The Trader, The Owner, The Slave Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery

Professor James Walvin

ISBN 10: 0712667636 / ISBN 13: 9780712667630

Published by Vintage Publishing, 2008

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 39008C36D789EAD

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Trader, The Owner, The Slave Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712667636
• ISBN 13: 9780712667630
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

In this new and original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of its historic end in April 1807, the parallel lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement—a trader, an owner, and a slave—are examined. John Newton (1725–1807), best known as the author of Amazing Grace, was a slave captain who marshaled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition. Thomas Thistlewood (1721–86) lived his life in a remote corner of western Jamaica and his unique diary provides some of the most revealing images of a slave owner’s life in the most valuable of all British slave colonies. Olaudah Equiano (1745–97) was practically unknown 30 years ago, but is now an iconic figure in black history and his experience as a slave speaks out for lives of millions who went unrecorded. All three men were contemporaries; they even came close to each other at different points of the Atlantic compass. But what held them together, in its destructive gravitational pull, was the Atlantic slave system.

About the Author

James Walvin has published widely on slavery and the slave trade. His titles include Atlas of Slavery, Black and White—which was awarded the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize—and The Quakers: Money and Morals, named as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.