The Atlantic slave trade

[Northern Sympathizer]

Does anyone know of any books that cover the history of it in great detail? i.e. the capturing of the slaves, the experiences on the ships, the preparations for the auctions and finally, the auctions themselves.

 

[E_just_E]

The Atlantic Slave Trade by Herbert Klein is a good place to start (get the latest 2nd edition,) if you are looking for an unbiased academic treatise on the subject. Lots and lots of ways to go after that, but this is highly recommended (and a fairly quick read). Scroll down to the comments from academic press in this amazon page, to get an idea.

You will get a lot of bias on this subject, because there are so many people with agendas authoring. Klein does not have one.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Though it's not the entire story, I can highly recommend Donald L. Canney's Africa Squadron: The U.S. Navy and the Slave Trade, 1842-1861 (Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2006). (In it, for instance, you can find who the most successful captain at catching slavers was-- one Lt. John Newland Maffitt, later of the Confederate Navy. Also quite a bit about the Navy's attempts, some better than others, at avoiding sickness when operating near the African coast...)

 

[ForeverFree]

Highly recommended: Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by David Eltis (Author), David Richardson (Author). This might be available at large sized libraries, so you can check it out to see if you like it. The book price is discounted on Amazon.com. Barnes and Noble, etc.

There is also a website-companion to the book: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which has information on more than 35,000 slaving voyages. Definitely worth a look.

- Alan