1788: Thomas Clarkson published a detailed essay on the slave trade that quantified the extreme loss of life during the “seasoning” period in the Americas.

1788: Thomas Clarkson published a detailed essay on the slave trade that quantified the extreme loss of life during the “seasoning” period in the Americas. He calculated that roughly twenty thousand Africans died within the first two years of their servitude, a phase required for them to become accustomed to plantation labor. Clarkson estimated that when voyage deaths and seasoning losses were combined, approximately forty-five thousand lives were expended annually. This horrific total was reached before any net increase in the colonial labor stock could even be recorded.