Between 1500 and 1870, millions of Africans were transported across the Atlantic by European traders to work as slaves in the Americas. They were shipped in conditions of great cruelty to lead lives of hard, unremitting labour, subject to degradation and violence. The products of their labour - primarily sugar, coffee and tobacco - were sent back to Europe and the profits derived from slavery helped fuel European economic development in the 18th and 19th centuries. The cost in lives and human suffering was enormous. First published to accompany a permanent gallery in the Merseyside Maritime Museum, this reissue of Transatlantic Slavery with new material documents this era through essays on women in slavery, the impact on West and Central Africa, and the African view of the slave trade. Richly illustrated, it reveals how the slave trade shaped the history of three continents-Africa, the Americas, and Europe-and how all of us continue to live with its consequences.
Contents
Foreword - Reverend Jesse Jackson
What is slavery?
A history of transatlantic slavery
African pasts
Why Africans?
Why slavery?
Operation of the slave trade
Liverpool: Capital of the transatlantic slave trade
Reasons for Liverpool's success
Economic benefits of slavery
Tropical goods and the rise of the consumer society
Enslavement and the Middle Passage
The Middle Passage: voyage through death
Impact on Africa
Life and death in the Americas
Sale and 'seasoning'
Chattel slavery
Plantation life
Pioneers of the Americas
Resistance
Maroons
Pro-slavery arguments
The end of slavery
Abolition of the British slave trade
Freedom in the Americas
The legacy of slavery
Racism
The fight for civil rights
Global inequalities
Since colonisation
Reparations
Cultural transformations
'The sun never sets on the children of Africa'
An unquenchable spirit
The International Slavery Musuem
Further Reading
Museums and websites to visit
Acknowledgements