further research could explore the implications of the Futa Jallon Imamate's participation in the slave trade for the commemorative meaning of Prince Abdulrahman's story. The Official Royal House of Sori's preservation work could be extended to include other aspects of African American history and the transatlantic slave trade.

  Guardians of a Royal Legacy The Official Royal House of Sori® The Historical Preservation of Prince Abdulrahman Ibrahima ibn Sori · 2026 · DOI

• The collection of human remains often occurred at the expense of human dignity, autonomy, and accountability. The paper highlights the challenges of developing context-specific and historically informed ethical and policy responses to human remains collections.

  Bones of Injustice: Historically Changing Ethics, Politics and Practices of Human Remains Collections · 2026 · DOI

• There is a need for context-specific and historically informed ethical and policy responses to human remains collections. The paper identifies a gap in understanding the historical processes of assembling and utilising these collections.

  Bones of Injustice: Historically Changing Ethics, Politics and Practices of Human Remains Collections · 2026 · DOI

• There is a lack of empirical evidence on how historical narratives causally influence racist beliefs. The causal pathways linking historical narratives to racist beliefs are not well understood.

  From Portuguese Colonial Representations to Racist Endorsement: Investigating Correlational and Causal Paths · 2026 · DOI

• The paper highlights the need to explore psychological concepts such as psychodynamics, epigenetics, and trans-generational trauma.

  The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Afrocentric Identityin the United States of Americaand the Caribbean Since the 19th Century · 2026 · DOI

• It argues that Sweet's book is limited by its conflation of distinct concepts. The paper highlights the challenge of understanding the historically situated liberty and collective effort in the past and present.

  James Hoke Sweet. Mutiny on the Black Prince. Slavery, Piracy, and the Limits of Liberty in the Revolutionary Atlantic World . Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2025. xi, 247 pp. Ill. Maps. £26.99. (E-book: € 12.41.) · 2026 · DOI

• UNESCO’s 2005 inscription of Ifa as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity was an important moment of international recognition, but recognition without resources, without institutional infrastructure, and without the active engagement of initiated practitioners is insufficient.

  From Slavery to Source Code: The Suppression of African Spiritual Intelligence · 2026 · DOI

• The research encounters difficulties in identifying and analyzing the archaeobotanical remains. The paper notes the challenge of interpreting the radiocarbon dates and their significance in understanding the site's occupation.

  The Likpe Kukurantumi Archaeological Project (Ghana): exploring the abandoned earthwork settlement · 2026 · DOI

• The study also highlights the need to consider the agency of enslavers like Pepys in curating their archives and shaping our knowledge of their involvement in slavery.

  Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689 · 2026 · DOI

• The existing literature focuses on countries with histories of enslaving people of African descent, leaving unexplored the relevance of countries without systematic slavery. The gap in the literature is the lack of study on the role of China in the American abolitionist movement. The paper aims to fill this gap by examining China's role in the movement.

  China in American Abolitionism, 1830–1865 · 2026 · DOI

• The study highlights the need to explore the shared causes of these migratory flows.

  At the Crossroads of Empires: Azoreans and Madeirans in Brazil and the West Indies in the Mid-Nineteenth Century · 2026 · DOI

• The lack of a unified purpose among pirate groups. The prevalence of intra-crew conflict and social division. The difficulty of understanding the complex and often fragmented nature of sinew populations.

  Off Grid: The Problem of Early-Eighteenth-Century Caribbean Sinew Populations · 2026 · DOI

• The existing historiography presents pirates as a cohesive group, but the evidence suggests deep and persistent fragmentation within the pirate population. There is a lack of understanding of the factors that contributed to the unviability of sinew populations. The paper identifies a need for a new approach to understanding sinew populations.

  Off Grid: The Problem of Early-Eighteenth-Century Caribbean Sinew Populations · 2026 · DOI

• While the role of the United States in the illegal transatlantic slave trade and, specifically, the city of New York has received a sufficient amount of attention from scholars, the role that New Orleans fulfilled in this trade as the second-largest city from which illegal slave vessels departed remains underexplored.

  New Orleans and the Illegal Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1857–1861 · 2026 · DOI

• The essay must navigate the complexity of Condorcet's abolitionist writings and the work of the Société des amis de noirs. The paper must also consider the limited circulation of the French translation of Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments.

