Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

Natural rebels : a social history of enslaved Black women in Barbados /Hilary McD. Beckles. "Although we are learning a lot from historians about the lives of slaves in the United States, we still know little about slavery in the Caribbean. Hilary Beckles's book on the social, economic, and labor history of slave women in Barbados, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, is a major addition to this literature. Drawing on contemporary documents and records, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Beckles reveals how slave women were central to the plantation economy of Barbados. They had two kinds of value for sugar planters: they could work just as hard as men, and they could literally reproduce the slave class. Beckles details the daily lives of slave women in conditions of extreme exploitation. They suffered from harsh conditions, cruel punishments, malnutrition, disease, high morality, and fear of abandonment when they were too old to work. He describes the various categories and responsibilities of slaves, and the roles of children in the slave economy. Beckles looks at family structures and the complexities of interracial unions. He also shows how female slaves regulary resisted slavery, using both violent and non-violent means."--Provided by the publisher. 2000. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.5/67/082

Negotiating abolition : the antislavery project in the British Strait Settlements, 1786-1843 /by Shawna R. Herzog. "Negotiating Abolition: The Antislavery Project in the British Straits Settlements, 1786-1843 explores how sex and gender complicated the enforcement of colonial anti-slavery policies in the region, the challenges local officials faced in identifying slave populations, and how European reclassification of slave labor to systems of indenture or 'free' labor created a new illicit trade for women and girls to the Straits Settlements of Southeast Asia. Through a history of early-19th century slavery and abolition in this often overlooked region in British imperial history, Herzog bridges a historiographical gap between colonial and modern slave systems. She discusses the dynamic intersectionality between perceptions of race, class, gender, and civilization within the Straits and how this informed behavior and policy regarding slavery, abolition, and prostitution within the settlement. This book provides an important new perspective for scholars of slavery interested in Southeast Asia, British imperialism in the Indian Ocean world and Asia, the East India Company in the Straits, and gender and sexuality in the context of empire."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326/.809033

The Atlantic / Butel, Paul. 1999 "Paul Butel's essential new survey of the Atlantic covers the history of this ocean from antiquity to the present day. The book is organised along chronological lines, starting with the Greek and Roman oceanic myths and ending with cruise-ship holiday makers of the late twentieth century. Paul Butel charts the political and cultural developments of over 2,000 years of seafaring, succinctly describing and explaining the way nations have used the Atlantic to their own advantage. Among subjects covered are the Greek and Roman voyages, Viking seafaring, Columbus's expeditions and the English and Portuguese discoveries of the fifteenth century. Trade with South America by Mediterranean countries is also closely examined, as is the English slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which was central to the development of the Atlantic system. Paul Butel follows the fortunes of the French and British colonists of the eighteenth century and the expanding tobacco, sugar and coffee markets of that era. In the twentieth century much of the story of the ocean is taken up by various discrete and global wars, but it was also a period of fertile exchange and growth."-- Provided by the publisher. 1999 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 930.9(261)

Freedom's debtors : British antislavery in Sierra Leone in the age of revolution /Padraic X. Scanlan. ''A history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone and how the British used its success to justify colonialism in Africa British anti-slavery, widely seen as a great sacrifice of economic and political capital on the altar of humanitarianism, was in fact profitable, militarily useful, and crucial to the expansion of British power in West Africa. After the slave trade was abolished, anti-slavery activists in England profited, colonial officials in Freetown, Sierra Leone, relied on former slaves as soldiers and as cheap labor, and the British armed forces conscripted former slaves to fight in the West Indies and in West Africa. At once scholarly and compelling, this history of the abolition of the British slave trade in Sierra Leone draws on a wealth of archival material. Scanlan's social and material study offers insight into how the success of British anti-slavery policies were used to justify colonialism in Africa. He reframes a moment considered to be a watershed in British public morality as rather the beginning of morally ambiguous, violent, and exploitative colonial history.''Provided by the publisher. [2017] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/6209664

