Slavery: A New Global History

By Jeremy Black

CW: slavery, violence

In this panoramic history, leading historian Jeremy Black explores slavery from its origins —the uprising of Spartacus and the founding of the plantations in the Indies — to its contemporary manifestations as human-trafficking and bonded labour. 

Black reveals how slavery served to consolidate empires and shape New World societies such as America and Brazil, and the way in which slave trading across the Atlantic changed the Western world. He assesses the controversial truth behind the complicity of Africans within the trade which continued until the long, hard fight for abolition in the nineteenth century. Black gives voice to both the campaigners who fought for an end to slavery, and the slaves who spoke of their misery. 

In this comprehensive and thoughtful account of the history of slavery, the role of slavery in the modern world is examined and Black shows that it is still widespread in many countries.