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The Trader, The Owner, The Slave: Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery
In this new and original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of its historic end in April 1807, the parallel lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement—a trader, an owner, and a slave—are examined. John Newton (1725–1807), best known as the author of Amazing Grace, was a slave captain who marshaled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition. Thomas Thistlewood (1721–86) lived his life in a remote corner of western Jamaica and his unique diary provides some of the most revealing images of a slave owner’s life in the most valuable of all British slave colonies. Olaudah Equiano (1745–97) was practically unknown 30 years ago, but is now an iconic figure in black history and his experience as a slave speaks out for lives of millions who went unrecorded. All three men were contemporaries; they even came close to each other at different points of the Atlantic compass. But what held them together, in its destructive gravitational pull, was the Atlantic slave system.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
336 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2007
3 people are currently reading
734 people want to read
About the author
James Walvin
90 books27 followersJames Walvin taught for many years at the University of York where he is now Professor of History Emeritus. He also held visiting positions in the Caribbean, the U.S.A. and Australia. He won the prestigious Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for his book Black and White, and has published widely on the history of slavery and the slave trade. His book The People's Game was a pioneering study of the history of football and remains in print thirty years after its first publication.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 17, 2010
Stupendous. Walvin's method is simple and ingenious. He examines the lives of a slave trader, a slave owner and a slave in detail, and inductively places them in the wider historical context. I have just completed the first section on the obnoxious John Newton who was a slaver captain, a brutal thug with thumb screws and whips, who thought nothing of the discrepancy between his penchant for neurotic theological nonsense and the vileness of his own part in the wicked trade. Later, he became a famous clergyman, a fierce Calvinist courted by politicians and the rich, and the poet William Cowper, and he it was who wrote that ugly sentimental song Amazing Grace). In a grotesque twist of Calvinist logic he seemed to think that because he had been a sinner therefore God's grace rescued him so his sinning was a way to repentance and glory. He became a spokesperson for the protracted abolitionist movement, a wise political move to further demonstrate his godliness. Of course, the abstract rhetoric against the trade was safely removed from the actual horrors of what lay beneath decks. His type are with us today of course, and will justify everything in the name of the lord.
August 12, 2021
The Trader, The Owner, The Slave – Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery
James Walvin has researched and written an excellent book, shining a light into the very dark past, that some people would rather we forget about. At the same time this book is remarkable and is a very gripping read. Besides highlighting these lives, providing an insiders view of the slave trade and its cost, human and financial. What Walvin has also managed to do is alert us to the remarkable contradictions of all humans.
Slavery has been an age- old problem that we can see from the Bible, to our current times. What sets this apart is that there was nothing like Atlantic Slavery. In its scope, how far reaching it was and at what cost, and the profits made by so few. This is the story of three individuals whose paths may never have crossed but were all active within the Slave Trade in one form or other during the same time period.
James Newton the author of probably the world’s most recorded hymn ‘Amazing Grace.’ Newton had been many things in his life, but what brings him to this story that he was a slave captain, who knew how to negotiate in Western Africa to purchase the slaves, transport them to the West Indies, to be sold, before transporting the wealth back to Liverpool. Walvin takes you through Newton’s life, even through to his ordination and his evangelical preaching. Even though Newton eventually came out as an abolitionist, he never told the full extent of what he did on those ships. He did look back on those times when he dealt with his human cargo of slaves with brutality with shame and contrition. What he does not ever do is to explain his role in the brutality aboard ship, the floggings, and the use of the thumbscrews. Fortunately for us his ship logs still remain.
Thomas Thistlewood was a slave owner who left the world his very interesting diaries. Thistlewood moved to Jamaica to work on other plantations, and what he learnt there as an overseer would help him when he became an owner in his own right. His diaries record his interactions and work on the plantation, from what he did to what he did to the slaves who disobeyed. He lists the beatings, the summary “justice” and the rape of female slaves. We also learn that he took a common law wife from one of the slaves and had a son by her and took care of her in his will. We learn a lot about the slavers attitude towards the slaves, how they often had sexual relationships with some, got on with some and beat others.
