A Short History of Transatlantic Slavery

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

A Short History of Transatlantic SlaveryAuthor(s): Kenneth Morgan\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, United Kingdom\nImprint: I.B. Tauris\nISBN-13: 9781780763873, 978-1780763873\nSynopsis\nFrom 1501, when the first slaves arrived in Hispaniola, until the nineteenth century, some twelve million people were abducted from west Africa and shipped across thousands of miles of ocean - the infamous Middle Passage - to work in the colonies of the New World. Perhaps two million Africans died at sea. Why was slavery so widely condoned, during most of this period, by leading lawyers, religious leaders, politicians and philosophers? How was it that the educated classes of the western world were prepared for so long to accept and promote an institution that would later ages be condemned as barbaric? Exploring these and other questions - and the slave experience on the sugar, rice, coffee and cotton plantations - Kenneth Morgan discusses the rise of a distinctively Creole cu.