BLACK CARGOES: A History of the Atlantic Stave Trade 1518-1865

This should stand as the definitive study of a traffic which left an indelible mark on this country and was perhaps the greatest single formative factor in its economic and social history. The whole story is one of horror and greed, although it is handled with a minimum of here. Originating in Europe, the traffic reached its peak in the late 1700's with Liverpool the chief Western port an Zanzibar the great African mart. The first cargo of African slaves reached the West Indies in 1518 and although the traffic was outlawed in the early 1800's, it persisted in this country until the Civil War. In these centuries some 15,000,000 human beings crossed the Atlantic to the West Indies, where they were fattened before being sold in the South. On the ""Middle Passage"" they were cackled in airless holds; those that were sick were thrown overboard; non-profit-making white seamen were subjected to revelling cruelties. Bringing minery to its victims and immense wealth to its entrepreneurs, the slave trade helped in the development of the New World and hastened the Industrial Revolution in the Old; to this country it contributed an embittered racial conflict, the myth of Negro Inferiority, and an ineradicable sense of guilt... This history, the result of an inspired collaboration, tells its amazing, horrifying story fully and well and its is important as a background for American history as well as for this country's social and economical development. It is also important for and Integrationists:- to find the antecedents of the issue here.