Library Results | Royal Museums Greenwich

The Routledge history of slavery / edited by Gad Heuman and Trevor Burnard. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326

The many-headed Hydra : the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic /Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Linebaugh, Peter 2002. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382(261.1)

Black ivory : slavery in the British Empire /James Walvin "The brutal story of African slavery in the British colonies of the West Indies and North America is told with clarity and compassion in this classic history. James Walvin explores the experiences which bound together slaves from diverse African backgrounds and explains how slavery transformed the tastes and economy of the western world. [...] All aspects of African slavery up to 1776 are covered: the situation of women, flight and rebellion, disease and death, the conditions on the slave ships, the abolition campaign and much more. The narrative is enlivened and personalised by frequent reference to individual lives. For this revised edition, the author has incorporated recent scholarly findings and updated the notes and bibliography in order to keep the book current."--Provided by the publisher. 2001 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1:941.44

Humanitarian governance and the British antislavery world system / Maeve Ryan. "Between 1808 and 1867, the British Navy's Atlantic squadrons seized nearly two thousand slave ships, 're-capturing' almost two hundred thousand enslaved people and resettling them as liberated Africans across sites from Sierra Leone and Cape Colony to the West Indies, Brazil, Cuba, and beyond. In this wide-ranging study, Maeve Ryan explores the set of imperial experiments that took shape as British authorities sought to order and instrumentalise the liberated Africans, and examines the dual discourses of compassion and control that evolved around a people expected to repay the debt of their salvation. Ryan traces the ideas that shaped 'disposal' policies towards liberated Africans, and the forms of resistance and accommodation that characterized their responses. This book demonstrates the impact of interventionist experiments on the lives of the liberated people, on the evolution of a British antislavery 'world system', and on the emergence of modern understandings of refuge, asylum, and humanitarian governance."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/620941

Africans and the industrial revolution in England "Drawing on classical development theory and recent theoretical advances on the connection between expanding markets and technological development, this book shows the critical role of expanding Atlantic commerce in the successful completion of England's industrialization process over the period 1650-1850. The contribution of Africans, the central focus of the book, is measured in terms of the role of diasporic Africans in large-scale commodity production in the Americas - of which expanding Atlantic commerce was a function - at a time when demographic and other socio-economic conditions in the Atlantic basin encouraged small-scale production by independent populations, largely for subsistence. This is the first detailed study of the role of overseas trade in the Industrial Revolution. It revises inward-looking explanations that have dominated the field in recent decades and shifts the assessment of African contribution away from debate on profits." --Provided by the publisher. 2002 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 382(261):942.06/.081(=96)

The empire of necessity : slavery, freedom, and deception in the New World /Greg Grandin. One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans who appeared to be slaves. They weren't. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception--that the men and women he thought were slaves were actually running the ship--he responded with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents, historian Greg Grandin explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event--an event that inspired Herman Melville's masterpiece "Benito Cereno". Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, uses the dramatic happenings of that day to map a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas, capturing the clash of peoples, economies, and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1

Observations on a Guinea voyage in a series of letters addressed to the Rev. Thomas Clarkson Stanfield, James Field 1788 • RARE-BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1(041):094

Indian Ocean slavery in the age of abolition / edited by Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, and David W. Blight. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1(267)

Representing enslavement and abolition in museums : ambiguous engagements /edited by Laurajane Smith ... [et al.]. "The year 2007 marked the bicentenary of the Act abolishing British participation in the slave trade. "Representing Enslavement and Abolition on Museums"- which uniquely draws together contributions from academic commentators, museum professionals, community activists and artists who had an involvement with the bicentenary - reflects on the complexity and difficulty of museums' experiences in presenting and interpreting the histories of slavery and abolition, and places these experiences in the broader context of debates over the bicentenary's significance and the lessons to be learnt from it. The history of Britain's role in transatlantic slavery officially become part of the National Curriculum in the UK in 2009; with the bicentenary of 2007, this marks the start of increasing public engagement with what has largely been a "hidden" history. The book aims to not only critically review and assess the impact of the bicentenary, but also to identify practical issues that public historians, consultants, museum practitioners, heritage professionals and policy makers can draw upon in developing responses, both to the increasing recognition of Britain's history of African enslavement and controversial and traumatic histories more generally"-- 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326:069.5

