A World Transformed: Slavery in the Americas and the Origins of Global Power

by James Walvin

A World Transformed explores how slavery thrived at the heart of the entire Western world for more than three centuries. Arguing that slavery can only be fully understood by stepping back from traditional national histories, this book collects the scattered accounts of the most recent scholarship into a comprehensive history of slavery and its shaping of the world we know. Celebrated historian James Walvin tells a global story that covers everything from the capitalist economy, labor, and the environment, to social culture and ideas of family, beauty and taste.

This book underscores just how thoroughly slavery is responsible for the making of the modern world. The enforced transportation and labour of millions of Africans became a massive social and economic force, catalysing the rapid development of multiple new and enormous trading systems with profound global consequences. The labour and products of enslaved people changed the consumption habits of millions - in India and Asia, Europe and Africa, in colonised and Indigenous American societies. Across time, slavery shaped many of the dominant features of Western taste: items and habits or rare and costly luxuries, some of which might seem, at first glance, utterly removed from the horrific reality of slavery. A World Transformed traces the global impacts of slavery over centuries, far beyond legal or historical endpoints, confirming that the world created by slave labour lives on today.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American, Sociology, Economics, Africa, Politics

Paperback

First published March 10, 2022

About the author

James 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.

Reviews

[Gareth Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and detailed overview on the African diaspora. Walvin has been working on the subject for decades, with dozens of publications to his name. This wears its expertise lightly. Scholarly yet readable - and devastating.

[Reuben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, quick read that takes the reader through a history of slavery in the West, from the 17th century through to its impacts on the present. Walvin clearly has a mastery of this topic and writes quickly and forcefully. Walvin illustrates the impact of slavery on the political, social, and economic structures of the West and how through slavery and its role in the global economic system, the balance of global power firmly settled in favor of the western European, and later American continents.

It seems an understatement to assert that slavery has touched all of our lives in one way or another, whether historically or as a direct beneficiary. It’s another thing entirely to see the pieces moving. Slaves obtained from human traders in Africa for Indian shells and iron bars, sent to the Americas and sold for labor. That enslaved labor then used to strip the land in order to create massive plantations of sugar, cotton, tobacco, lumber… all to be shipped back to Europe for consumption by the greatest empires the world had yet seen. The triangle of wealth, the callous meticulousness of slave records, and the never ending call for more enslaved labor serve to reinforce the evils of slavery and the evils of a system so devoted to its own growth that it must be built on the backs of unwilling, uncompensated labor.

[Tim Briedis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walvin is a prolific historian of slavery, and this was a great introduction to the topic, both scholarly and readable. I particularly enjoyed learning about South American systems of slavery (including enslaved Indians), which I was less familiar with. Brazil both started mass slavery the earliest and ended it the latest. Some great tidbits about Brazilian slavery are included - such as the horrific practice of carrying owners around town.

Walvin also details well how slavery permeated less obvious aspects of Western life. These include sugar in sweet tea (consumed by poor Britons as well) and the use of mahogany in fine furniture. The section on slave resistance was fascinating, detailing the contributions of Olaudah Equiano amongst the many unnamed enslaved people who simply ran away. Walvin has written a whole other book called Freedom on this theme!

Overall an engaging and compelling read.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good overview of the Atlantic slave trade as a whole. Most of the books I've read (as an American) have been by Americans, focusing primarily on the U.S. slave trade. Walvin does a great job covering both Americas and the Caribbean.

[Tony Goriainoff]

Birthday gift from Mom and Patty
Clifton, Oxfordshire, September 2024