Download The Slave Trade: The Story Of The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 By Hugh Thomas Readable In Mobi

this book was long and involved, It sure made me think that slavery was insidious, I think the chapter on how they caught them was most gruesome thing I have read in non fiction a long long book glad I read this now how can

we get over this in our country
Uitputtende beschrijving vanjaar Atlantische slavenhandel, van zijn directe voorgangers tot het allerlaatste slavenschip naar Cuba in.


Thomas bespreekt het allemaal met extreem detail, met veel cijfers, heel erg veel praktijkvoorbeelden en soms spannende passages, vooral over de moeizame strijd tot afschaffing van de slavenhandel, die gek genoeg ruim voorafging aan het idee van afschaffing van de slavernij zelf.
Hierbij ligt de focus sterk op de handel en de handelaren, De slaven zelf komen er erg bekaaid vanaf, mede omdat er zo weinig over hun bekend is,

Helaas is Thomas soms zó gedetailleerd dat het overzicht zoek dreigt te geraken: de slavernij zelf ligt grotendeels buiten beeld wanneer Nederland deze afschafte blijft bijvoorbeeld onbekend en veel historische kaderkennis beschouwt de auteur als bekend.
Dus wie niet weet wie Philips II was, wat de Napoleontische oorlogen waren en waarom de Amerikaanse burgeroorlog werd gevochten, snapt soms weinig van de context.


Daarbij is Thomas binnen zijn onderwerp soms wel èrg uitputtend: honderden namen komen voorbij en veel te veel voorbeelden, waardoor het lezen soms een moeizame exercitie wordt.
Bovendien is Thomas geen flamboyant auteur, Decors scheppen, de lezer het verhaal in trekken, ho maar, al kan hij dus spannnend vertellen over bijv, parlementaire debatten over slavernij.

Uiteindelijk is het lezen van dit boek net zo uitputtend als het beschrevene zelf dat is, This is a solid historical analysis of the transAtlantic slave trade and its multiple economic, ethnic, political and religious levels, Highly recommended. It is important to understand what this book is and is not about,

First, it is a history of the slave trade, not of slavery per se,

Second, it is a history of the Atlantic slave trade, Slavery was nearly universal in settled societies, existing to varying extents on all continents and in all eras from ancient times until the abolitionist movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and continuing to exist in a few scattered and benighted parts of the world even today.
This book, however, focuses on the transportation of slaves, not all of them black Africans, to southern Europe, islands in the Atlantic such as Madeira, and especially the New World between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Other slave trades, such as the Arab slave trade which took slaves across the Sahara or from East Africa and also from the coastal regions of Christendom and ships captured by pirates to slave markets in North Africa and the Middle East, are mentioned only in passing and by way of comparison to the Atlantic trade.
It shows that the Atlantic slave trade began along the fault lines between Christian, Muslim, and Animist cultures, where wars generated captives who could be sold as slaves, and later continued more along racial lines, with African potentates selling their neighbors, and sometimes their own subjects, into slavery, and European merchants taking them to the Americas.


Third, within the Atlantic slave trade, the book focuses on the activities of white slave traders from Europe and the Americas.
The fact that black Africans were full partners without whom the trade could not have existed comes winking through, Almost all slaves were taken by African despots who sold them to traders along the coast, Through the last half of the eighteenth century the Kings of Dahomey in modern Nigeria and Togo earned an income from selling slaves dwarfing the revenues of any English duke or merchant.
When abolition gained traction in the early nineteenth century and the English navy began patrolling against slave traders, most African rulers along the Atlantic seaboard protested, and several even sent ambassadors to London to make their protest more forcefully.
The author's attention, however, remains firmly focused on the activities of the white middlemen, thus reflecting the concern of the modern universityeducated West with the role of their own ancestors, not the ancestors of others.


The book concludes with the rapid in a historical sense rise of the abolitionist movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and suppression of the slave trade by the English and American navies that resulted.
North African slave traders the famous Barbary Pirates continued to take white slaves until Thomas Jefferson sent the American navy to their home ports to suppress this activity.
These pirate slavers ranged as far afield as Iceland, and took well over a million sailors and coastal residents as slaves before their raids ended, yet the abolitionists appear not to have been overly concerned about these unfortunate persons.
Rather, they focused exclusively on the slave trade carried by their own merchants, From this fact I draw the conclusion that they were more concerned with ending their own sins than ending the sins of others against them, though that could be the subject for another book.


Within its limits, The Slave Trade is a detailed and thoroughly documented account of the subject, and well worth the reader's time and attention.
Analizes the Atlantic slave trade ovcer four centuries exploring the reasons and methods, This book provided some excellent data around the Atlantic Slave Trade, Only problem I had with it was it became redundant after about halfway through, Some interesting take aways:

African slaves were chosen based on their physical attributes such as strength amp endurance, not because of the color of their skin over the South American Indian slaves.


A good number of slaves were sold to the Europeans by their own tribal leaders that acquired them through invasions of rival tribes or war.


