Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America

by Kenneth Morgan

Slavery and the British Empire provides a clear overview of the entire history of British involvement with slavery and the slave trade, from the Cape Colony to the Caribbean. The book combines economic, social, political, cultural, and demographic history, with a particular focus on the Atlantic world and the plantations of North America and the West Indies from the mid-seventeenth century onwards.

Kenneth Morgan analyses the distribution of slaves within the empire and how this changed over time; the world of merchants and planters; the organization and impact of the triangular slave trade; the work and culture of the enslaved; slave demography; health and family life; resistance and rebellions; the impact of the anti-slavery movement; and the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and of slavery itself in most of the British empire in 1834.

As well as providing the ideal introduction to the history of British involvement in the slave trade, this book also shows just how deeply embedded slavery was in British domestic and imperial history - and just how long it took for British involvement in slavery to die, even after emancipation.

Genres: History

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Kenneth Morhan is primarily an economic and social historian of the British Atlantic world in the ‘long’ eighteenth century (1688 - 1840). His particular academic specialism is the history of merchants, ships, foreign trade and ports. He also has subsidiary academic interests in Australian history and in music history. He currently teaches at Brunel University, London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Reviews

[Jim Gulley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the late 15th century, Britain joined Spain and Portugal in the procurement of enslaved people from Africa to work in various precincts of their empire. Soon, this effort concentrated in the Americas, where widespread cultivation of staple crops (sugar, rice, and tobacco) was made possible by slave labor. Morgan delivers a textbook-style account of this history as it developed into the “triangular” trade from England to Africa to America back to England, with the underpinning of the mercantilist economic system of the day.

He ends the narrative with the abolition of the slave trade by the British government in 1807 and the emancipation of slaves twenty-five years later. Morgan elucidates the historiography of the era, paying particular attention to the arguments of Williams in Capitalism and Slavery and their rebuttals. The book is very accessible and provides a grounded understanding of the era.

[Samwise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and informative, exactly what I was looking for.

I think this is the type of book that benefits from multiple reads if you are to really benefit from and absorb the information; the subject matter does require a lot of concentration.

Definitely recommend for anyone with a basic prior knowledge.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid introduction to the question of slavery, abolition and emancipation in the British Empire.

[Haythem Bastawy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent intorduction to British involvement in the slave trade and the conditions of slaves within the British empire!