The SLAVE TRADE

Rating:
Summary: Nine Months
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: An heavy book, worth reading.
Review: As a Southern historian, much of what I managed to read in this book, I already knew - in a general sense, of course. This book was able to put more details around my general knowledge on the subject, and for that I am grateful.

Yes, the book is a difficult and orduous read, but well worth it.

One thing still amazes me though... if so many were at fault, why is it that The South gets all the blame when at least the Confederate flag NEVER flew over a single ship that bore slaves from Africa, and Virginia was the first to attempt to outlaw slavery. Also, be it known that the Constitution of the Confederate States of America forbid ANY person in any Confederate State to import another single slave. I don't believe the US Constitution contained this until the 13th Amendment of 1865. Of course there was a law against it passed in 1808 by Congress, but nothing was done to enforce it. South Carolina itself passed a state law in the early 1800's forbidding any future importation of slaves, but repealed it about 15 years later because they didn't have the navy to patrol all the inlet waterways and the US government wouldn't supply assistance.

Rating:
Summary: A History of the Middle Passage
Review: The most important thing to note about the title of this brilliant book is that it is about the slave TRADE, not slavery per se. For descendants of slaves, this distinction may be pretty meaningless, but to the eighteenth century abolitionists it was critical. As Thomas explains, opponents of slavery such as Lord Wilberforce premised their campaign on the theory that the trade in slaves - with its horrendous "middle passage" in which African men, women and children were piled into rotting hulks for weeks on end - was far more deserving of abolition of than the practice of slavery itself. As Thomas points out, the logic of this position now seems extremely dubious, for even after the British and other European navies had suppressed the cross-Atlantic trade, many countries retained their slave plantations, most notably the Southern United States, Brazil and Cuba.

When one tallies up those who traded in slaves, one finds a scandalously large and non-exclusive club - virtually all the nations of Europe, and all the colonial and "liberated" powers of North America, starting with Henry the Navigator of Portugal and ending with the newly formed states of c. 19th Latin America. In 900 pages, Thomas chronicles a trade that covered four continents and four centuries. This is THE work on the slave trade.

Rating:
Summary: A History of the Middle Passage
Review: The most important thing to note about the title of this brilliant book is that it is about the slave TRADE, not slavery per se. For descendants of slaves, this distinction may be pretty meaningless, but to the eighteenth century abolitionists it was critical. As Thomas explains, opponents of slavery such as Lord Wilberforce premised their campaign on the theory that the trade in slaves - with its horrendous "middle passage" in which African men, women and children were piled into rotting hulks for weeks on end - was far more deserving of abolition of than the practice of slavery itself. As Thomas points out, the logic of this position now seems extremely dubious, for even after the British and other European navies had suppressed the cross-Atlantic trade, many countries retained their slave plantations, most notably the Southern United States, Brazil and Cuba.

When one tallies up those who traded in slaves, one finds a scandalously large and non-exclusive club - virtually all the nations of Europe, and all the colonial and "liberated" powers of North America, starting with Henry the Navigator of Portugal and ending with the newly formed states of c. 19th Latin America. In 900 pages, Thomas chronicles a trade that covered four continents and four centuries. This is THE work on the slave trade.

Rating:
Summary: Let history begin
Review: The record of civilization is haunted by the dread percentage: the largest percentage of its overall duration saw the domination of slavery. Its seemingly endless persistence and relatively sudden abolition reminds us that the 'way things are' is not an argument for the 'way things should be', and that injustice persists in part because our thinking is flawed Thomas' work is a very well-researched account of modern slavery from the fifteen century until its final overthrow in the nineteenth. Although much of Northern Europe was close to seeing salvery dying out in the medieval period its endemic existence as a constant and sudden last phase in the rise of capitalism can be traced backwards via the Portuguese voyages of discovery, as this initiated the last centuries of the disastrous and maleficent Atlantic trade to the Americas. This work is quite comprehensive as to the facts, without commentary. The suddenness of the abolition period is sometimes ascribe to the emergence of the capitalist system, yet there seems to be something missing in that account. Did Rousseau denunciation spring from questions of economic efficiency. The history of slavery seems always an account of men mesmerized by their worlds, finding its evils the basis of phantom normality, men without a history as automatons in their blindness. We inherit the labors of those who woke up to history to let it at last begin. Very useful account at nine hundred pages.

Rating:
Summary: Another book on the Slave Trade
Review: The Slave Trade is a massive work that attempts to explain the Atlantic Slave Trade which dominated the European and American waters for over four centuries. It covers the beginning when the Portuguese first set foot on Africa in the 1400's to the end of the American Civil War. The book is split into six different "books" which range from the herding of slaves into the ships to European and African attempts to abolish this trade. The author, whether purposely or by mistake, portrays the Slave Trade through the eyes of the slave traders themselves. The period of great interest for Thomas is the nineteenth century when the slave trade began to disappear.
When Great Britain abolished the trade in the early 1800's, it began, with the help of West African naval patrols, to suppress the trade still prosperous in Brazil and Cuba. Thomas shows how ineffectual these efforts were for so many years. He is one of the first to correct U.S. historians who assume the slave trade ended during that time. Many North American ships were still involved during that "illegal era," mostly coming from ports in New York, Baltimore, and especially other ports in New England.
Of course, with any 900 page description it is difficult to keep the reader interested simply because there is so much information out there. Thomas admits that writing on the slave trade produces "no new cultivation," yet he feels it is necessary so that it can perhaps "offer something for almost everyone."(11) Although filled with errors, it can be an excellent read for those interested in the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Rating:
Summary: Another book on the Slave Trade
Review: The Slave Trade is a massive work that attempts to explain the Atlantic Slave Trade which dominated the European and American waters for over four centuries. It covers the beginning when the Portuguese first set foot on Africa in the 1400's to the end of the American Civil War. The book is split into six different "books" which range from the herding of slaves into the ships to European and African attempts to abolish this trade. The author, whether purposely or by mistake, portrays the Slave Trade through the eyes of the slave traders themselves. The period of great interest for Thomas is the nineteenth century when the slave trade began to disappear.
When Great Britain abolished the trade in the early 1800's, it began, with the help of West African naval patrols, to suppress the trade still prosperous in Brazil and Cuba. Thomas shows how ineffectual these efforts were for so many years. He is one of the first to correct U.S. historians who assume the slave trade ended during that time. Many North American ships were still involved during that "illegal era," mostly coming from ports in New York, Baltimore, and especially other ports in New England.
Of course, with any 900 page description it is difficult to keep the reader interested simply because there is so much information out there. Thomas admits that writing on the slave trade produces "no new cultivation," yet he feels it is necessary so that it can perhaps "offer something for almost everyone."(11) Although filled with errors, it can be an excellent read for those interested in the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST READ!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: highly informative but not well organized
Review: This book operates on so many levels, which complicates the author's task. I found the book a difficult read, but I appreciated his effort.
Before the slave trade, there was no business of transporting people over great distances. Yes, they were slaves, trapped in a holocaust-like snare; and yet, compensating for advances in technology, the business was similar in various ways to the mass migrations of the Irish and other europeans three centuries later. The abominable conditions of steerage on the great ocean liners paid for those fleets, inventing international tourism along the way.
Fascinating how european finance, insurance and commodities trade were transformed through the slave trade. The marshalling of so much information is confusing, yet one senses that this book will be around for some time.
Sugar, says Hugh Thomas, created the slave trade. Gold is pretty, but sugar was the real driving force.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written, detailed book on the slave trade
Review: 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.