Comments on: Slavery and centuries of poverty http://www.davosnewbies.com/2007/09/13/slavery-and-centuries-of-poverty/ A year-round Davos of the mind, written since 1999 by Lance Knobel Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:38:33 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: jaywalker http://www.davosnewbies.com/2007/09/13/slavery-and-centuries-of-poverty/comment-page-1/#comment-142100 jaywalker Fri, 14 Sep 2007 08:59:35 +0000 http://www.davosnewbies.com/2007/09/13/slavery-and-centuries-of-poverty/#comment-142100 Interesting article. Two problems. Just 4 countries (Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia) account for 50% of all slave exports. The article only accounts for this fact on the slavery side (correcting for land area). The author is also very brave in drawing regression curves in widely scattering data points. The article claims that the slave trade resulted in increased political and ethnic fragmentation, but the two countries most suffering from slave exports, Angola and Nigeria, show a wide difference in the size of ethnic boundary sizes (Figure II), somewhat contrary to the argumentation. Interesting article. Two problems.

Just 4 countries (Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia) account for 50% of all slave exports. The article only accounts for this fact on the slavery side (correcting for land area). The author is also very brave in drawing regression curves in widely scattering data points.

The article claims that the slave trade resulted in increased political and ethnic fragmentation, but the two countries most suffering from slave exports, Angola and Nigeria, show a wide difference in the size of ethnic boundary sizes (Figure II), somewhat contrary to the argumentation.

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