There has been nothing like Atlantic slavery. About twelve million Africans loaded onto the notorious slave ships, marshalled & transported in unbearable conditions to work the tropical lands of the Americas was a form of oppression, driven by economics on a global scale, which lasted for the best part of four centuries.
The story of slavery embraces the lives of many millions of people: Africans, Europeans & Americans. Its scope & the ways in which it has shaped the modern world are so far-reaching as to make it ungraspable. This book therefore takes a unique course. It focuses on the lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement
- a trader, John Newton, an owner, Thomas Thistlewood, & a slave, Olaudah Equiano. Their parallel lives are microcosms of the larger story: together they provide an account of slavery at its peak & how it was finally brought to its knees.
John Newton (1725-1807), best known as the author of