Books and Weblinks
Take charge of your future
If you'd like to explore the influence of the past on our lives today, you might find something of interest amongst the Open University's courses?
A modern-day problem
You might feel the battle against slavery was won long before you were even born - but it's an all-too common problem even in our times.
Chained to slavery
Debt bondage, child labour and human trafficking - slavery still steals the lives of many, over 140 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The Big Question asks can we ever beat slavery?
Related programme
Want to dig a little deeper into slavery, both historical and modern? We've compiled a list of weblinks and books to start you off.
Weblinks
From Open2:
The Big Question: Can we ever beat slavery? - our global series provides a briefing to the problems faced in eradicating slavery in the 21st century
From bbc.co.uk
The British anti-slavery movement - the campaign to abolish slavery in the Empire took just 26 years to achieve its aims; how did it manage to have such an impact?
Slavery and Economy in Barbados - why was Barbados the only of the colonies to support abolition?
British slaves on the Barbary coast - although the taking of slaves from African nations made up the bulk of human trafficing, no country was immune from having its peoples enslaved
BBC World Service: The Atlantic Slave Trade - an introduction to the subject, with links to other pages about slavery on the BBC's "Story of Africa" website
Timeline - a timetable of the abolition movement
Elsewhere on the web:
Slavery Images - thousands of visual images from the slave trade
Thoughts Upon Slavery - the full text of John Wesley's 1774 condemnation of the trade
Bristol and Slavery - what was Bristol's role in the slave trade?
The BBC and The Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites.
Edward Long, who is featured in the first programme, wrote a History of Jamaica in 1774; it was republished in the early 1970s and offers an interesting perspective on the times.
Thomas Clarkson's 1808 The history of the rise, progress, and accomplishment of the abolition of the African slave-trade was also republished in the late 20th century; it's one of the first histories of the abolition.
Historical perspectives
Johannes Postma, The Atlantic Slave Trade
Greenwood Press, 2003
Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave, 1440-1870
Papermac, 1970
P.D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census
University of Wisconsin Press, 1967
J.E. Inikori and S.L. Engerman (eds.), The Atlantic Slave Trade
Duke University Press, 1992
B.L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System
Cambridge University Press, 1991
B.L. Solow and S.L. Engerman (eds.), British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987
B. Waites, Europe and the Third World
Macmillan Press, 1999
On Slavery in the West Indian Sugar Islands
Richard B. Sheridan, An Economic History of the British West Indies
Caribbean Universities Press, 1974
J.R.Ward,British West Indian Slavery, 1750-1834: the process of amelioration
Clarendon, 1988
William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: the sugar colonies and the great experiment
Clarendon, 1976
On The Sam Sharpe Rebellion
M. Turner, Slaves and Missionaries: the disintegration of Jamaican slave society, 1787-1834
Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1982
Biography
J. Pollock, William Wilberforce
Constable, 1977
Content last updated: 03/03/2005
