There has been a long-standing debate on the global importance of the African external slave trades. While many scholars believe these to have been detrimental to African development, they were clearly a determining factor in the development of the Americas. What role they played for the European colonial powers is, however, hotly debated. This article contributes to the debate by estimating value added in the Triangular Trade and the American plantation complex. The article empirically studies the case of British connections to the African slave trade and the American plantation complex during the eighteenth century, since these have been the focus of much previous scholarly debate. The estimates suggest that these trades grew substantially over the period, reaching a magnitude equivalent to about 11% of the British economy by the early nineteenth century.

中文翻译：

---

关于 18 世纪奴隶种植园对英国经济的经济重要性：一种增值方法

关于非洲外部奴隶贸易的全球重要性一直存在长期争论。尽管许多学者认为这些对非洲的发展有害，但它们显然是美洲发展的决定性因素。然而，他们为欧洲殖民列强扮演了什么角色却引发了激烈的争论。本文通过估计三角贸易和美国种植园综合体的附加值来促进辩论。本文实证研究了 18 世纪英国与非洲奴隶贸易和美国种植园的联系案例，因为这些一直是之前许多学术争论的焦点。估计表明，这些交易在此期间大幅增长，