'Walvin synthesises this complex global history with skill and
ingenuity. Freedom is beautifully written and clearly organised . .
. thought-provoking, rich in detail and imbued with an emotional
intelligence that pushes us to imagine what slave life meant,
especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' J. R.
Oldfield, University of Hull, Family & Community History, Vol.
22/3, October 2019 'A wide-ranging history of resistance during the
Atlantic slave trade that reminds us how captives fought their
miserable fates every step of the way.' David Olusoga, BBC History
Magazine 'A sobering reminder of the trade's cruelty and scope . .
. but also, through resistance, rebellion and riots, the power of
individual people to change the world against the odds.' History
Revealed In this timely and very readable new work, Walvin focuses
not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery, but
on resistance, the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from
sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings - and its impact in
overthrowing slavery. He also looks that whole Atlantic world,
including the Spanish Empire and Brazil. In doing so, he casts new
light on one of the major shifts in Western history in the past
five centuries. In the three centuries following Columbus's
landfall in the Americas, slavery became a critical institution
across swathes of both North and South America. It saw twelve
million Africans forced onto slave ships, and had seismic
consequences for Africa. It led to the transformation of the
Americas and to the material enrichment of the Western world. It
was also largely unquestioned. Yet within a mere seventy-five years
during the nineteenth century slavery had vanished from the
Americas: it declined, collapsed and was destroyed by a complexity
of forces that, to this day, remains disputed, but there is no
doubting that it was in large part defeated by those it had
enslaved. Slavery itself came in many shapes and sizes. It is
perhaps best remembered on the plantations - though even those can
deceive. Slavery varied enormously from one crop to another- sugar,
tobacco, rice, coffee, cotton. And there was in addition myriad
tasks for the enslaved to do, from shipboard and dockside labour,
to cattlemen on the frontier, through to domestic labour and
child-care duties. Slavery was, then, both ubiquitous and varied.
But if all these millions of diverse, enslaved people had one thing
in common it was a universal detestation of their bondage. They
wanted an end to it: they wanted to be like the free people around
them. Most of these enslaved peoples did not live to see freedom.
But an old freed man or woman in, say Cuba or Brazil in the 1880s,
had lived through its destruction clean across the Americas. The
collapse of slavery and the triumph of black freedom constitutes an
extraordinary historical upheaval - and this book explains how that
happened.
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