James Walvin

Western slavery goes back 10,000 years to Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq, where a male slave was worth an orchard of date palms. Female slaves were called on for sexual services, gaining freedom only when their masters died. This book traces slavery from classical times to the present. It shows how the enforced movement of more than 12 million Africans on to the Atlantic slave ships, and the scattering of more 11 million survivors across the colonies of the Americas between the late 16th and early 19th centuries, transformed the face of the Americas. Though they were not its pioneers, it was the British who came to dominate Atlantic slavery, helping to consolidate the country’s status as a world power before it became the first major country to abolish slavery. James Walvin explores the moral and economic issues slavery raises, examines how it worked and describes the lives of individual slaves, their resilience in the face of a brutal institution, and the depths to which white owners and their overseers could on occasion sink in their treatment of them.

How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating yet again into the cause of a global health epidemic?Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous and an everyday necessity. Less than fifty years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem. And yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco. While sugar consumption remains higher than ever—in some countries as high as 100lbs per head per year—some advertisements even proudly proclaim that their product contains no sugar.How did sugar grow from prize to pariah? Acclaimed historian James Walvin looks at the history of our collective sweet tooth, beginning with the sugar grown by enslaved people who had been uprooted and shipped vast distances to undertake the grueling labor on plantations. The combination of sugar and slavery would transform the tastes of the Western world.Masterfully insightful and probing, James Walvin reveals the relationship between society and sweetness over the past two centuries—and how it explains our conflicted relationship with sugar today.

As we approach the bicentenary of the abolition of the Atlantic trade, Walvin has selected the historical texts that recreate the mindset that made such a savage institution possible - morally acceptable even. Setting these historical documents against Walvin's own incisive historical narrative, the two layers of this extraordinary, definitive account of the Atlantic slave trade enable us to understand the rise and fall of one of the most shameful chapters in British history, the repercussions of which the modern world is still living with.

The first full review of the mass murder by crew members on the slave ship Zong and the lasting repercussions of this horrifying eventOn November 29, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the British ship Zong commanded his crew to throw overboard one-third of his cargo: a shipment of Africans bound for slavery in America. The captain believed his ship was off course, and he feared there was not enough drinking water to last until landfall. This book is the first to examine in detail the deplorable killings on the Zong , the lawsuit that ensued, how the murder of 132 slaves affected debates about slavery, and the way we remember the infamous Zong today.Historian James Walvin explores all aspects of the Zong ’s voyage and the subsequent trial—a case brought to court not for the murder of the slaves but as a suit against the insurers who denied the owners’ claim that their “cargo” had been necessarily jettisoned. The scandalous case prompted wide debate and fueled Britain’s awakening abolition movement. Without the episode of the Zong , Walvin contends, the process of ending the slave trade would have taken an entirely different moral and political trajectory. He concludes with a fascinating discussion of how the case of the Zong , though unique in the history of slave ships, has come to be understood as typical of life on all such ships.

In this new and original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of its historic end in April 1807, the parallel lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement—a trader, an owner, and a slave—are examined. John Newton (1725 - 1807), best known as the author of Amazing Grace, was a slave captain who marshaled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition. Thomas Thistlewood (1721 - 1786) lived his life in a remote corner of western Jamaica and his unique diary provides some of the most revealing images of a slave owner’s life in the most valuable of all British slave colonies. Olaudah Equiano (1745 - 1797) was practically unknown 30 years ago, but is now an iconic figure in black history and his experience as a slave speaks out for lives of millions who went unrecorded. All three men were contemporaries; they even came close to each other at different points of the Atlantic compass. But what held them together, in its destructive gravitational pull, was the Atlantic slave system.

The terrible 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.

The critically acclaimed author of Sugar explains one of the major shifts in Western history in the past five centuries—the end of the slave empires.In this timely and readable new work, Walvin focuses not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery, but on the resistance of the enslaved themselves—from sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings—and its impact in overthrowing slavery. He also looks at whole Atlantic world, including the Spanish Empire and Brazil, all of which revolved around slavery.In the three centuries following Columbus's landfall in the Americas, slavery became a critical institution across swathes of both North and South America. It saw twelve million Africans forced onto slave ships, and had seismic consequences for Africa while leading to the transformation of the Americas and to the material enrichment of the Western world. It was also largely unquestioned.Yet within a mere seventy-five years, slavery had vanished from the it declined, collapsed and was destroyed by a complexity of forces that, to this day, remains disputed, but there is no doubting that it was in large part defeated by those it had enslaved. Slavery itself came in many shapes and sizes. It is perhaps best remembered on the plantations of the American south, but slavery varied enormously from one crop to sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, cotton. And there was in addition myriad tasks for the enslaved to do, from shipboard and dockside labor, from factories to the frontier, through to domestic labor and child-care duties.Slavery was, then, both ubiquitous and varied. But if all these millions of diverse, enslaved people had one thing in common it was a universal detestation of their bondage. Most of these enslaved peoples did not live to see freedom. But an old freed man or woman in Cuba or Brazil in the 1880s would have lived through its destruction clean across the Americas. The collapse of slavery and the triumph of black freedom constitutes an extraordinary historical upheaval, one which still resonates throughout the world today.

