Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
by Nicholas Radburn
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Description
During the eighteenth century, Britain's slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by the eve of the American Revolution, grown into an Atlantic-wide system through which fifty thousand men, women, and children were enslaved every year. In this sweeping new history, Nicholas Radburn explains how thousands of slaving merchants in Africa, Britain, and the British Americas collectively created this cancerous system by devising highly show more efficient, but also violent, new business methods. African brokers developed commercial techniques that facilitated the enslavement and sale of millions of people. Britons invented shipping methods that quelled enslaved people's constant resistance on the Middle Passage. And American slave traders formulated brutal techniques through which shiploads of people could be quickly sold to a variety of colonial buyers. Truly Atlantic-wide in its vision, this study shows how the slave trade became one of the most important phenomena in world history and dragged millions of people into the trade's terrible vortex. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
An incredibly clear and concise history of the everyday workings of the transatlantic slave trade. Written in a perfectly academic-but accessible way, Radburn never speaks down to his readers, instead letting the facts illustrate the horrors of this practice in a broad but concentrated scope. I learned a lot, and I appreciated the choice to synthesize both the qualitative and quantitative information of the practice (though I wish there was a bit more than just Equiano!). I ended up down a rabbit hole of the author's research, including the 3D ship renderings, and everything I've learned only feels that much more impactful.
Anyway, I cannot believe I found this as an audiobook through the LAPL. An amazing, amazing treat, reminiscent of show more finds such as They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South and Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom. These are the history books to rave about! show less
Anyway, I cannot believe I found this as an audiobook through the LAPL. An amazing, amazing treat, reminiscent of show more finds such as They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South and Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom. These are the history books to rave about! show less
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Books in the Bibliography of Contested Continent by Peter Mancall
495 works; 1 member
Author Information
1 Work 35 Members
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2023
Classifications
- Genres
- History, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 306.362 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social Behavior - Dating, Marriage, Divorce Economic institutions Systems of labor Slavery
- LCC
- HT1332 .R332 — Social sciences Communities. Classes. Races Communities. Classes. Races Classes Slavery
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 35
- Popularity
- 819,688
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.75)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 2
