Britain's War Against the Slave Trade - The Operations of the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron 1807–1867

Anthony Sullivan

Summary

The true story of the Royal Navy’s sixty-year campaign to stop slavery across the British Empire, decades before the American Civil War.

Long before recorded history, men, women and children had been seized by conquering tribes and nations to be employed or traded as slaves. Greeks, Romans, Vikings, and Arabs were among the earliest of many peoples involved in the slave trade, and across Africa the buying and selling of slaves was widespread. There was, at the time, nothing unusual in Britain’s somewhat belated entry into the slave trade, transporting natives from Africa’s west coast to the plantations of the New World. What was unusual was Britain’s decision, in 1807, to ban the slave trade throughout the British Empire.

Britain later persuaded other countries to follow suit, but this did not stop this lucrative business. So the Royal Navy went to war against the slavers, in due course establishing the West Africa Squadron, which was based at Freetown in Sierra Leone. This force grew throughout the nineteenth century until a sixth of the Royal Navy’s ships and marines was employed in the battle against the slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. In Britain’s War Against the Slave Trade, naval historian Anthony Sullivan reveals the story behind this little-known campaign. Whereas Britain is usually, and justifiably, condemned for its earlier involvement in the slave trade, the truth is that in time the Royal Navy undertook a major and expensive operation to end what was, and is, an evil business.

Available since: 04/30/2020.

Print length: 399 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The End of Imagination

Arundhati Roy

Five books of essays in one volume from the Booker Prize–winner and “one of the most ambitious and divisive political essayists of her generation” (The Washington Post).   With a new introduction by Arundhati Roy, this new collection begins with her pathbreaking book The Cost of Living—published soon after she won the Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things—in which she forcefully condemned India’s nuclear tests and its construction of enormous dam projects that continue to displace countless people from their homes and communities. The End of Imagination also includes her nonfiction works Power Politics, War Talk, Public Power in the Age of Empire, and An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, which include her widely circulated and inspiring writings on the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the need to confront corporate power, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions globally.  Praise for Arundhati Roy   “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace Award   “Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays.” —Howard Zinn, author of Political Awakenings and Indispensable Zinn   “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness. And in these extraordinary essays—which are clarions for justice, for witness, for a true humanity—Roy is at her absolute best.” —Junot Díaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao   “One of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.” —Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and The Battle For Paradise   “Arundhati Roy calls for ‘factual precision’ alongside of the ‘real precision of poetry.’ Remarkably, she combines those achievements to a degree that few can hope to approach.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects   “India’s most impassioned critic of globalization and American influence.” —The New York Times

Show book

Sealand - The True Story of the...

Dylan Taylor-Lehman

In 1967, a retired army major and self-made millionaire named Paddy Roy Bates cemented his family’s place in history when he inaugurated himself ruler of the Principality of Sealand, a tiny dominion of the high seas. And so began the peculiar story of the world’s most stubborn micronation on a World War II anti-aircraft gun platform off the British coast. 
Sealand  is the raucous tale of how a rogue adventurer seized the disused Maunsell Sea Fort from pirate radio broadcasters, settled his eccentric family on it, and defended their tiny kingdom from UK government officials and armed mercenaries for half a century. Incorporating original interviews with surviving Sealand royals, Dylan Taylor-Lehman recounts the battles and schemes as Roy and his crew engaged with diplomats, entertained purveyors of pirate radio and TV, and even thwarted an attempted coup that saw the Prince Regent taken hostage. Incredibly, more than fifty years later, the self-proclaimed independent nation still stands—replete with its own constitution, national flag and anthem, currency, and passports. 
This stranger-than-fiction account of a dissident family and their outrageous attempt to build a sovereign kingdom on an isolated platform in shark-infested waters is the stuff of legend.

Show book

Washington Bullets - A History...

Vijay Prashad

Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. It is a book that could easily have been a song of despair—a lament of lost causes; it is, after all, a roll call of butchers and assassins; of plots against people's movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World by the country where liberty is a statue.Despite all this, Washington Bullets is a book about possibilities, about hope, about genuine heroes. One such is Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso—also assassinated—who said: "You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future."Washington Bullets is a book infused with this madness, the madness that dares to invent the future.

Show book

His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The last collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories contains some of the most dramatic moments of the entire Sherlock Holmes canon. "The Dying Detective" sees the great Holmes brought low by a fatal illness and refusing even Dr Watson's medical care. "The Bruce-Partington Plans" is a case of national importance, not least for the introduction of Mycroft Holmes. It also contains the quintessential Holmes line "whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.""The Devil's Foot" is what happens when the great sleuth and his doctor attempt to go on a restful holiday. "His Last Bow" is the last ever Sherlock Holmes story, about his war service and undercover spy experiences. These and other classic Holmes and Watson stories are here brought to life by a dramatic cast of voices, so sit back and let the mysteries unfold! (Summary by Beth Thomas) Dr. John Watson (Narrator), read by Cori Samuel 
Sherlock Holmes, read by Beth Thomas 
Inspector Lestrade, read by Natalie Paula 
Additional Narration: Shakira Searle 
Other featured voices: azureblue, James Callaghan, ablestonebridge, Norman Elfer, Brian Mansi, Teresa Bauman, Frances Brown, K. Cotter, MaryAnn, Arnaldo Machado, Levi Throckmorton, Etel Buss, Eden Rea-Hedrick, ToddHW, Rapunzelina, Jeanie, David Olson, Adam, TriciaG, Julia Niedermaier, P. J. Morgan 
 
Audio edited by: Adele de PignerollesAdditional editing by: Piotr Nater

Show book

Letters to an American Christian

Bruce Riley Ashford

What does it mean to be an American Christian? 
In Letters to an American Christian, Bruce Riley Ashford, author of One Nation Under God, addresses overarching issues of the relationship of Christianity and politics, speaks to the way historic Christian belief informs specific hot-button political issues, and challenges readers to take seriously both our heavenly and earthly citizenships. Written as a series of letters to "Christian"—a young college student who is a new believer—Letters to an American Christian will help every reader think carefully about how Christianity informs what it means to be an American. 
In the midst of a rapidly changing national and political landscape, Letters to an American Christian reminds us of two important truths: we cannot afford to shrink away from our earthly citizenship, and we cannot afford to lose sight of our heavenly citizenship.

Show book

Human Rights Movement and...

Mercedes Barros

This book accounts for the process of emergence and constitution of the human rights movement and discourse during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Central to this account is the contention that the movement’s emergence and constitution should not be understood as a necessary or as a natural response to the atrocities carried out by the last military regime, but instead as the result of a contingent process of political articulation and as a response which could have failed in its constitution and success. Thus, the appearance of the human rights movement and discourse in the country can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to this very process of popular mobilisation and political articulation that took place during 1976-1982.

Show book