The SLAVE TRADE [Hardcover]

Hugh Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 26, 1997

No great historical subject is so laden with modern controversy or so obscured by myth and legend as the slave trade. Who were tbe slavers? How profitable was the business? Why did many African rulers and peoples collaborate? The strength of Hugh Thomas's book is that it begins with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, before Columbus's voyage to the New World, and ends with the last gasp of the slave trade, long since made illegal elsewhere, in Cuba and Brazil twenty-five years after the American Emancipation Proclamation. His narrative is vividly alive with villains and heroes, and illuminated by eyewitness accounts, many of which are published here for the first time. Hugh Thomas gives the reader the facts about the slave trade - shows us how whole towns, like Bristol and Liverpool in England, Nantes in France, or Newport in Rhode Island, grew and prospered on slavery; how each new discovery and colonization spurred the demand for slave labor. He confronts the thorny subject of Jewish involvement in the slave trade, documents the fact that many of the New England whaling captains became successful slavers on the side, and tells the story of the rising tide of the antislavery movement, first against the trade and then against the institution of slavery itself. He describes the work of men such as Montesquieu in France, Wilberforce in England, and Anthony Benezet in the United States who finally succeeded in turning public opinion against slavery and making it illegal in Europe and the New World.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Slave Trade is a massive (900-page) book that attempts to document the entire history of the Atlantic slave trade, a sordid business that somehow prospered for more than four centuries. As the sheer heft of the book might indicate, the story is complicated. Much of the extensive research conducted by Hugh Thomas relates to rivalries both in Europe and Africa. Those who wonder how slavery could have existed in the United States may find revelatory the moral ambiguity of how the business of transporting slaves was conducted.

From School Library Journal

YA-Thomas concentrates on the economics, social acceptance, and politics of the slave trade. The scope of the book is amazingly broad as the author covers virtually every aspect of the subject from the early days of the 16th century when great commercial houses were set up throughout Europe to the 1713 Peace Treaty of Utrecht, which gave the British the right to import slaves into the Spanish Indies. The account includes the anti-slavery patrols of the 19th century and the final decline and abolition in the early 20th century. Through the skillful weaving of numerous official reports, financial documents, and firsthand accounts, Thomas explains how slavery was socially acceptable and shows that people and governments everywhere were involved in itAfrom African kings and Arab slave traders to the Europeans and Americans who bought and transported them to the New World. Despite the volatility of the subject, the author remains emotionally detached in his writing, yet produces a highly readable, informative book. A superb addition to YA collections.
Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 928 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 26, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684810638
• ISBN-13: 978-0684810638
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.9 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #508,024 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nine Months, May 31, 2000

By 

I. Ranovos (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: 1440 - 1870 (Paperback)

Arghhhh! This book took me nine months to get through! Still, this super-detailed, eye-opening account of the slave trade should be required reading for every high school senior in the world. I was suprised not only by the culpability of the Africans themselves but by that of Hume, Swift, Voltaire...the greatest champions of liberty our civilization has known! I can't believe I didn't know this stuff!

I hope there will be a second edition that takes us up to the slavery currently going on in Mauritania and the Sudan.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST READ!, July 26, 2003

By 

events3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: 1440 - 1870 (Paperback)

THE SLAVE TRADE: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 is, perhaps, the single most-important work dealing with the slave trade. This masterful work builds on and partially overlaps John Thornton's AFRICA AND AFRICANS IN THE MAKING OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1400-1800 and Edward William Bovill's THE GOLDEN TRADE OF THE MOORS. It also provides an essential bridge between those works and Ira Berlin's MANY THOUSANDS GONE: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America & MAROON SOCIETIES: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (edited by Richard Price).

Starting with the first major shipload of African (white, café au lait and black) slaves taken in a razzia by Portuguese in 1444, Thomas briefly looks backward at the history of slavery among Christians, non-African Muslims and Africans - pagan, Christian and Muslim. He recounts the origins of the Atlantic slave trade - including the long-existing North African-Spanish conflict with mutual slave raids and the beginning of the coastal trade in West Africa associated with Prince Henry's desire for exploration, conquest, profit and religious zeal and the equal desire for conquest and / or profit of almost all African rulers and aristocrats, as well as of numerous merchants (especially Muslim and Mandingo), already familiar with the Trans-Saharan trade. Thomas recounts the early settlements in the Azores and Madeira and Cape Verde Islands, as well as the lengthy effort to conquer the Canary Islanders, including the guanches of Tenerife, and the explorations of Cadamosto. The trade began to be institutionalized by Agreements of mutual benefit between the west coast Africans and European traders (with increasing numbers of slaves being taken from the interior by coastal states)while the plantation system began to develop in Madeira and elsewhere. The fortress at El Mina (Sao Jorge da Mina) was established as well as Arguin and Luanda (which became one of the few exceptions to the principle of non-settlement - of Europeans in Africa - due to fears of antagonizing local rulers, losing trading rights and suffering debilitating and even deadly illnesses). Luso-Africans (persons claiming both Portuguese and African antecedents) increasingly took over the coastal trade in El Mina and Luanda. Despite the papal grant of Portuguese (extended to Spain when the two were temporarily united) monopoly over the trade, the English began entering the slave trade in 1562 under Captain John Hawkins and the Dutch began to be involved in the 1590s.