  Cugoano, Condorcet, and Abolition on the Eve of Revolution · 2026 · DOI

• It also identifies a need to analyze how nineteenth-century representations of the Haitian Revolution sparked ambivalent and limited liberal abolitionist imaginaries.

  Who Will Keep Cultivating Sugar? Harriet Martineau, the Haitian Revolution, and the Post-emancipation Plantation Economy · 2026 · DOI

• The published estimates include Africans seized on slave vessels and delivered to a Caribbean port, but these cases are poorly documented.

  Human Plunder: Slaving Raids, Economic Warfare, and Mercantilism in the French Caribbean, 1665-1713 · 2026 · DOI

• The book's focus on individual ambition and greed is seen as a flaw. The paper argues that Sweet's work misses the historically situated liberty and collective effort in the past and present.

  James Hoke Sweet. Mutiny on the Black Prince. Slavery, Piracy, and the Limits of Liberty in the Revolutionary Atlantic World . Oxford University Press, Oxford [etc.] 2025. xi, 247 pp. Ill. Maps. £26.99. (E-book: € 12.41.) · 2026 · DOI

• The translation seems to have enjoyed only limited circulation. Cugoano and his book are not, to our knowledge, mentioned in Condorcet's surviving papers and correspondence, nor is there any surviving direct correspondence with Piattoli.

  Cugoano, Condorcet, and Abolition on the Eve of Revolution · 2026 · DOI

• Further study of the testimonies of Aphra Behn and John Gabriel Stedman. Comparison with other accounts of the Surinam plantation system. Analysis of the implications of the paper's findings for our understanding of colonial slavery and its legacies.

  Another Surinam Witness: John Gabriel Stedman's Careful Testimony · 2026 · DOI

• The paper identifies a gap in understanding the link between slavery and capitalism. The study aims to fill this gap by examining the use of slave labor in the American colonies.

  ACUMULAÇÃO PRIMITIVA DO CAPITAL · 2026 · DOI

• The study identifies a gap in understanding the economic role of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the start of the Industrial Revolution. The study seeks to uncover the truth behind the end of the slave trade.

  The Economic Role of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the Start of the Industrial Revolution · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Colonialism, slavery, and trade

• The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth · American Economic Review · 2005 · 1,175 citations
• The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference · South Atlantic Quarterly · 2002 · 756 citations
• Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors · Critical Inquiry · 1989 · 586 citations
• Notes on the "Post-Colonial" · Social Text · 1992 · 545 citations
• Modern Slavery As A Management Practice: Exploring the Conditions and Capabilities for Human Exploitation · Academy of Management Review · 2012 · 390 citations
• Predatory Value · Social Text · 2018 · 365 citations
• Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Racial Logic of Global Capitalism—An Introduction · American Quarterly · 2012 · 335 citations
• The Time of Slavery · South Atlantic Quarterly · 2002 · 319 citations
• The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-Colonialism · South Atlantic Quarterly · 2002 · 275 citations
• The Denial of Slavery in Management Studies · Journal of Management Studies · 2003 · 229 citations

Most recent work

• Deadlier than the Male?: Women and the Death Penalty in Colonial Kenya and Nyasaland, c.1920-57 · Open Research Exeter (University of Exeter) · 2026
• Whiteness as freedom: paradoxes of liberty and slavery in British New York, 1664–1763 · Ethnic and Racial Studies · 2026
• The metamorphoses of illegitimacy in São Jorge Island (Azores, Portugal) 1600–1910 · The History of the Family · 2026
• Under company and state, reconstructing government-owned enslaved families on Bonaire 1758-1863 · The History of the Family · 2026
• From Portuguese Colonial Representations to Racist Endorsement: Investigating Correlational and Causal Paths · International review of social psychology · 2026
• Mothers and Maternal Grandmothers Kept Children Alive During Slavery: Evidence From the Surinamese Slave Registers, 1830–1863 · Demography · 2026
• Socio-historical factors driving the integration of Fulani among the Nanumba in northern Ghana · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2026
• Running towards: Labour market incentives for runaway slaves in the British Cape Colony, 1830–1838 · Asia‐Pacific Economic History Review · 2026
• The Myth of Slavery: Modern Study Shows that Slaves was Treated Much better than what was thought before · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
• Aspectos do quotidiano no transporte de escravos no século XVII. Do sertão africano à costa americana · DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) · 2026

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