Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

A sweeping new history that reveals how British, African, and American merchants developed the transatlantic slave trade   “This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade   “A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas.”—Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense   During the eighteenth century, Britain’s slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by the eve of the American Revolution, grown into an Atlantic-wide system through which fifty thousand men, women, and children were enslaved every year.   In this sweeping new history, Nicholas Radburn explains how thousands of slaving merchants in Africa, Britain, and the British Americas collectively created this cancerous system by devising highly efficient, but also violent, new business methods. African brokers developed commercial techniques that facilitated the enslavement and sale of millions of people. Britons invented shipping methods that quelled enslaved people’s constant resistance on the Middle Passage. And American slave traders formulated brutal techniques through which shiploads of people could be quickly sold to a variety of colonial buyers. Truly Atlantic-wide in its vision, this study shows how the slave trade became one of the most important phenomena in world history and dragged millions of people into the trade’s terrible vortex.

About the Author :
Nicholas Radburn is a senior lecturer in Atlantic history at Lancaster University and coeditor of www.slavevoyages.org. He lives in Lancaster, England, formerly one of Britain’s largest slave-trading ports.

Review :
“Radburn’s definitive and accessible debut lays bare the cold-blooded economic engine of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, demonstrating how merchants in Britain, the U.S., and Africa refined their business practices to maximize their income. . . . Radburn provides just the right amount of detail, deftly balancing individual stories with objective data. The result is both an enlightening economic investigation and an unsparing documentation of atrocity.”—Publishers Weekly “Redefines how historical research approaches the different phases that together constituted the transatlantic slave trade.”—Camilla de Koning, Journal of Global Slavery “One of the most shocking books I have ever read. . . . Radburn clinically and mercilessly details exactly how the trade operated.”—Neill Denny, BookBrunch “Hugely important, because once you’ve read this book, you can’t sustain complacent cliches about the Western part in the slave trade. The detail is extraordinary.”—Diarmaid MacCulloch, Five Books, “Best History Books of 2024” “By dint of indefatigable research, imaginative reconstruction and persuasive argument [Radburn] has created one of the most important additions in the field.”—James Walvin, Family & Community History Included in BookBrunch “Books of the Year 2024” Shortlisted for the 2024 Wolfson History Prize, sponsored by The Wolfson Foundation Finalist for the 2023 #Slaveryarchive Book Prize, sponsored by The #Slaveryarchive Digital Initiative 2024 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Winner of The James A. Rawley Prize in the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century, sponsored by the American Historical Association “A meticulously researched account of how British slave merchants in their interactions with African agents made very calculated economic decisions in order to maximize the profits made from the slave trade, and how these decisions impacted Atlantic African societies and contributed to dehumanizing African men, women, and children.”—Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University “An illuminating study of the raw ambition, brutal efficiency, and networked strategies of violence that underpinned the explosion of 18th-century British Atlantic-world slave trading. Radburn makes a compelling case for why these vaguely remembered ‘merchants’ should be reclaimed from respectability.”—Maeve Ryan, author of Humanitarian Governance and the British Antislavery World System “This is a landmark study given its clear status as easily the best researched and most comprehensive book on the British slave trade to date.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade “This definitive analysis of the British slave trade, encompassing Europe, Africa, and the Americas, blends quantitative and qualitative research in a clear-eyed, chilling, and convincing account of a business even more ruthless than abolitionists imagined.”—Philip Morgan, Johns Hopkins University “A masterful account of one of the most brutal moments in the history of capitalist modernity. Radburn brilliantly details all aspects of the process of commodification of human beings in the Liverpool slave trade, vividly depicting the long journeys endured by Africans in Africa, across the Atlantic, and in the Americas.”—Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense