Reviews

The age of exploration increased the slave trade, which had begun earlier with the Portuguese and didn't end in Brazil and Cuba until almost 1890. The volume was tremendous. Between 1492 and 1820, "five times as many Africans went to the New World as did white Europeans." Most of the great economic enterprises (sugar, cotton, etc.) of the first four centuries of colonization depended on slaves. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

YA-Thomas concentrates on the economics, social acceptance, and politics of the slave trade. The scope of the book is amazingly broad as the author covers virtually every aspect of the subject from the early days of the 16th century when great commercial houses were set up throughout Europe to the 1713 Peace Treaty of Utrecht, which gave the British the right to import slaves into the Spanish Indies. The account includes the anti-slavery patrols of the 19th century and the final decline and abolition in the early 20th century. Through the skillful weaving of numerous official reports, financial documents, and firsthand accounts, Thomas explains how slavery was socially acceptable and shows that people and governments everywhere were involved in itÄfrom African kings and Arab slave traders to the Europeans and Americans who bought and transported them to the New World. Despite the volatility of the subject, the author remains emotionally detached in his writing, yet produces a highly readable, informative book. A superb addition to YA collections.-Robert Burnham, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA

This monumental study of one of the grimmest subjects in the history of Western civilization combines scholarship and good writing so effortlessly that few contemporary books can be compared to it. As Thomas (The Spanish Civil War) points out, the one voice not heard in his book is that of the slaves themselves. He's not interested in belaboring what we already know‘that slavery is morally repugnant; instead he gives us a brilliant history of the business of slavery, an industry that thrived for over 400 years along the Atlantic rim. His account begins with the 15th-century African trade, dominated by Portugal and Spain. The book then enters the 17th and 18th centuries, when the trade was dominated by Protestant northern Europe, especially England and, later, the United States. Thomas covers slave ports in Africa, the shipping business, the manner in which goods were traded for slaves and the abolitionist movement (more in England than in the U.S.). The final sections focus on how the increased prohibition of the slave trade in the 19th century affected international relations and how, once slavery became illegal in some nations, conditions for the slaves became even worse. Perhaps for North Americans, the greatest lesson in the book is the realization that slavery was not a uniquely American problem. (Nov.)