The British navy in the Caribbean / John D. Grainger. "This book charts the involvement of the British navy in the Caribbean from the earliest times to the present. It recounts the voyages of sixteenth century English adventurers such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake and their attacks on Spanish territories, outlines the capture of Jamaica during the time of Oliver Cromwell's rule and describes the growth of the British slave trade. It goes on to discuss the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century conflicts and wars with the Dutch, Spanish and French and the War of American Independence, analyses the effect of the abolition of the slave trade and explores the British dominance which prevailed throughout much of the nineteenth century. The book concludes by examining how in the twentieth century the British navy withdrew almost entirely from the Caribbean, tacitly ceding control to the United States. Throughout the book relates developments in the Caribbean to developments in Britain and in the British navy more widely."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.00941

Africa and the Africans in the making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 "This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers. This edition contains a new chapter extending the story into the eighteenth century."--Provided by the publisher. 1999 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325.45(6):326

British abolitionism and the question of moral progress in history / edited by Donald A. Yerxa. "In this collection historians use the abolition of the British slave trade as a case study for exploring the larger interpretive question of moral progress in history. Approaching their subject from the standpoints of social, economic, religious, scientific, and political history, the fourteen contributors explore connections between religious belief and social transformation, the material and cultural structures needed to translate altruism into successful political movements."--Provided by the publisher. 2012. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.8(42)

The worlds of unfree labour : from indentured servitude to slavery /edited by Colin A. Palmer. 1998. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1

Slavery, geography and empire in nineteenth-century marine landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica / Charmaine A. Nelson. "Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica is among the first Slavery Studies books - and the first in Art History - to juxtapose temperate and tropical slavery. Charmaine A. Nelson explores the central role of geography and its racialized representation as landscape art in imperial conquest. One could easily assume that nineteenth-century Montreal and Jamaica were worlds apart, but through her astute examination of marine landscape art, the author re-connects these two significant British island colonies, sites of colonial ports with profound economic and military value. Through an analysis of prints, illustrated travel books, and maps, the author exposes the fallacy of their disconnection, arguing instead that the separation of these colonies was a retroactive fabrication designed in part to rid Canada of its deeply colonial history as an integral part of Britain's global trading network which enriched the motherland through extensive trade in crops produced by enslaved workers on tropical plantations. The first study to explore James Hakewill's Jamaican landscapes and William Clark's Antiguan genre studies in depth, it also examines the Montreal landscapes of artists including Thomas Davies, Robert Sproule, George Heriot and James Duncan. Breaking new ground, Nelson reveals how gender and race mediated the aesthetic and scientific access of such - mainly white, male - artists. She analyzes this moment of deep political crisis for British slave owners (between the end of the slave trade in 1807 and complete abolition in 1833) who employed visual culture to imagine spaces free of conflict and to alleviate their pervasive anxiety about slave resistance. Nelson explores how vision and cartographic knowledge translated into authority, which allowed colonizers to 'civilize' the terrains of the so-called New World, while belying the oppression of slavery and indigenous displacement."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1

Edmund Burke and the British Empire in the West Indies : wealth, power, and slavery /P.J. Marshall. "Edmund Burke was both a political thinker of the utmost importance and an active participant in the day-to-day business of politics. It is the latter role that is the concern of this book, showing Burke engaging with issues concerning the West Indies, which featured so largely in British concerns in the later eighteenth century. Initially, Burke saw the islands as a means by which his close connections might make their fortunes, later he was concerned with them as a great asset to be managed in the national interest, and, finally, he became a participant in debates about the slave trade. This volume adds a new dimension to assessments of Burke's views on empire, hitherto largely confined to Ireland, India, and America, and explores the complexities of his response to slavery. The system outraged his abundantly attested concern for the suffering caused by abuses of British power overseas, but one which he also recognised to be fundamental for sustaining the wealth generated by the West Indies, which he deemed essential to Britain's national power. He therefore sought compromises in the gradual reform of the system rather than immediate abolition of the trade or emancipation of the slaves."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325.3209033

