Overview

A sweeping new history that reveals how British, African, and American merchants developed the transatlantic slave trade   “This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade   “A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas.”—Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense   During the eighteenth century, Britain’s slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by the eve of the American Revolution, grown into an Atlantic-wide system through which fifty thousand men, women, and children were enslaved every year.   In this sweeping new history, Nicholas Radburn explains how thousands of slaving merchants in Africa, Britain, and the British Americas collectively created this cancerous system by devising highly efficient, but also violent, new business methods. African brokers developed commercial techniques that facilitated the enslavement and sale of millions of people. Britons invented shipping methods that quelled enslaved people’s constant resistance on the Middle Passage. And American slave traders formulated brutal techniques through which shiploads of people could be quickly sold to a variety of colonial buyers. Truly Atlantic-wide in its vision, this study shows how the slave trade became one of the most important phenomena in world history and dragged millions of people into the trade’s terrible vortex.

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9780300257618

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Reviews

A meticulously researched account of how British slave merchants in their interactions with African agents made very calculated economic decisions in order to maximize the profits made from the slave trade, and how these decisions impacted Atlantic African societies and contributed to dehumanizing African men, women, and children. -Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University An illuminating study of the raw ambition, brutal efficiency, and networked strategies of violence that underpinned the explosion of 18th-century British Atlantic-world slave trading. Radburn makes a compelling case for why these vaguely remembered 'merchants' should be reclaimed from respectability. -Maeve Ryan, author of Humanitarian Governance and the British Antislavery World System This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date. -David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade This definitive analysis of the British slave trade, encompassing Europe, Africa, and the Americas, blends quantitative and qualitative research in a clear-eyed, chilling, and convincing account of a business even more ruthless than abolitionists imagined. -Philip Morgan, Johns Hopkins University A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas. -Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense

“Radburn’s definitive and accessible debut lays bare the cold-blooded economic engine of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, demonstrating how merchants in Britain, the U.S., and Africa refined their business practices to maximize their income. . . . Radburn provides just the right amount of detail, deftly balancing individual stories with objective data. The result is both an enlightening economic investigation and an unsparing documentation of atrocity.”—Publishers Weekly “Redefines how historical research approaches the different phases that together constituted the transatlantic slave trade.”—Camilla de Koning, Journal of Global Slavery “One of the most shocking books I have ever read. . . . Radburn clinically and mercilessly details exactly how the trade operated.”—Neill Denny, Book Brunch “By dint of indefatigable research, imaginative reconstruction and persuasive argument [Radburn] has created one of the most important additions in the field.”—James Walvin, Family & Community History Shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize, sponsored by The Wolfson Foundation Finalist for the 2023 #Slaveryarchive Book Prize, sponsored by The #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative Winner of The James A. Rawley Prize in the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century, sponsored by the American Historical Association “A meticulously researched account of how British slave merchants in their interactions with African agents made very calculated economic decisions in order to maximize the profits made from the slave trade, and how these decisions impacted Atlantic African societies and contributed to dehumanizing African men, women, and children.”—Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University “An illuminating study of the raw ambition, brutal efficiency, and networked strategies of violence that underpinned the explosion of 18th-century British Atlantic-world slave trading. Radburn makes a compelling case for why these vaguely remembered ‘merchants’ should be reclaimed from respectability.”—Maeve Ryan, author of Humanitarian Governance and the British Antislavery World System “This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade “This definitive analysis of the British slave trade, encompassing Europe, Africa, and the Americas, blends quantitative and qualitative research in a clear-eyed, chilling, and convincing account of a business even more ruthless than abolitionists imagined.”—Philip Morgan, Johns Hopkins University “A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas.”—Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense

This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date. -David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas. -Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense Nicholas Radburn's rich scholarship provides an overview of the entire system of the British slave trade as it functioned at its height in the eighteenth century. Every scholar, student, and general reader with an interest in the slave trade will benefit from this study. -Randy J. Sparks, Tulane University A meticulously researched account of how British slave merchants in their interactions with African agents made very calculated economic decisions in order to maximize the profits made from the slave trade, and how these decisions impacted Atlantic African societies and contributed to dehumanizing African men, women, and children. -Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University A pioneering work that explains how British merchants and their transatlantic partners transformed five stages of enslavement, 'many Middle Passages,' from Africa to the Americas. -Stephen D. Behrendt, Victoria University of Wellington

Author Information

Nicholas Radburn is a senior lecturer in Atlantic history at Lancaster University and coeditor of www.slavevoyages.org. He lives in Lancaster, England, formerly one of Britain’s largest slave-trading ports.

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