The Slave Trade
The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 - 1870
Thomas, Hugh Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year Published: 1997
Pages: 909pp ISBN: 0-684-83565-7
Library of Congress Number: HT985.T47 Dewey: 382'.44
Resource Type: Book
A comprehensive history of the Atlantic slave trade in which approximiately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses.
Abstract: Hugh Thomas's The Slave Trade details the rise of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1400s through to its subsequent abolition more than five centuries later. Thomas begins by reporting that by the Middle Ages slaves had already been in use in Northern Africa and the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. In the late Middle Ages, African slaves were transported to Portugal and Spain. The slave trade in Europe had begun.
The Portuguese were the first to sail down the West coast of Africa on slaving expeditions during the 15th century, but other countries such as Spain, France, and Great Britain followed soon after.
The colonization of the New World brought the demand for slaves to its peak because, as Thomas explains, Africans seemed "strong" enough to work plantations and mines while "docile" enough so as not to revolt. Most of the great enterprises of the New World, such as the cotton, rice, sugar, and gold industries, were based on labour by slaves. Despite this, Thomas argues that the slave trade did not significantly affect every industry, and that it could not be said that the capital generated by slaves made the industrial revolution possible. Politically, the slave trade strengthened the monarchies of the European countries involved in it and helped fund noblemen of the African countries from which the slaves originated.
Memories of the great civilizations of old that had been built by slaves dominated the minds of those colonizing the New World. Thomas believes that it was neither economics nor prudence that ended slavery, but the work of philanthropists and politicians from every slaving country. The history of the Atlantic slave trade is punctuated with grand and tragic stories of the extravagant lives of slavers and the brutalities they committed, as is Thomas's work, but throughout their plight Africans managed never to lose their great dignity, patience, and spirit.
[Abstract by Oliver Mao]
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