A World Transformed explores how slavery thrived at the heart of the entire Western world for more than three centuries. Arguing that slavery can only be fully understood by stepping back from traditional national histories, this book collects the scattered accounts of the most recent scholarship into a comprehensive history of slavery and its shaping of the world we know. Celebrated historian James Walvin tells a global story that covers everything from the capitalist economy, labor, and the environment, to social culture and ideas of family, beauty and taste.This book underscores just how thoroughly slavery is responsible for the making of the modern world. The enforced transportation and labour of millions of Africans became a massive social and economic force, catalysing the rapid development of multiple new and enormous trading systems with profound global consequences. The labour and products of enslaved people changed the consumption habits of millions - in India and Asia, Europe and Africa, in colonised and Indigenous American societies. Across time, slavery shaped many of the dominant features of Western taste: items and habits or rare and costly luxuries, some of which might seem, at first glance, utterly removed from the horrific reality of slavery. A World Transformed traces the global impacts of slavery over centuries, far beyond legal or historical endpoints, confirming that the world created by slave labour lives on today.

At the beginning of the 20th century, soccer was widely accepted as the most popular sport in the western world. Starting in Britain in the 19th century but with roots going back to the late Middle Ages, it quickly spread from there to the rest of the world. Yet here was a game with strong traditional folk-roots; a game originally intended for urban working men. This text tells the story of the remarkable rise of a remarkable game—and the way it became the game of the masses across the globe.

The sixteenth-century Spanish and Portuguese explorers who went to Africa in search of gold discovered an even more lucrative cargo: slaves. A hugely profitable transatlantic trade in human lives soon developed, linking the continents of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and great fortunes were built. Africans and their descendants cultivated sugar throughout the Caribbean and Brazil, and tobacco, cotton, and rice in the American South. A fervent abolitionist campaign eventually succeeded in changing public opinion and forced governments to outlaw it, but the Atlantic slave trade persisted well into the nineteenth century, with incalculable human costs.James Walvin is an expert guide to the origins, development, eventual abolition, and legacies of the slave trade, focusing on the experiences of those who lived through slavery. The ten facsimile documents include plans and logs of slave ships and auction sale notices as well as private letters and emancipation proclamations. A wealth of evocative images—photographs, paintings, objects, and contemporary maps—give further insight into the horrors and global impact of the transatlantic slave trade.

The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano, a prominent African in late 18th-century Britain, is quoted, anthologized and interpreted in dozens of books and articles. More than any single contemporary, Equiano speaks for the fate of millions of Africans in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. This study attempts to create a rounded portrait of the man behind the literary image, and to study Equiano in the context of Atlantic slavery.

A fascinating journey through the history of "Amazing Grace," one of the transatlantic world's most popular hymns and a powerful anthem for humanity. Sung in moments of personal isolation or on state occasions watched by millions, "Amazing Grace" has become an unparalleled anthem for humankind. How did a simple Christian hymn, written in a remote English vicarage in 1772, come to hold such sway over millions in all corners of the modern world? With this short, engaging cultural history, James Walvin offers an explanation. The greatest paradox is that the author of "Amazing Grace," John Newton, was a former Liverpool slave captain. Walvin follows the song across the Atlantic to track how it became part of the cause for abolition and galvanized decades of movements and trends in American history and popular culture. By the end of the twentieth century, "Amazing Grace" was performed in Soweto and Vanuatu, by political dissidents in China, and by Kikuyu women in Kenya. No other song has acquired such global resonance as "Amazing Grace," and its fascinating history is well worth knowing.

Slavery transformed Africa, Europe and the Americas and hugely-enhanced the well-being of the West but the subject of slavery can be hard to understand because of its huge geographic and chronological span. This book uses a unique atlas format to present the story of slavery, explaining its historical importance and making this complex story and its geographical setting easy to understand.

