The American Slave Trade: Its Origins, Rise, and End

The Slave Trade in the Americas: Origins, Prosperity, and End recounts the shameful history of the slave trade over more than four hundred years. When did the first slave ship arrive in the Americas? Was the trade founded on justice or evil? What equipment did the early slave ships carry? How did the trade transform from a fair barter market into brutal plunder? How were Black villages attacked, and what inhuman abuses did enslaved people endure? How much profit did slave traders make? When was the slave trade declared an illegal act of piracy? What legislative and judicial efforts, and what international cooperation, did Britain, the United States, and other countries undertake to abolish it? What role did the British and American navies play in the trade? Why did slave smuggling grow even more rampant after the trade was declared illegal? What became of the last slave trader? When did the slave trade finally come to an end? This book answers these questions one by one.