The Slave Trade - Hardcover

Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684810638 ISBN 13: 9780684810638

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

No great historical subject is so laden with modern controversy or so obscured by myth and legend as the slave trade. Who were tbe slavers? How profitable was the business? Why did many African rulers and peoples collaborate? The strength of Hugh Thomas's book is that it begins with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, before Columbus's voyage to the New World, and ends with the last gasp of the slave trade, long since made illegal elsewhere, in Cuba and Brazil twenty-five years after the American Emancipation Proclamation. His narrative is vividly alive with villains and heroes, and illuminated by eyewitness accounts, many of which are published here for the first time. Hugh Thomas gives the reader the facts about the slave trade - shows us how whole towns, like Bristol and Liverpool in England, Nantes in France, or Newport in Rhode Island, grew and prospered on slavery; how each new discovery and colonization spurred the demand for slave labor. He confronts the thorny subject of Jewish involvement in the slave trade, documents the fact that many of the New England whaling captains became successful slavers on the side, and tells the story of the rising tide of the antislavery movement, first against the trade and then against the institution of slavery itself. He describes the work of men such as Montesquieu in France, Wilberforce in England, and Anthony Benezet in the United States who finally succeeded in turning public opinion against slavery and making it illegal in Europe and the New World.

About this title

Review:

Hugh Thomas's The Slave Trade takes a big-picture view of New World slavery in its international context. The Portuguese and Spanish who first came to Africa, he writes, arrived in search of gold. They found it, but they also found social systems in which the ransom, buying, and selling of human beings had long been established. These systems had existed in European antiquity, and now they were revived when, shortly after making contact with Africa, the European nations began to establish colonies on the other side of the Atlantic; the horrible traffic continued well into the 19th century. Thomas mines vast archives and previously published histories to make this sweeping and remarkably useful synthesis.

Review:

A 'darkly compelling history of the trade'. (MAIL ON SUNDAY)

The most impressive single volume history of the subject. Combining grand narrative sweep with vivid, telling detail, Thomas provides an elegant synthesis of contemporary accounts and modern scholarship (LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS)

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684810638
• ISBN 13: 9780684810638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 908