The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870

Hugh Thomas

Simon and Schuster, 1997 - History - 908 pages

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade.

Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time but to answer as well such controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. Thomas also movingly describes such accounts as are available from the slaves themselves.

What people are saying

THE SLAVE TRADE: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870

User Review  - Jane Doe - Kirkus

A masterful survey of the origins, development, nature, and decline of the trade in African men, women, and children, drawing heavily on original sources. Thomas (Conquest: Montezuma, CortĒs and the ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - J.v.d.A. - LibraryThing

I had to abandon this book about four hundred pages in as I just couldn't take the pedestrian style any longer. With such a subject I had presumed the writer would have a wealth of interesting ...

Contents

• A Filthy Voyage: 291
• Great Pleasure from Our Wine: 315
• Slave Harbors I: 332
• Slave Harbors II: 353
• A Great Strait for Slaves: 370
• The Blackest Sort with Short Curled Hair: 388
• If You Want to Learn How to Pray Go to Sea: 409
• God Knows What We Shall Do with Those That Remain: 431
• Above All a Good Soul: 449
• The Loudest Yelps for Liberty: 467
• The Gauntlet Had Been Thrown Down: 486
• Men in Africa of As Fine Feeling As Ourselves: 512
• Why Should We See Great Britain Getting All the Slave Trade?: 537
• The Slaver Is More Criminal Than the Assassin: 591
• Only the Poor Speak 111 of the Slave Trade: 629
• Active Exertions: 651
• Slave Harbors of the Nineteenth Century: 673
• Sharks Are the Invariable Outriders of All Slave Ships: 709
• Can We Resist the Torrent? I Think Not: 727
• They All Eagerly Desire It Protect It and Almost Sanctify It: 747
• Cuba the Forward Sentinel: 769
• Epilogue: 786
• Some Who Lived to Tell the Tale: 799
• Selected Prices of Slaves 14401870: 806
• The Voyage of the Enterprize 809: 6
• List of Maps 7: 7
• Introduction 9: 9
• Green Sea of Darkness: 19
• What Heart Could Be So Hard? 21: 21
• Humanity Is Divided into Two 25: 25
• The Slaves Who Find the Gold Are All Black 32: 32
• The Portuguese Served for Setting Dogs to Spring the Game: 48
• Herded Them As If They Had Been Cattle 68: 68
• The Best and Strongest Slaves Available 87: 87
• For the Love of God Give Us a Pair of Slave Women 114: 114
• The White Men Arrived in Ships with Wings 228: 128
• The Internationalization of the Trade: 151
• A Good Correspondence with the Blacks 153: 153
• The Black Slave Is the Basis of the Hacienda 182: 182
• Lawful to Set to Sea 196: 196
• He Who Knows How to Supply the Slaves Will Share This Wealth 210: 210
• Apogee: 233
• No Nation Has Plunged So Deeply into This Guilt As Great Britain 235: 235
• By the Grace of God 262: 262

About the author

Hugh Thomas is the author of The Spanish Civil War, Conquest, and many other books. A former Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies (U.K.), he was made Lord Thomas of Swinnerton in 1981. He is currently a University Professor at Boston University. He lives in London.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870; Touchstone book
• Author: Hugh Thomas
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1997
• ISBN: 0684835657, 9780684835655
• Length: 908 pages
• Subjects: History / Africa / General; History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / Europe / General; History / General; History / North America; History / Social History; History / World; Social Science / Slavery