Kenneth Morgan - A Short History of Transatlantic Slavery

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A Short History of Transatlantic Slavery provides a magisterial overview of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery from the mid-fifteenth to the late nineteenth century. Synthesizing a vast field of scholarship, including the latest important works, Kenneth Morgan here addresses the organisation of the slave trade, plantation slavery, resistance, abolition and emancipation, and the legacy of slavery. The author spans Europe, Africa, North, Central and South America, and includes essential information about slave demography and culture, the legal underpinnings of slavery, plantation economies and the great push to destroy inhuman bondage. Specialists and non-specialists alike will welcome this readable and succinct handbook, which should appear on the reading lists of many university courses.

Stephen D. Behrendt, Associate Professor in History, Victoria University of Wellington, co-author of The Diary of Antera Duke: A n Eigh teenth-Century A frican Slave Trader

This is an impressive book by one of Europes leading historians of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Kenneth Morgan provides a comprehensive and very readable assessment of the European and African origins of slavery, of slaveholders and the enslaved, of the transportation of Africans to the Americas and of their experiences of enslavement and emancipation. Building on the latest scholarly work, Morgan has fashioned a penetrating assessment of how the institution of slavery was adapted over space and time, and in the process became ever more difficult to eliminate. Readers of this book will learn a great deal about and better understand not just historical slavery but also the myriad ways in which it ended. Both experts and those who are new to the subject will benefit from Morgans able synthesis of a vast amount of scholarship, and his confident survey of the history of slavery across four hundred years and four continents. A Short History of Transatlantic Slavery is an excellent introduction to this fascinating subject.

Simon P. Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Professor of American History, University of Glasgow, author of A New World of Labor: The Development of Plantation Slavery in the British Atlantic

A Short History of...

Published in 2016 by

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Copyright 2016 Kenneth Morgan

The right of Kenneth Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78076 386 6 (HB)

ISBN: 978 1 78076 387 3 (PB)

eISBN: 978 0 85772 855 5

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

List of Maps, Tables and Illustrations

FRONTISPIECE

Credit: Regency Enterprises/The Kobal Collection

MAP

The Routes of the Atlantic Slave Trade

TABLES

Slave embarkations by flag, 15011866

Slave embarkations by African regions, 15011866

Broad disembarkation regions for slaves, 15011866

FIGURES

Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, 1990s

Source: Kwesi J. Anquandah, Castles & Forts of Ghana (Ghana Museums & Monuments Board, 1999), p. 47

Ramparts and guns at Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, 1986

Source: Photograph by Christopher DeCorse

Dixcove Fort, Gold Coast, 1727

Source: William Smith, Thirty different drafts of Guinea (London, c. 1727), plate 10

Mandingo slave traders and coffle, Senegal, 1780s

Source: Ren Claude Geoffroy de Villeneuve, LAfrique, ou histoire, moeurs, usages et coutumes des Africaines: le Sngal (Paris, 1814), vol. 4, facing p. 43

Plan of the Liverpool slave ship Brookes , 1789

Source: Stowage of the British slave ship Brookes under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788, Broadside Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress

Africans in the hold of a slave ship, 1827

Source: Johann Moritz Rugendas, Voyage Pittoresque dans le Brsil. Traduit de lAllemand (Paris, 1835)

Advertisement for slave sale, Charleston, South Carolina, 26 April 1760

Source: South Carolina Gazette

Newly arrived slaves, Surinam, 1770s

Source: John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative, of a Five Years Expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam from the Year 1772 to 1777 (London, 1796), vol. 1, facing p. 200

Sugar plantation, Port Maria, Jamaica, 18201

Source: James Hakewill, A Picturesque Tour of the Island of Jamaica, from Drawings made in the Years 1820 and 1821 (London, 1825), plate 11