We all know the story of the slave trade—the infamous Middle Passage, the horrifying conditions on slave ships, the millions that died on the journey, and the auctions that awaited the slaves upon their arrival in the Americas. But much of the writing on the subject has focused on the European traders and the arrival of slaves in North America. In Crossings , eminent historian James Walvin covers these established territories while also traveling back to the story’s origins in Africa and south to Brazil, an often forgotten part of the triangular trade, in an effort to explore the broad sweep of slavery across the Atlantic. Reconstructing the transatlantic slave trade from an extensive archive of new research, Walvin seeks to understand and describe how the trade began in Africa, the terrible ordeals experienced there by people sold into slavery, and the scars that remain on the continent today. Journeying across the ocean, he shows how Brazilian slavery was central to the development of the slave trade itself, as that country tested techniques and methods for trading and slavery that were successfully exported to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas in the following centuries. Walvin also reveals the answers to vital questions that have never before been addressed, such as how a system that the Western world came to despise endured so long and how the British—who were fundamental in developing and perfecting the slave trade—became the most prominent proponents of its eradication. The most authoritative history of the entire slave trade to date, Crossings offers a new understanding of one of the most important, and tragic, episodes in world history.

Describes how the sect acquired wealth in Great Britain through such businesses as Barclays Bank, Lloyds of London, and Cadbury, and recounts their efforts on behalf of social causes

Slavery in Small Slavery and Modern Cultural Habits isthe first book to explore the long-range cultural legacy of slavery through commonplace daily objects.Offers a new and original approach to the history of slavery by an acknowledged expert on the topic Traces the relationship between slavery and modern cultural habits through an analysis of commonplace objects that include sugar, tobacco, tea, maps, portraiture, print, and more Represents the only study that utilizes common objects to illustrate the cultural impact and legacy of the Atlantic slave trade Makes the topic of slavery accessible to a wider public audience

The British role in the shaping and direction of the African diaspora was central, since the British carried more Africans across the Atlantic than any other nation, and British colonial settlements absorbed vast numbers of Africans. The crops produced by those slaves helped to lay the foundations for western material well-being, and their associated cultural habits helped to shape key areas of western sociability which survive to the present day. The shadow of slavery lingered long after the institution itself had died, and this racism survived into the 20th century, reinforced and periodically reinvented by powerful cultural forces - commercialism, schooling, popular journalism and a host of visual images. Recently the story of migration has been marked by a wave of migration, since 1945, from the former slave colonies and other parts of the empire to Britain, with long-reaching consequences for British domestic life. This book presents the story of the African exile, its origins, its progress and its transformation from bondage to freedom.

For the best part of three centuries the material well-being of the western world was dependent on slavery. Yet these systems were mainly brought to a very rapid end. This text surveys the key questions of slavery, and traces the arguments which have swirled around its history in recent years. The latest findings on slavery are presented, and a comparative analysis of slavery in the English-speaking Americas is offered.

Book by Walvin, James

This long overdue, vivid and wide-ranging examination of the significance of the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and running away to outright violent rebellion - shines fresh light on the end of slavery in the Atlantic World.It is high time that this resistance, in addition to abolitionism and other factors, was given its due weight in seeking to understand the overthrow of slavery. Fundamentally, as Walvin shows so clearly, it was the implacable hatred of the enslaved for slavery and their strategies of resistance that made the whole system unsustainable and, ultimately, brought about its downfall.Walvin's approach is original, too, in looking at the Atlantic world as a whole, including the French and Spanish Empires and Brazil, as well as Britain's colonies. In doing so, he casts new light on one of the major shifts in Western history: in the three-hundred years following Columbus's landfall in the Americas, slavery had become a widespread and critical institution. It had seen twelve million Africans forced onto slave ships; a forced migration that had had seismic consequences for Africa. It had transformed the Americas and materially enriched the Western world.It had also been largely unquestioned - in Europe at least, and among slave owners, traders and those who profited from the system.Yet, within a mere seventy-five years during the nineteenth century, slavery had vanished from the Americas: it had declined, collapsed and been destroyed by a complexity of forces that, to this day, remains disputed. As Walvin shows so clearly here, though, it was in large part overthrown by those it had enslaved.

The British Empire carried more Africans into bondage in the Americas than any other nation in the world. Not only did the British slavers of the 17th and 18th centuries do the most to hone the art of slave trading, but the nation as a whole also benefited financially more than any of its competitors. The story of how Britain grew and prospered on the backs of millions of slaves is retold here in vivid detail. Renowned slavery historian James Walvin explains how the international commodity market operated, how the process of transporting millions of Africans thousands of miles across ocean and land developed, and how the experience affected slaves both in bondage and later in freedom. This is an innovative and eye-opening account of the critical relationship between slavery and the development of Britain’s cultural and economic life.

