This social history looks at African slavery and the Atlantic slave trade which, in the space of 300 years, transported more than 11 million Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean - with millions more dying en route. No other slave system in world history was so regulated and determined by the question of race, or had forcibly removed so many people and scattered them across such vast distances or had such prodigious results for the slave-owning class. Using contemporary accounts, this book shows how the British maritime trade and power were transformed by the Atlantic slave trade, and how ports like Bristol, Liverpool and London grew into international trading centres on the backs of the slaves. The book describes the enslavement of Africans, the brutal conditions for the human cargoes, the slave auctions and prosperous plantocracies of the slave colonies in the West Indian islands of Barbados and Jamaica, the songs of the slaves, revolts and runaways, the effects of conversion to Christianity and growing literacy among the slaves, the abolition campaign, the problems of freedom and the legacy of racism.

Black ivory: A history of British slavery

History

James Walvin

Europe

Fontana Press

Radicalism and Reform, 1776-1848

Edward Royle

BRANCH LINE

Black and White: Negro and English Society, 1555-1945

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

A.Lane

Questioning Slavery

Routledge

Sugar: The world corrupted, from slavery to obesity

How did a commodity that was once the prized monopoly of kings become an essential ingredient of everyday life and then the cause of a global health epidemic? James Walvin traces the history of how the demand for sweetness has been met, from early Mediterranean sugar plantations, to the immense human and environmental cost of the Caribbean plantations and the slave system, the industries that followed, and the dawning awareness of the obesity problem.

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Robinson

Review\nA convincing, deep history of this (in)famous product . . . This is not simply the tale of those who toiled to produce sugar . . . Something more than just a scholarly text, this study could not be more timely―Laura Sandy, Lecturer in the History of Slavery at the University of Liverpool, History Today\nAs an historian of slavery, Walvin is well-versed in the triangular trade and explains the role of sugar cane in bringing Africans to the Caribbean. His survey of sugar in our lives is very readable.―Katrina Gulliver, Spectator\nThis study could not be more timely.―Laura Sandy, Lecturer in the History of Slavery, University of Liverpool\nA brilliant and thought-provoking history of sugar and its ironies―Bee Wilson, Wall Street Journal\nAn 'entertaining, informative and utterly depressing global history of an important commodity . . . By alerting readers to the ways that modernity's very origins are entangled with a seemingly benign and delicious substance, How Sugar Corrupted the World raises fundamental questions about our world.'―Sven Beckert, the Laird Bell professor of American history at Harvard University and the author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History, New York Times\nA refreshingly historical look at a substance we often take for granted―History Revealed\nAn 'entertaining, informative and utterly depressing global history of an important commodity . . . By alerting readers to the ways that modernity's very origins are entangled with a seemingly benign and delicious substance, How Sugar Corrupted the World raises fundamental questions about our world.' 
Sven Beckert, the Laird Bell professor of American history at Harvard University and the author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History, in the New York Times 
'A brilliant and thought-provoking history of sugar and its ironies' 
Bee Wilson, Wall Street Journal 
'Shocking and revelatory . . . no other product has so changed the world, and no other book reveals the scale of its impact.' David Olusoga 
'This study could not be more timely.' Laura Sandy, Lecturer in the History of Slavery, University of Liverpool 
The story of sugar, and of mankind's desire for sweetness in food and drink is a compelling, though confusing story. It is also an historical story. 
The story of mankind's love of sweetness - the need to consume honey, cane sugar, beet sugar and chemical sweeteners - has important historical origins. To take a simple example, two centuries ago, cane sugar was vital to the burgeoning European domestic and colonial economies. For all its recent origins, today's obesity epidemic - if that is what it is - did not emerge overnight, but instead evolved from a complexity of historical forces which stretch back centuries. We can only fully understand this modern problem, by coming to terms with its genesis and history: and we need to consider the historical relationship between society and sweetness over a long historical span. This book seeks to do just that: to tell the story of how the consumption of sugar - the addition of sugar to food and drink - became a fundamental and increasingly troublesome feature of modern life. 
Walvin's book is the heir to Sidney Mintz's Sweetness and Power, a brilliant sociological account, but now thirty years old. In addition, the problem of sugar, and the consequent intellectual and political debate about the role of sugar, has been totally transformed in the years since that book's publication.

How Sugar Corrupted The World

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Constable Robinson

Slavery to Freedom Britain's Slave Trade and Abolition

Pitkin Unichrome Ltd.

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Books by James Walvin