A brief history of slavery / Jeremy Black. "Slavery is as old as the world itself and expert and professor Jeremy Black will show that its history is one that is central to our understanding of the modern world. This essential guide is a new global history of slavery from ancient times to the present day, includes fascinating new insights and interpretations including the role of slavery within Islam, the complicity of some Africans in the transatlantic trade, and will raise key questions about the persistence of slavery today and what our governments are doing about it."--Provided by the publisher. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326(100)

Maritime history as global history / edited by Maria Fusaro and Amâelia Polâonia. 2010. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 94(100:26)

Slavery, capitalism and the Industrial Revolution / Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson. "For too long, the role of slavery in driving Britain's economic development has been marginalized. In their remarkable new book, Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson 'follow the money' to document in revealing detail the role of slavery in the making of Britain's industrial revolution. Slavery was not just a source of wealth for a narrow circle of slave owners who built grand country houses and filled them with luxuries. The forces set in motion by the slave and plantation trades seeped into almost every aspect of the economy and society. In textile mills, iron and copper smelting, steam power, and financial institutions, slavery played a crucial part. Things we might think far removed from the taint of slavery, like 18th century fashions for indigo-patterned cloth, sweet tea, snuff boxes, mahogany furniture, ceramics and silverware, were intimately connected. Even London's role as a centre for global finance was partly determined by the slave trade as insurance, financial trading and mortgage markets were developed in the City to promote distant and risky investments in enslaved people. The result is a bold and unflinching account of how Britain became a global superpower, and how the legacy of slavery persists. Acknowledging Britain's role in slavery is not just about toppling statues and renaming streets. We urgently need to come to terms with slavery's inextricable links with Western capitalism, and the ways in which many of us continue to benefit from slavery to this day."--Provided by publisher. 2023 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382/.440941

Staying power : the history of black people in Britain /Peter Fryer "'STAYING POWER is a panoramic history of black Britons. Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of Black presence in Britain. First published in the 1980s, amidst race riots and police brutality, Fryer's history performed a deeply political act; revealing how Africans, Asians and their descendants had long been erased from British history. By rewriting black Britons into the British story, showing where they influenced political traditions, social institutions and cultural life, was - and is - a deeply effective counter to a racist and nationalist agenda.This new edition includes the classic introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack', in addition to a brand-new foreword by Guardian journalist Gary Younge, which examines the book's continued significance today as we face Brexit and a revival of right wing nationalism."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 305.896041

Wives of the leopard : gender, politics, and culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey /Edna G. Bay. "Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions. Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it."--Provided by the publisher. 1998. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 320/.082/096683

Europe and the sea / edited by Dorlis Blume, Christiana Brennecke, Ursula Breymayer and Thomas Eisentraut for the Deutsches Historisches Museum "Europe is a maritime continent: measured by the length of its coasts and its total size, none of the five continental masses on the planet has more points of contact with the seas than Europe. The importance of the sea for the development of European civilisation is illustrated by the themes of myths, shipbuilding and seafaring, rule of the seas, European coastal trade, expansion, the slave trade, migration, the maritime global economy, resources, oceanography, tourism, and the artistic perception of the sea. Thirteen themes, each linked to a port city, range from Antiquity to the present day and demonstrate that the domination of the seas was a central component of European power politics for centuries."--Provided by the publisher. c2018. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 930.9(26)

Hamble River : A Glimpse of the past /Ian Underdown Underdown, I. M.-(Ian M.) 2014 • PAMPHLET • 1 copy available. 627.1(282.242)

Astronomical minds : the true longitude story /Ted Gerrard. Gerrard, Ted. 2007. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 528.282

