FREEDOM: The Overthrow of the Slave Empires

Published in a paperback edition under the title 'Resistance, Rebellion and Revolt', Professor Walvin looks at the Atlantic world as a whole including the French and Spanish empires and Brazil as well as Britain's colonies. He casts new light on one of the major shifts in Western history - in the 300 years following Columbus's landfall in the Americas, slavery had become a widespread and critical institution. It had seen 12 million Africans forced onto slave ships, a forced migration that had had seismic consequences for Africa and had transformed the Americas and materially enriched the Western world. It had also been largely unquestioned, in Europe at least, and among slave owners, traders and those who profited from the system, yet within a mere 75 years during the 19th century, slavery had vanished from the Americas, declined, collapsed and was destroyed by a complexity of forces that to this day remains disputed. Walvin shows here that it was in large part overthrown by those it had enslaved. He re-examines the significance of the resistance of the enslaved themselves, from sabotage and running away to outright violent rebellion. 304pp, map and fairly large print.