Description

This ground-breaking history reveals for the first time the true significance of the trade in enslaved Africans in Britain’s development as a modern nation – based on a comprehensive, landmark investigation.

‘Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

*AS FEATURED IN BBC DOCUMENTARY FINDING BRITAIN’S SLAVE-TRADERS*

They came from a wide range of backgrounds: plumbers as well as politicians, instrument-makers as well as monarchs, women and immigrants alongside aristocrats and merchants; playwrights, poets and artists, too. They were a tiny minority but their wealth, their power and their appetite for risk influenced not just Britain’s economy but its politics, science, arts and institutions – from the development of the Royal Navy and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy to the emergence of two-party politics, the free press and Parliament itself.

Drawing on a years-long project to unearth the identities of 13,000 individual investors, Britain’s Slave Traders shows not only how they helped win wars, shape modern industry and make Britain the global and imperial force it eventually became, but how their drive to open up the trade contributed to Britain’s reputation as a freedom-loving nation and how slavery’s profits improved the lives of the neediest Britons through hospitals, alms-houses and schools.

Rewriting our national story in light of this new research, Britain’s Slave Traders corrects a profound distortion of our past, revealing a previously obscured but vital thread within Britain’s history.

‘Vital and necessary’ SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB

‘Ambitious, original and extensively researched’ AMANDA FOREMAN

‘No place to hide. William Pettigrew’s compelling narrative reveals how slave-trading shaped British society, economy and government, through and through’ CLARE JACKSON

Publisher Review

Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority. I wish I had been given this book at school — Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland In this vital and necessary book, William Pettigrew challenges the cultural amnesia and omissive history around Brtain’s involvement in the trafficking of enslaved Africans. His astute analysis reveals how the wealth, technologies and rationalisations generated by the slave trade created the very institutions, structures and identities that still define Britishness today — Suzannah Lipscomb, author of The King Is Dead Ambitious, original, and extensively researched, William Pettigrew’s Britain’s Slave Traders is an important book and a timely addition to the current debate on national identity and cultural memory — Amanda Foreman, author of World on Fire No place to hide. William Pettigrew’s compelling narrative reveals how slave trading shaped British society, economy, and government, through and through. Look behind the merchant traders at those who invested in slave trading, and you find that every section of British society was involved — Clare Jackson, author of Devil-Land An important and illuminating book, based on remarkable research, but also one written with great clarity and pace — Jonathan Healey, author of The Blood in Winter