Black experience and the empire / Philip D. Morgan, editor and Sean Hawkins, editor. "This work explores the lives of people of sub-Saharan Africa and their descendants, how they were shaped by empire, and how they in turn influenced the empire in everything from material goods to cultural style. The black experience varied greatly across space and over time. Accordingly, thirteen substantive essays and a scene-setting introduction range from West Africa in the sixteenth century, through the history of the slave trade and slavery down to the 1830s, to nineteenth- and twentieth-century participation of blacks in the empire as workers, soldiers, members of colonial elites, intellectuals, athletes, and musicians. No people were more uprooted and dislocated; or traveled more within the empire; or created more of a trans-imperial culture. In the crucible of the British empire, blacks invented cultural mixes that were precursors to our modern selves - hybrid, fluid, ambiguous, and constantly in motion."--Provided by the publisher. 2004. • BOOK • 2 copies available. 941-44

Not made by slaves : ethical capitalism in the age of abolition /Bronwen Everill. "'East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves'-with these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists in the Atlantic world shaped emerging ideas of ethical commerce to fight the system of plantation slavery that had become an engine of modern capitalism. How did consumers define ethical commerce? How did producers create markets for their products? Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world rather than on the more familiar boycott movements against slave-produced goods. Different approaches to making money in ethical commerce-through commercial agriculture, government contracts, international trade, and money management-shaped the relationship between production, consumption, and morality in ways that determined how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. Companies such as Macaulay & Babington in Sierra Leone, Roberts & Colson in Liberia, and Forster & Smith in the Gambia used commercial networks and government subsidies to make 'legitimate' commerce pay. Ethical commerce was also promoted by former slaves in such organizations as the Colored Free Produce Society, which promoted the idea that consumers bore responsibility for the plight of the slave and could change their buying behavior. This book illuminates global consumer society and industrial capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century, as well as underscores the roles of slavery and antislavery movements in the development of international capitalism. It also reminds us that concerns over fair trade and labor conditions remain relevant today"--Provided by publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 174/.409182109034

The fearless Benjamin Lay : the Quaker dwarf who became the first revolutionary abolitionist /Marcus Rediker A biography of writer and activist Benjamin Lay, who was a prominent early campaigner for the end of enslavement in the United States in the early 18th century. The book gives an account of Lay's youth in Essex and London, his travels to Barbados as a sailor, where he became radicalised against the slave trade, and his subsequent lifelong work to draw public attention to its barbarism, influenced by his Quaker faith. The book also outlines Lay's impact and legacy in Quakerism and the abolitionist movement after his death. Includes 12 pages of colour plates. 2017 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92LAY

Slavery in Africa and the Caribbean : a history of enslavement and identity since the 18th century /edited by Olatunji Ojo and Nadine Hunt. "For over four hundred years, thousands of African men and women were taken from their homeland and transported across the world to be sold into slavery. The history of this startling and horrific period is perennially important, and recent scholarship has sought to uncover the experiences of the slaves themselves in order to uncover the voices of its many victims. Slavery and Africa in the Caribbean analyses the written sources which have survived, demonstrating how many Africans coped by adopting a flexible identity in order to negotiate the cultural differences in African, European and Islamic systems of slavery."--Provided by the publisher. 2012. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1(6:729)"17"

Navies and soft power : historical case studies of naval power and the nonuse of military force /Bruce A Elleman and S C M Paine. "For well over two centuries, the U.S. Navy has engaged in an ever broader array of nonmilitary missions. Although a fundamental raison d'etre of navies concerns hard power, in the twentieth century an awareness of the uses of soft power developed. For example, since ancient times protecting against piracy has been a common naval problem, while since the mid-nineteenth century equally important patrol missions, such as attempts to stop the illegal slave trade, have been conducted by the U.S. Navy. After the Cold War, many other nonmilitary missions became important, in particular maritime humanitarian-aid missions like the post-tsunami Operation Unified Assistance in Southeast Asia during 2004-2005 ... this volume presents nine historical case studies examining the use of navies in nonmilitary missions"--Preface. 2015 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 363.34/8

Channelling mobilities : migration and globalisation in the Suez Canal region and beyond, 1869-1914 /Valeska Huber. "The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies."--Provided by the publisher. 2013 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382(267.5)"18/19"

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