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(More customer reviews)London was the major port involved in the early development of the English Transatlantic slave trade, but it is often discounted in favor of Bristol and Liverpool, which overshadowed London in terms of participation as the 18th century wore on. As Rawley points out, the London trade did not actually end in the 1720s, as many have suggested, but persisted until the British abolished their participation in the trade in 1807.
What makes this book important to those who want to know more about how the trade got started and accepted is that it is is the late 17th and early 18th centuries, that you can see the entrepreneurial and ethical development of the trade most clearly. At this point the trade was not the well-oiled machine that it later became and people were able to make choices. Those who chose to participate set the tone and developed the methodology of what was to come.
This excellent book traces the lives of some of London's foremost traders of the period, putting a human face on people we now find hard to understand. It is an extraordinary effort of research that is surprisingly readable, considering the wealth of information and the nature of the subject. James Rawley has spent a life time specializing in this area, and this is an important collection of recent essays.
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In London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade, James A. Rawley collects some of his best works from the past three decades. Also included in this volume are three new pieces: an essay on a South Carolina slave trader, Henry Laurens; an analysis of the slave trade at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and a portrait of John Newton, a slave trader who became a priest in the Church of England and composer of the hymn "Amazing Grace," as well as an outspoken opponent of the trade.
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