Thomas then describes the development of "corporations" given monopolies on trading slaves by the various European monarchs and the economic benefits accruing to various European towns, as well as the growing wealth, culture and influence of various West African towns involved the trade. In the 1600s, African slave began to trickle into North America followed by the eventual establishment of the slave-plantation system. Turning to the crossing, Thomas describes, in vivid detail, the horrible conditions slaves encountered aboard ship as well as the high rate of deaths for both (often shanghaied) sailors and human cargo and the inhumane treatment provided to both by the officers as well as the harshness suffered by the latter under the African captors. Included in this section (Book 4) is an account of the various non-human cargo brought to and from Africa.

Turning to the Abolition (of the Slave Trade, if not slavery, itself) movement, the author touches on the views, organizations and actions of political men like Pitt, Wilberforce, Benjamin Franklin and the Marquis de Lafayette as well as the anti-slavery philosophy of men like Montesquieu, Hume, Adam Smith and Burke (in opposition to the interests of men like Voltaire and Locke). In 1807, the reluctant slave owners, Madison and Jefferson, in America, enacted legislation banning Americans from involvement in the international trade of slaves while non-slaveholders William Pitt and William Wilberforce did the same in the British Empire. Great Britain began to pressure other nations to end the slave trade and many African states began to use more of their slave captives to produce goods for international trade in lieu of slave. Portugal, at the same time, began to trade in even greater numbers of slaves. African merchants also actively opposed the attempts by Britain's AFRICAN INSTITUTION to increase the industriousness and productivity of the general African populace due to the potential danger to their trading interests. Britain paid various African leaders to end the trade (although many captives were executed since the rulers could not sell them due to the abolitionist sentiments among Europeans and Americans). Still, slavery itself was not actually abolished in the British West Indies until 1838. In the mid-1850s Brazil and Britain neared war and Britain forced Brazil to adopt anti-slave trade measures in earnest. The book concludes with the end of Cuban involvement in the trade as Britain began to forcibly occupy some African states (setting the stage for the eventual "colonization" of the continent) in order to finally squash the trade - although the epilogue informs us that as late as 1980, 90,000 blacks are still reported as slaves to Arab masters.

It would not, of course, be fair to leave off without pointing some negligible errors in the book: First, the Sources and Notes section seems to have provided bold headings for some of the latter sections (books) but not the former. However, this does no discernable harm toward the body of the work and a few seconds study will clear up the confusion. In addition, while apparently relying on the best statistics available for the total number of slaves transported via the Atlantic / Trans-Atlantic journeys, the work fails to directly rebut some of the much larger numbers proposed by some historians. The author (in citing one minor source) also fails to respond to the criticisms of Sir Richard Burton and those almost identical ones of Orlando Patterson (who fails, however, to indicate his reliance on that noted bigot) on Mungo Park's reliability. However, such a response is readily available in Kate Ferguson Marsters' Introduction to Park's TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR DISTRICTS OF AFRICA. Thomas also fails to explain why he differs with Bovill on the exact relationship of the Sanhaja and the Tuareg. All-in-all; however, these are minor points and hardly detract from the incredible depth, breadth, organization and vividness of this masterful work!

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, detailed book on the slave trade, February 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The SLAVE TRADE (Hardcover)

Thomas has written a detailed, comprehensive portrait of the slave trade. He emphasizes the perspective of the slave traders, rather than the slaves. He stresses the earlier, European roots, over the earlier Muslim traders, although he does not ignore the Arab and Moorish traders. He seems to focus a little more on the European than the American traders, but there is plenty of coverage of the latter.

One of the strengths and weaknesses of the book is its voice, which is clinically detached from the material. I would expect this informative, but cool voice in a study of cotton trading. At times, Thomas' distance disarms the reader, but more often it facilitates the reader's access to this centuries-old, horrific business.

Thomas indirectly addresses the question why England so quickly converted its national policy on slave trading. He portrays several individuals who worked long, hard, and seemingly against the odds for the abolition of slave trading, if not slavery itself, but I still wonder how this policy seems to have gained such widespread acceptance among those naval officers on whom fell the duty of enforcement. I would have appreciated more insights into their feelings about slave trading and naval interdiction.

The length of the book probably did not permit the enlargement of its scope, but the reader seeking the slave's point of view may not be satisfied. Largely drawing from The Life of Olaudah Equiano, Thomas explains that there was little literature on which he could rely for this perspective.

The book is well written and seems well researched. I most appreciated Thomas' quanitification of the enormity of the slave trade without overwhelming me with statistics. I wouldn't call it a page-turner, but I had trouble putting it down.