BOOKS AND WEBSITES

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade – David Eltis and David Richardson (Yale University Press, 2010) Comprehensive, detailed and clear, this is an invaluable offshoot from slavevoyages.org, an indispensable online scholarly archive and interpretation of the slave trade.

Legacies of British Slave-Ownership

This UCL-based project analyses British slave compensation records, exposing the pervasive influence and importance of slaving in British life. ucl.ac.uk/lbs The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas – David Eltis (Cambridge University Press, 2000)

The best single-volume study of the topic available.

Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery – Seymour Drescher (Cambridge UP, 2009)

A masterly exposition of the rise and fall – and survival – of slavery worldwide.

Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World – David Brion Davis (Oxford UP, 2006)

By the pre-eminent historian of anti-slavery, this deserves to be read alongside Drescher.

The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 4, AD 1804–AD 2016 – David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, Seymour Drescher and David Richardson, eds (Cambridge UP, 2017)

An invaluable collection of essays by the most eminent historians in the field, providing a comprehensive study of Atlantic slavery’s demise.

Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism – Sven Beckert (Penguin, 2014)

A brilliant study of cotton, which locates slavery at the heart of the rise of industrial capitalism.

Trafficking in Human Beings: Modern Slavery – Silvia Scarpa (Oxford UP, 2008)

An account of the legal and diplomatic origins of modern anti-slavery.

The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition – Manisha Sinha (Yale UP, 2016)

An important revisionary account that locates US abolition in its hemispheric setting.

Freedom: The Overthrow of the Slave Empires – James Walvin (Robinson, 2019)

My own study places the slaves centre-stage in the ending of slavery.