Obviously there were abuses especially on the transport ships, but overall they were kept safe and secure,

There were rogue groups that were involved that seems to be the leaders in the abuses,

All nations were involved in some degree, It took several weeks to finish this very long book but it was worth it to learn how involved Spain was in the slave trade and slavery, something that they never taught us in school back home.
Along with Brazil Spain took longer than any other Western nation to abolish the slave trade because of their interests in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
It was really humbling to learn so much, For reference when reading: sitelinkThe Gail and Stephen Rudin Collection on Slavery in America Author names names which is always good but uses the same language the slave traders use to describe events.
kind of an asshole. Estimates overmillion Africans were brought as captives probably twice that many died or were killed along the way, Author is mostly interested in the economics of it, not the realities, Anyway, it's worth reading if you want transaction records, . This is a very informative book that looks at many of the economic and political aspects of the slave trade, It goes into how many different cultures, tribes and European nations were involved rather than just focusing on the United States, It isn't an easy read, but does a pretty good job of not taking sides, There isn't a lot from the point of view of the imprisoned slaves here so it isn't the best book if you are looking for that, but if you want to begin understanding how and why the slave trade became such a huge part of the period then this book can help you with that.
Do you want to know our story Here it is, In depth and written with fun There were few innocents except the children:
“Manstealing accounted for the majority of slaves taken to the New World, and it was usually the responsibility of Africans.
Voltaires sharp comment that, while it was difficult to defend the conduct of Europeans in the slave trade, that of Africans in bartering each other was even more reprehensible, deserves to be better remembered.
/But then there was no sense of Africa: a Dahomeyan did not feel that he had anything in common even with an Oyo.
”
There is no doubt that, as with the drug trade, demand creates supply, But that does not decrease the guilt of those African leaders whose greed helped perpetuate the servitude sometimes even of their own people.

What amazed me most was how few people seemed to have doubts at the beginning of the European slave trade, Thomas feels that it was because many were fixated on “classical” ideals and the Greeks and Romans, of course, had slaves, I was shocked to learn how active the Quaker community had been in the trade before their “conversion” to abolitionism,
If Thomas is right, then the history of abolition is a call to individual responsibility and power:

“Experiencesuggests that the end of the slave trade came not because, as the French historian Claude Meillassoux put it, slavery as a means of production hindered agrarian and industrial growth, but because of the work of individuals, with writers such as Montesquieu playing an essential part.
”
I picked up this title because I wanted to understand more specifics about the transatlantic slave trade: which countries did what and when, how often, and how much.


I find many things troubling about this book,

Most glaring is his constant praise and use of words such as "great" and "intellect" to describe men whose livelihoods were dependent upon the enslavement and exploitation of human beings.
:/

His handling of history becomes inconsistent when he compares European traders to African traders, He wants the reader to believe that both parties are equally culpable, but while he has in depth chapters or large sections of chapters devoted to monarchies and merchants from Portugal, Spain, England/Great Britain, France, the Dutch and even Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, he offers very little in the way of documenting any African kingdoms whether they are Moorish or "subsaharan".
That in itself is fine, as that would require a lifetime of research, However, I find it problematic that he frames a specific viewpoint on African involvement on the trade when it would appear that he has done minimal research in this area.


In my opinion, the author goes out of his way to lessen any sense of blame that could be applied to European governments.
I believe he downplays the role of European governments in exploiting and at times creating divisions between different ethnic groups in Africa, or how selling firepower to one side of a conflict allowed for the dominant party to continue supplying slaves to European traders.



THAT SAID, . .
If the reader seeks only to learn about the European origins and roles in the slave trade, I find it pretty informative and an easy read.
At times I feel he is overly specific about individuals, but if I ever want to learn more detailed information, it's nice to have a list of names to research.
I appreciate the author's attempt to contextualize what we know as "slavery", but as a reader, it's definitely necessary to tune out the author's glaringly obvious ethnocentric bias.
I read this in the mid's for a highschopl project and was in way over my head as far as the length and time limit for our project.
I ended up not finishing the book till after my project was due, However I believe the knowledge I gained as a Jr, in High School far exceeded what the other students learned as a result of reading this book, Long! I was looking for something that provided a fuller history of the slave trade, not a focus on the US only, This provides that to a surprising degree,
I notice a reviewer or two commenting on the lack of personal perspective, There is a little but for the most part the content is true to the 'trade' part of the title, There is some history of the slave trade in Africa prior to the European discovery and settlement of the Americas,
It is an easy read in the sense that the tone and language is not academic, A very detailed history of the slave trade from Africa to the Americas, focusing on the trade aspects rather than what happened to the slaves when they reached their final destinations.
If you can work your way through the book, and it's not an easy read, you may be surprised by how many slaves were brought over to countries other than the United States Brazil actually imported the most slaves.
The book also covers the efforts to eradicate the trade, An area of history not as well covered in most standard works on slavery and worth the effort to get through it if you wish to be come more knowledgeble regarding the subject.
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