The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440 - 1870After 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, Hugh Thomas 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 controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. |
Contents
List of Maps | 7 |
Introduction | 9 |
GREEN SEA OF DARKNESS | 19 |
What Heart Could Be So Hard? | 21 |
Humanity Is Divided into Two | 25 |
The Slaves Who Find the Gold Are All Black | 32 |
The Portuguese Served for Setting Dogs to Spring the Game | 48 |
Herded Them As If They Had Been Cattle | 68 |
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 Best and Strongest Slaves Available | 87 |
For the Love of God Give Us a Pair of Slave Women | 114 |
The White Men Arrived in Ships with Wings | 128 |
A Good Correspondence with the Blacks | 153 |
The Black Slave Is the Basis of the Hacienda | 182 |
Lawful to Set to Sea | 196 |
He Who Knows How to Supply the Slaves Will Share This Wealth | 210 |
APOGEE | 233 |
No Nation Has Plunged So Deeply into This Guilt As Great Britain | 235 |
By the Grace of God | 262 |
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 Slaver Is More Criminal Than the Assassin | 591 |
Only the Poor Speak Ill 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 |
Sources and Notes | 812 |
| 863 | |
Illustration Credits | 909 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abolition abolitionists African slaves America Angola Atlantic slave trade Bahia Benin black slaves Brazil Brazilian Bristol Britain British brought Cape Verde captives captured cargo Caribbean Cartagena de Indias Christian colonies commerce Company Congo crew Cuba Cuban Dahomey Dutch eighteenth century Elmina empire England English European example export France French Gambia Gold Coast governor Guinea Havana House of Commons illegal important Indian Jamaica John José journey king land later Lisbon Liverpool London Lord Luanda Madrid master minister Muslim Nantes naval navy negroes North American number of slaves officers Palmerston plantations planters port Portugal Portuguese river sailed Saint Saint-Domingue seemed seized sell Sénégal sent seventeenth century Seville Sierra Leone slave merchants slave ships slave trade slavery sold South Spain Spaniards Spanish Spanish empire sugar thought thousand slaves tion Tomé trade in slaves trading slaves traffic treaty tuguese United vessel voyage West Africa West Indies Whydah Wilberforce William wrote