More Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic before the nineteenth century.

Evidence

The work of Inikori, McDonald, D. R. Murray, and others, however, serves to underscore dramatically Curtin’s remark that before the nineteenth century the number of Africans crossing the Atlantic each year exceeded that of Europeans. Moreover, as we shall see momentarily, the relative decline of European colonists to African populations from the end of the seventeenth century—and in some instances the decline of the Europeans was absolute—may have helped to confuse the issue of the profitability of the slave system. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 567

Categorization

• CANDY: The fact that African migration to the Americas outnumbered European migration until ~1800 overturns the usual Eurocentric picture of Atlantic settlement.