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What could be more British than a cup of tea? what has proved a more resilient vice in Western life than tobacco? What are the origins of our enthusiasm for spice, smoke, and sugar? James Walvin illustrates how the tastes of the British people, and ultimately the sensory predilections of the entire west, were profoundly transformed by the fruits of distant empire and trade. Tracing the history of British global trade and the drive for imperial preeminence to the rise of a new kind of domestic material consumption, Fruits of Empire devotes chapters to the allure and spread of tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, the potato, and sugar, thereby revealing a continuum between the British passion for empire and the contemporary Western passion to consume. Lively and revealing, Fruits of Empire is that unusual work of history that will both inform and entertain.

With more than 80 illustrations, this is an up- to-date look at the English national pastime, football, with its a noble past, extraordinary present and an unimaginable future. From its humble origins in the late 19th century, the game of football has reached far beyond the field itself to become the most lucrative and the most popular sport in the world. Yet little more than a decade ago, English football was in a state of terminal decline, pockmarked by disasters, plagued by hooliganism and tainted by racism. What has happened to change football so dramatically? The Only Game is the first book to present a broad historical sweep of the game, harnessing the incredible events of the last ten years. Jim Walvin explores in detail the years of violence, racism and ultimately tragedy, on football's crumbling terraces during the 1970s and '80s and then goes on to show how the game has been transformed since the formation of the Premier League in 1992. The marriage of football and BskyB television saw dizzying amounts of money flooding into the game and as the players have become millionaires with celebrity status, the fans have returned to the game in huge numbers, en route buying football merchandise on an epic scale. The Only Game also looks into how the British game has been saved not only by the massive influx of cash but also by becoming more cosmopolitan, embracing the skills of foreign players and relishing in our success in international competitions. Walvin's quirky observations and compelling stories on the game combine to give a fresh reappraisal of how "the people's game" has become "the only game" for millions of people around the world. James Walvin is the author of The People's Game which has been in print for almost 30 years.

James Walvin escribió «Breve historia de la esclavitud» en 2007, por el bicentenario de la abolición de la trata de esclavos en el Reino Unido y en sus colonias. Experto en esta compleja materia, el autor presenta una selección de textos históricos que permiten acercarse a la mentalidad de quien ha sostenido una institución tan aberrante como moralmente aceptable, enfrentándola con la visión crítica actual. La obra nos sitúa con rigor ante uno de los capítulos más vergonzosos de la historia, cuyas repercusiones aún perduran en la actualidad, aportando una reflexión sobre la relación entre la esclavitud y el sistema económico capitalista occidental.

This work aims to describe, in broad outline, the history of slavery and the slave trade in the British colonies up to the abolition of slavery in all British possessions in 1838. It traces its devastating impact on black culture and its transforming effect on the British economy.

Dust jacket "By the mid years of the seventeenth century the English prided themselves on their newly secured social and political freedoms. At much the same time, however, they had begun to develop their own slave colonies in the New World. By the mid-eighteenth century, the English has become the world's pre-eminent slaving nation, shipping millions of Africans from their homelands into the Americas, for the material well-being of European nations. Yet slavery, which brought so much diverse prosperity to Britain was ended, in British possessions, in a relatively brief period. In the space of fifty years first the slave trade and then slavery itself was abolished by Parliament. This book seeks to explore that process by studying abolition and emancipation as a species of popular politics. Moreover one crucial element in the complex political formula which created black freedom was black socity itself - in Britain and the West Indies. But the wider transformation, from slavery to black freedom, took place in the determining context of a changing British economy; of the emergence of the British industrial revolution. Thus this book seeks to tell the story of how a society which was, at once, proud of its internal liberties and yet a slaving nation, came to bestow similar freedoms on its slaves."

Book by Walvin, James

The years between 1776 and 1851 are of profound importance for the social and urban historian. English town dwellers of the period experienced some fundamental changes in their way of rapid population growth; and an unprecedented rate of social change resulting from this. These ever-increasing armies of town dwellers presented the local and central authorities with a myriad of urgent problems, including those of feeding, housing and controlligni a turbulent populace. These years saw the emergence of a new, essentially modern, machinery of control for running an urban society. Despite these dramatic changes an equally important feature of the period was the elements of continuit - in work, family life and leisure. Part one deals with the physical changes, the problems for the town dweller inherant in these, and the distinctions of social class that developed. Part two discusses the political response to the urbanization of England and the problems this poverty and law enforcement. In part three the continuities are in leisure, rituals and family life. At every opportunity Dr Walvin brings his material to life with his extensive use of contemporary commentaries. In this lively and wide-ranging study, firmly rooted in recent scholarly research, Dr Walvin provides a balanced and up-to-date picture of a society which, although experiencing the most fundamental changes was also characterized by the continuities in its people's habits and social customs. This book was first published in 1984.