Olaudah Equiano was a slave and died a free man. Between birth and death led many different lives, left an account of his life, which was famous in his lifetime but largely forgotten since. How even as a freed slave life was still dangerous for him, whether in England, the West Indies or in the Americas. How Equiano quickly learnt and became an important cog of where he worked. Eventually earning enough to buy his freedom, own slaves, and eventually write his own autobiography and leave a generous some of money in his will.
The three very different men that emerge from the pages of this book were all shaped by African slavery. While Africa would not have even registered with the majority of Britons at this time, these lives reveal the importance of slavery to the economy in the nineteenth century. All their stories are very different but also show the contradictions in life that we all face. Some face them better than others.
Even with the distance of a new millennia some stains on British history are too bad to try and hide away from. While some try and make excuses for it, try, and tell us it was a different time, it is hard to agree with them. The 1835 Slave Compensation Act, which gave money per slave to former owners, may have been enacted nearly 200 years ago, but the British Taxpayer was still paying back the loans for it until 2015.
It is time we British did a vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (working off or facing the past) the Germans are still doing that. But due to British exceptionalism, we still have our heads in the sand and anyone challenging the narrative of things were not that bad are woke.
An excellent book, very readable, and shows Britain in its inglorious past in a different light.
James Walvin has researched and written an excellent book, shining a light into the very dark past, that some people would rather we forget about. At the same time this book is remarkable and is a very gripping read. Besides highlighting these lives, providing an insiders view of the slave trade and its cost, human and financial. What Walvin has also managed to do is alert us to the remarkable contradictions of all humans.
Slavery has been an age- old problem that we can see from the Bible, to our current times. What sets this apart is that there was nothing like Atlantic Slavery. In its scope, how far reaching it was and at what cost, and the profits made by so few. This is the story of three individuals whose paths may never have crossed but were all active within the Slave Trade in one form or other during the same time period.
James Newton the author of probably the world’s most recorded hymn ‘Amazing Grace.’ Newton had been many things in his life, but what brings him to this story that he was a slave captain, who knew how to negotiate in Western Africa to purchase the slaves, transport them to the West Indies, to be sold, before transporting the wealth back to Liverpool. Walvin takes you through Newton’s life, even through to his ordination and his evangelical preaching. Even though Newton eventually came out as an abolitionist, he never told the full extent of what he did on those ships. He did look back on those times when he dealt with his human cargo of slaves with brutality with shame and contrition. What he does not ever do is to explain his role in the brutality aboard ship, the floggings, and the use of the thumbscrews. Fortunately for us his ship logs still remain.
Thomas Thistlewood was a slave owner who left the world his very interesting diaries. Thistlewood moved to Jamaica to work on other plantations, and what he learnt there as an overseer would help him when he became an owner in his own right. His diaries record his interactions and work on the plantation, from what he did to what he did to the slaves who disobeyed. He lists the beatings, the summary “justice” and the rape of female slaves. We also learn that he took a common law wife from one of the slaves and had a son by her and took care of her in his will. We learn a lot about the slavers attitude towards the slaves, how they often had sexual relationships with some, got on with some and beat others.
Olaudah Equiano was a slave and died a free man. Between birth and death led many different lives, left an account of his life, which was famous in his lifetime but largely forgotten since. How even as a freed slave life was still dangerous for him, whether in England, the West Indies or in the Americas. How Equiano quickly learnt and became an important cog of where he worked. Eventually earning enough to buy his freedom, own slaves, and eventually write his own autobiography and leave a generous some of money in his will.
The three very different men that emerge from the pages of this book were all shaped by African slavery. While Africa would not have even registered with the majority of Britons at this time, these lives reveal the importance of slavery to the economy in the nineteenth century. All their stories are very different but also show the contradictions in life that we all face. Some face them better than others.
Even with the distance of a new millennia some stains on British history are too bad to try and hide away from. While some try and make excuses for it, try, and tell us it was a different time, it is hard to agree with them. The 1835 Slave Compensation Act, which gave money per slave to former owners, may have been enacted nearly 200 years ago, but the British Taxpayer was still paying back the loans for it until 2015.
