James Robert Fichter's 3 favorite reads in 2024

A sweeping new history that reveals how British, African, and American merchants developed the transatlantic slave trade

"This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date."-David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

"A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in… show more.

The first telling of the unknown story of America's two-hundred-year history as a slave-trading nation

"A work of impressive breadth, deep research, and evenhanded analysis."-James Oakes, New York Review of Books

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and mariners sailed to Africa and to the Caribbean to acquire and sell captives. Using exhaustive archival research, including many collections that have never been used before, historian Sean M. Kelley argues that slave trading needs to be seen as integral to the larger story… show more.

At the start of the American War of Independence, Great Britain dominated overseas commerce and was the leading slave-trading nation in the world. In 1776, American privateers—privately owned ships granted commissions by the Continental Congress to attack and disrupt enemy trade—began to prey on British merchantmen.  Some privateers captured British slave ships with African captives on board just before they arrived at their Caribbean Island destinations.
            One privateer was given an extraordinary task: to sail across the Atlantic to attack British slave trading posts and ships on the coast of West Africa. Based on a little-known contemporary primary source, The… show more.