Atlas of Slavery

James Walvin has over many years successfully bridged the worlds of academia, teachers, and the public at large, making the latest scholarly findings on the history of slavery accessible to the widest possible audience. His new book Atlas of Slavery in which he maps the history of slavery from ancient to modern times and provides a succinctly written commentary on the same, will further enhance his reputation as one of the leading international figures in raising public awareness and understanding of slavery and its impact on global history. As we approach in 2007/8 the bi-centenary of the abolition of the British and American Atlantic slave trades, Walvins atlas reminds us of the magnitude of the task that faced those who sought and still seek to eradicate slavery.

David Richardson, Professor of Economic History, University of Hull.

The enslavement of Africans and their transportation across the Atlantic has come to occupy a unique place in the public imagination. Despite the wide-ranging atrocities of the twentieth century (including massive slave systems in Nazi Europe and the Russian Gulag), the Atlantic slave system continues to hold a horrible fascination. But slavery in the Atlantic world involved much more than the transportation of human cargo from one country to another, as Professor Walvin clearly explains in the Atlas of Slavery.

In this fascinating new book he looks at slavery in the Americas in the broadest context, taking account of both earlier and later forms of slavery.  The relationship between the critical continents, Europe, Africa and the Americas, is examined through a collection of maps and related text, which puts the key features of the history of slavery in their defining geographical setting. By foregrounding the historical geography of slavery, Professor Walvin shows how the people of three widely separated continents were brought together into an economic and human system that was characterized both by violence and cruelty to its victims and huge economic advantage to its owners and managers.

Professor Walvins synthesis of the complex history of Atlantic slavery provides a fresh perspective from which to view and understand one of the most significant chapters in global history. We may think of slavery as a largely bygone phenomenon, but it is a practice that continues to this day, and the exploitation of vulnerable human beings remains a pressing contemporary issue.