James Walvin: 11 books

The modern successor to Sweetness and Power, James Walvin’s Sugar is a rich and engaging work on a topic that continues to change our world. How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating...

We all know the story of the slave trade—the infamous Middle Passage, the horrifying conditions on slave ships, the millions that died on the journey, and the auctions that awaited the slaves upon their arrival in the Americas. But much of the writing on the subject has focused on the European traders...

On November 29, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the British ship Zong commanded his crew to throw overboard one-third of his cargo: a shipment of Africans bound for slavery in America. The captain believed his ship was off course, and he feared there was not enough drinking water to last until landfall....

As we approach the bicentenary of the abolition of the Atlantic trade, Walvin has selected the historical texts that recreate the mindset that made such a savage institution possible - morally acceptable even. Setting these historical documents against Walvin's own incisive historical narrative, the...

The years between 1776 and 1851 are of profound importance for the social and urban historian. English town dwellers of the period experienced some fundamental changes in their way of life: rapid population growth; and an unprecedented rate of social change resulting from this. These ever-increasing...

Slavery in Small Things: Slavery and Modern Cultural Habits isthe first book to explore the long-range cultural legacy of slavery through commonplace daily objects. Offers a new and original approach to the history of slavery by an acknowledged expert on the topic Traces the relationship between...

Slavery transformed Africa, Europe and the Americas and hugely-enhanced the well-being of the West but the subject of slavery can be hard to understand because of its huge geographic and chronological span. This book uses a unique atlas format to present the story of slavery, explaining its historical...

Worthy Park has archives covering much of its three-hundred year history. Using these records, the authors have written the first complete history of a West Indian sugar estate. However, this is not just the story of a single Jamaican plantation and its people over three hundred years; the study reveals, in microcosm, the social and economic development of the area.

For the best part of three centuries the material well-being of the western world was dependent on slavery. Yet these systems were mainly brought to a very rapid end. This text surveys the key questions of slavery, and traces the arguments which have swirled around its history in recent years. The...

When Henry Clarke died in 1907 his obituary described him as an Englishman, yet he had only spent the first 19 years of his life in England, the next 60 being spent in Jamaica. He was a teacher, a cleric politician, a businessman, an inventor, and the father of eleven children. He left behind an extraordinary...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, soccer was widely accepted as the most popular game in the western world. In the space of a few decades, it had become the best-supported team game in Britain, watched and played by more boys and men than any other sport. Yet here was a game with strong traditional...