Curtin’s 1969 estimate cut the accepted slave-trade totals roughly fivefold.

Evidence

In 1969, Curtin authoritatively calculated that between 1451 and 1870, 9,566,000 African workers were brought to the Western Hemisphere. He further concluded that “it is extremely unlikely that the ultimate total will turn out to be less than 8,000,000 or more than 10,500,000.” This significantly lowered the figure most commonly used, 50,000,000. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 565

Categorization

• SHARE: Philip Curtin’s revision of the slave-trade numbers from 50 million down to ~9.5 million is a data point many quantitative historians would appreciate.
• XREF: The revisionism-vs-correction debate here parallels the learned-claims dispute over Curtin’s numbers and Inikori’s critique.