It is time we British did a vergangenheitsaufarbeitung (working off or facing the past) the Germans are still doing that. But due to British exceptionalism, we still have our heads in the sand and anyone challenging the narrative of things were not that bad are woke.
An excellent book, very readable, and shows Britain in its inglorious past in a different light.
April 20, 2022
This is the kind of history I like, with stories about real people providing a focus for the broader historical context. And these three people - the slave trader who went on to write "Amazing Grace", a slave owner who was one of the cruellest on the island of Jamaica but spent his time reading and discussing the ideas of the Enlightenment, and the freed slave Equiano - give a remarkable insight into the realities of slavery. It's not heavy intellectual history but is probably much more memorable for not being so!
May 7, 2024
An very well written book, would recommend everyone read it and get a better understanding of Britain's role in the slave trade, shouldn't be seen as just a history book but one that gives a stark lesson in reality that still resonates today.
April 10, 2023
Immensely readable and eye opening about the British involvement in slavery and the lead up to abolition, told through the lives of these three men. A study into the contradictions and hypocrisy of people - particularly Thistlewood, who was a cruel slave owner but considered himself an enlightened intellectual.
October 28, 2010
Shocking, particularly the 'owner' section. Definitely an eye-opener.
April 1, 2024
An interesting but plodding account of three contemporaneous lives in the 18th century, when Britain's involvement in the slave trade was at its height. Because each life is dealt with separately, there is perforce some repetition.
It is nonetheless a worthwhile expose of the quite terrible deeds of slavers and the slaveowners.
It is nonetheless a worthwhile expose of the quite terrible deeds of slavers and the slaveowners.
July 23, 2023
A must read very enlightening and also very sad how can people treat other people like that
August 11, 2023
It’s a good read - well written and accessible. A forensic deep dive into the lives of 3 people involved in the industry and the campaign to bring it to an end but light on analysis of how it did.
December 4, 2023
I read this one as part of my research for The Four Hour Body.
A fairly decent view of slavery from the trifecta involvement.
It will stay on my bookshelf for possible future reference.
A fairly decent view of slavery from the trifecta involvement.
It will stay on my bookshelf for possible future reference.
September 30, 2013
Part one follows the life of so-called slave trader John Newton (1725-1807). The biography is based on the copious letters he exchanged with his sweetheart. And independent records which also mention him.
Part two is about the slaveholder. The final part is about a slave who bought his own freedom. The author was more critical about Olaudah Equiano's own account of his life compared to the others. The author claims that by reporting on lives of these three men, the work covers the range of activities involved in the transatlantic slave economy, yet the author hardly mentions women who were also in these roles and others. The work is unable to answer the question "Why was slavery in the British Empire acceptable to the British in the 18th century but banned by parliament in the 19th century?"
The Trader, The Owner, The Slave risks inciting offence by describing the lives of two slavers, before that of one enslaved. But after the selection of subjects involved in transatlantic slavery and the decision to present each life in a separate part, somebody must be first, another last.
Making the enslaved African first would have given the last word to a British slaver; Perhaps giving Olaudah Equiano's life in the ultimate part gives a measure of justice even if only one life of three seems disproportionate - there were many enslaved but few Atlantic slave-takers and slaveholders.
In this historical work slavers outnumber enslaved making it more likely, ceteris paribus, that a reader will find sympathy with a slaver than a slave. The work fails to avoid the appearance of bias.
Part two is about the slaveholder. The final part is about a slave who bought his own freedom. The author was more critical about Olaudah Equiano's own account of his life compared to the others. The author claims that by reporting on lives of these three men, the work covers the range of activities involved in the transatlantic slave economy, yet the author hardly mentions women who were also in these roles and others. The work is unable to answer the question "Why was slavery in the British Empire acceptable to the British in the 18th century but banned by parliament in the 19th century?"
The Trader, The Owner, The Slave risks inciting offence by describing the lives of two slavers, before that of one enslaved. But after the selection of subjects involved in transatlantic slavery and the decision to present each life in a separate part, somebody must be first, another last.