Global lives : Britain and the world, 1550-1800 /Miles Ogborn. Ogborn, Miles. 2008. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 38(410)"1550/1800"

Sweetness and power : the place of sugar in modern history /Sidney W. Mintz. "In this eye-opening study of how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how a slave crop, and the growing demand for it, transformed the history of capitalism and industry, Sidney Mintz asks us to consider the many ways in which sugar has become "meanginful" in modern Western life. [...] Sidney Mintz discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are its origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's colonies with its use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. [...] Finally, Professor Mintz considers the meaning of food and eating in our own society. Sugar has facilitated the modern transformation of work patterns, consumption habits, and diet, and Sweetness and Power asks us to understand what this means."--Provided by the publisher. 1985. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 394.1/2

A dark history of sugar / Neil Buttery. "A Dark History of Sugar delves into our evolutionary history to explain why sugar is so loved, yet is the root cause of so many bad things. Europe's colonial past and Britain's Empire were founded and fuelled on sugar, as was the United States, the greatest superpower on the planet - and they all relied upon slave labour to catalyse it. A Dark History of Sugar focusses upon the role of the slave trade in sugar production and looks beyond it to how the exploitation of the workers didn't end with emancipation. It reveals the sickly truth behind the detrimental impact of sugar's meteoric popularity on the environment and our health. Advertising companies peddle their sugar-laden wares to children with fun cartoon characters, but the reality is not so sweet. A Dark History of Sugar delves into our long relationship with this sweetest and most ancient of commodities. The book examines the impact of the sugar trade on the economies of Britain and the rest of the world, as well as its influence on health and cultural and social trends over the centuries. Renowned food historian Neil Buttery takes a look at some of the lesser-known elements of the history of sugar, delving into the murky and mysterious aspects of its phenomenal rise from the first cultivation of the sugar cane plant in Papua New Guinean in 8,000 BCE to becoming an integral part of the cultural fabric of life in Britain and the rest of the West - at whatever cost. The dark history of sugar is one of exploitation: of slaves and workers, of the environment and of the consumer. Wars have been fought over it and it is responsible for what is potentially to be the planet's greatest health crisis. And yet we cannot get enough of it, for sugar and sweetness has cast its spell over us all; it is comfort and we reminisce fondly about the sweets, cakes, puddings and fizzy drinks of our childhoods with dewy-eyed nostalgia. To be sweet means to be good, to be innocent; in this book Neil Buttery argues that sugar is nothing of the sort. Indeed, it is guilty of some of the worst crimes against humanity and the planet."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 338.47664109

The Humphrey Morice papers from the Bank of England, London Morice, Humphry, 1998. • MICROFILM • 2 copies available. 326.1

The Glasgow sugar aristocracy : Scotland and Caribbean slavery, 1775-1838 /Stephen Mullen. "This important book assesses the size and nature of Caribbean slavery's economic impact on British society. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy, a grouping of West India merchants and planters, became active before the emancipation of chattel slavery in the British West Indies in 1834. Many acquired nationally significant fortunes, and their investments percolated into the Scottish economy and wider society. At its core, the book traces the development of merchant capital and poses several interrelated questions during an era of rapid transformation, namely, what impact the private investments of West India merchants and colonial adventurers had on metropolitan society and the economy, as well as the wider effects of such commerce on industrial and agricultural development. The book also examines the fortunes of temporary Scottish economic migrants who traveled to some of the wealthiest of the Caribbean islands, presenting the first large-scale survey of repatriated slavery fortunes via case studies of Scots in Jamaica, Grenada, and Trinidad before emancipation in 1834. It, therefore, takes a new approach to illuminate the world of individuals who acquired West India fortunes and ultimately explores, in an Atlantic frame, the interconnections between the colonies and metropole in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."--Provided by the publisher. [2022] • BOOK • 1 copy available. 381.44094144

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

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)

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

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

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)

Explore our collection