Description

Written by leading younger and distinguished senior scholars, the twelve accomplished essays in this volume probe the long and interconnected histories of slavery and the slave trade and of abolition and emancipation throughout the Atlantic world. Drawing on innovative new research using quantitative and qualitative evidence and foregrounding economic, cultural, demographic, environmental, and political questions, the chapters recast knowledge about the rise, transformation, and slow demise of slavery and the commerce in human beings needed to support it that forever changed Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The essays demonstrate the mixed consequences and ambiguous legacies of abolition, the first formative global human rights movement. They also cast new light on the origins and development of the African diaspora created by the transatlantic slave trade. Engagingly written and attuned to twenty-first century as well as historical problems and debates, this book will appeal to undergraduates and nonspecialists as well as to advanced researchers. Philip Misevich is assistant professor of history at St. John's University and Kristin Mann is professor of history at Emory University.