Freedom: The Overthrow Of The Slave Empires

The book “Freedom The Overthrow of the Slave Empires” by James Walvin is an interesting narrative about the rise and collapse of the slave empires of Europe’s New World colonies.

The is irony is that Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the slave revolt that established the free state of Haiti, was himself an owner of slaves.

The revolt that he led resulted in a wholesale replacement of characters but not of social structures, as former lieutenants became estate holders and former slaves became forced laborers.

The author widens his view to embrace enslavement throughout North and South America, with all its grim specifics—for instance, he writes that “Africans often spent longer on board a slave ship anchored off the coast of Africa than in crossing the Atlantic,” those ships serving as horrific floating prisons until they were full enough for the captain to make a profitable trip across the ocean.

As the author notes, 2.8 million Africans embarked as slaves from Angola alone, most bound for Brazil, joining millions of other Africans, and there they took roles in every sector of society. The author documents Britons who never set foot in slaveholding territories but yet owned slaves at long distance.

For all its puzzles, the slave economy lasted for three centuries but then disappeared over the course of a few decades as abolitionist and liberation movements arose in the 19th century.

Even so slavery has never disappeared as given the lamentably massive number of impoverished people around the world, “present-day slaves cost only a fraction of the price of slaves bought in the US South before 1860.”