An investigation of US participation in the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas, from the American Revolution to the Civil War While much of modern scholarship has focused on the American slave trade's impact within the United States, considerably less has addressed its effects in other parts of the Americas. A rich analysis of a complex subject, this study draws on Portuguese, Brazilian, and Spanish primary documents-as well as English-language material-to shed new light on the changing behavior of slave traders and their networks, particularly in Brazil and Cuba. Slavery in these nations, as Marques shows, contributed to the mounting tensions that would ultimately lead to the U.S. Civil War. Taking a truly Atlantic perspective, Marques outlines the multiple forms of U.S. involvement in this traffic amid various legislation and shifting international relations, exploring the global processes that shaped the history of this participation.

Essays draw on quantitative and qualitative evidence to cast new light on slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as well as on the origins and development of the African diaspora. Drawing on new quantitative and qualitative evidence, this study reexamines the rise, transformation, and slow demise of slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world. The twelve essays here reveal the legacies and consequences of abolition and chronicle the first formative global human rights movement. They also cast new light on the origins and development of the African diaspora created by the transatlantic slave trade. Engagingly written and attuned to twenty-first century as well as historical problems and debates, this book will appeal to specialists interested in cultural, economic, and political analysis of the slave trade as well as to nonspecialists seeking to understand anew how transatlantic slavery forever changed Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Philip Misevich is assistant professor of history at St. John's University, and Kristin Mann is professor of history at Emory University.