Making the enslaved African first would have given the last word to a British slaver; Perhaps giving Olaudah Equiano's life in the ultimate part gives a measure of justice even if only one life of three seems disproportionate - there were many enslaved but few Atlantic slave-takers and slaveholders.
In this historical work slavers outnumber enslaved making it more likely, ceteris paribus, that a reader will find sympathy with a slaver than a slave. The work fails to avoid the appearance of bias.
December 27, 2010
I first heard of James Walvin quite some time ago, and his name rose again to prominence in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807. I do also remember listening to him speak at the University of Ghana here in Accra. It did take me a while to actually get around to buying and then reading this non-academic book. But I am glad I did.
I had of course heard of John Newton as the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace", made more famous by the film of the same name, celebrating the accomplishments of William Wilberforce, but didn't know much about him or his life. I had also read Olaudah Equiano's autobiography http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13..., so his story was not that new.
But placing the three different perspectives together does help to emphasize the impact and also to place them all within the 18th century environment.
I had of course heard of John Newton as the author of the hymn "Amazing Grace", made more famous by the film of the same name, celebrating the accomplishments of William Wilberforce, but didn't know much about him or his life. I had also read Olaudah Equiano's autobiography http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13..., so his story was not that new.
But placing the three different perspectives together does help to emphasize the impact and also to place them all within the 18th century environment.
January 30, 2020
An excellent survey of 18th.century attitudes to slavery & its trafficking of human lives from 'out of Africa' & into American &Caribbean exploitation & misery. It is a lesson in how the past can seem impossible to understand to us 20th & 21st century paragons of virtue...yet slavery & human trafficking...with its exploitation & misery intact...still flourishes. The mission of British abolitionists who somehow turned the public's perception of the African slave trade completely on its head is something that we should admire & endeavour to emulate in our crazy world of global conflict with anything that causes human misery & despair.
James Walvin, who wrote a classic about football!, writes with an admirable objectivity in very measured scholarship& commentary on the 3 protagonists...two of whom were up to their necks in the slavery business...but only John Newton had the humanity to change his ways...& leave the hell-hole of such a life...& find amazing grace!
James Walvin, who wrote a classic about football!, writes with an admirable objectivity in very measured scholarship& commentary on the 3 protagonists...two of whom were up to their necks in the slavery business...but only John Newton had the humanity to change his ways...& leave the hell-hole of such a life...& find amazing grace!
June 6, 2009
this book was very sad but fascinating at the same time. it is amazing to me how different the same experience can be depending on whose eyes are telling it. in this book, each of the main narrators had their own characteristics that followed them throughout the entire book. the trader was extrelmely self-centered and jsut wanted the best life for himself, no matter who it negatively affected. the owner wanted work dont and the slave obviously was not happy with his life. it is so amazing to me how different the same event seemed when different people talked about it. it was like the poisonwood bible where the same events were each told by each of the four daughters.
May 9, 2013
Now, I'm not a very avid non fiction reader, but I was interested the the subject so I picked this one up at random from the library. I got through it all, but only because I'm really stubborn. I didn't like the constant repetition. It's not a lengthy tome but the information could have been passed on in half the time if it weren't for the repetitive writing style. The subject matter is fascinating however and I would encourage anyone interested in this horrifying period in history to read more about it, just not this one. Sorry :(
September 8, 2020
I read this for a university class, and I didn't hate it. As far as required reading goes, it wasn't awful at all. It's interesting to have the three different perspectives. That's all I can really say about it. It's not a huge book so it doesn't go into a ton of detail, but considering I didn't get rid of it after the class ended it's probably pretty okay? I might even read it again in the future when I'm not being forced to write about it.
November 3, 2014
Good source of information on the slave trade. Recommend.
December 10, 2018
Very accessible.
July 16, 2022
Very insightful. I liked seeing the 3 different timelines focusing on the different experiences. Used the book as the main focus to an enquiry of lessons I planned for KS3.
4 stars 🌟
4 stars 🌟
November 24, 2023
really interesting and readable book that covers three perspectives of the slave trade.
June 1, 2024
Read stuff in this book I'll never forget. It was a very easy to read and engaging book. I'm so glad I read it.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews