A thought-provoking and important book that raises essential issues crucial not only for our past but also the present day. In this panoramic history, Jeremy Black tells how slavery was first developed in the ancient world, and reaches all the way to present day and the contemporary crimes of trafficking and bonded labour. He shows how slavery has taken many forms throughout history and across the world - from the uprising of Spartacus, the plantations of the Indies, and the murderous forced labour of the gulags and concentration camps. Slavery helped consolidated transoceanic empires and helped mould new world societies such as America and Brazil. In the Atlantic trade, Black also looks at the controversial area of how complicit the African peoples were in the trade. He then charts the long fight for abolition in the 19th century, including both the campaigners as well as the lost voices of the slaves themselves who spoke of their misery. Finally, as Black points out, slavery has not been completely abolished today and coerced labour can be found closer to home than is comfortable.

This book gives an overview of the trans-Atlantic slave trade from its sixteenth century beginnings until its final absolution in the nineteenth century. It covers the main countries involved and explains the inner workings of the trade and the developments that made it easier and more profitable as the centuries passed. On the human level, this book uses the stories of the enslaved, often in their own words, to try to convey the horrors endured by these victims. Finally, it details the fight against slavery both by politicians such as William Wilberforce and by the military might of the Royal Navy.

Published author, screenwriter and actor, Richard Kiel, teams up with Pamela Wallace to tell the story of this overlooked real-life hero who probably did more to help end slavery than any man of his time. Romance, assassination attempts, murder, courtroom drama and all other elements of a great read fill the pages of this historical novel.

Slavery and the British Empirer provides a clear overview of the entire history of British involvement with slavery and the slave trade, from the Cape Colony to the Caribbean. The book combines economic, social, political, cultural, and demographic history, with a particular focus on the Atlantic world and the plantations of North America and the West Indies from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. Kenneth Morgan analyses the distribution of slaves within the empire and how this changed over time; the world of merchants and planters; the organization and impact of the triangular slave trade; the work and culture of the enslaved; slave demography; health and family life; resistance and rebellions; the impact of the anti-slavery movement; and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and of slavery itself in most of the British empire in 1834. As well as providing the ideal introduction to the history of British involvement in the slave trade, this book also shows just how deeply embedded slavery was in British domestic and imperial history - and just how long it took for British involvement in slavery to die, even after emancipation.

The documents collected here illuminate the conduct of British trade and investments in the Caribbean when slavery was at its height and Jamaica was the wealthiest territory in Britain's Atlantic empire. Pertaining to the commercial and plantation interests of two Bristol families connected through marriage and business, the documents include correspondence, wills and inventories, partnership agreements, insurance policies and property deeds. The introduction addresses issues of the slave trade and sugar cultivation, capital accumulation, the ways in which a West India fortune was created, the risk environment of the Caribbean, and social, economic and demographic conditions in eighteenth-century Bristol and Jamaica. A valuable source for historians of the Georgian period, this volume shows that British merchants connected with the West Indies were centrally concerned with improvement, independence, and social mobility.