| Description |
xv, 304 pages : map ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
1. People as things: the slave trade -- 2. Sinews of empire: Africans and the making of the American empires -- 3. Slave defiance -- 4. The slave owner's nightmare: Haiti -- 5. The friends of Black Freedom -- 6. Freeing Britain's slaves -- 7. The fall of US slavery -- 8. The end of slavery in the Spanish empire -- 9. The last to go: Brazil -- 10. Abolition in the wider world -- 11. Slavery in the modern age |
| Summary |
Walvin focuses not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery, but on resistance, the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings - and its impact in overthrowing slavery. He also looks that whole Atlantic world, including the Spanish Empire and Brazil. Slavery itself came in many shapes and sizes. It is perhaps best remembered on the plantations - though even those can deceive. Slavery varied enormously from one crop to another- sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, cotton. And there was in addition myriad tasks for the enslaved to do, from shipboard and dockside labour, to cattlemen on the frontier, through to domestic labour and child-care duties. Slavery was, then, both ubiquitous and varied. But if all these millions of diverse, enslaved people had one thing in common it was a universal detestation of their bondage. They wanted an end to it: they wanted to be like the free people around them |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Slave insurrections -- America -- History -- 19th century
|
|
Slaves -- Emancipation -- America -- History -- 19th century
|
| SUBJECT |
America -- History -- 19th century
|
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| ISBN |
9781472141422 |
|
1472141423 |
|
