San Francisco Public Library

A world transformed, slavery in the Americas and the origins of global power, James Walvin

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

platesmapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

A world transformed

bibliography

1303219604

James Walvin

slavery in the Americas and the origins of global power

"A World Transformed explores how slavery thrived at the heart of the entire Western world for more than three centuries. Arguing that slavery can be fully understood only by stepping back from traditional national histories, this book collects the scattered accounts of the latest modern scholarship into a comprehensive history of slavery and its shaping of the world we know. Celebrated historian James Walvin tells a global story that covers everything from the capitalist economy, labor, and the environment, to social culture and ideas of family, beauty, and taste. This book underscores just how thoroughly slavery is responsible for the making of the modern world. The enforced transportation and labor of millions of Africans became a massive social and economic force, catalyzing the rapid development of multiple new and enormous trading systems with profound global consequences. The labor and products of enslaved people changed the consumption habits of millions--in India and Asia, Europe and Africa, in colonized and Indigenous American societies. Across time, slavery shaped many of the dominant features of Western taste: items and habits or rare and costly luxuries, some of which might seem, at first glance, utterly removed from the horrific reality of slavery. A World Transformed traces the global impacts of slavery over centuries, far beyond legal or historical endpoints, confirming that the world created by slave labor lives on today"--, From publisher's website

Part one. The trade. The scattering of people -- Spanish origins -- Spain and the other slavery -- Slavery, sugar and power -- Part two. People and cargoes. Bound for Africa: cargoes -- The dead -- Part three. Internal trades. Upheavals -- Brazil's internal slave trade -- The domestic US slave trade -- Part four. Managing slavery. A world of paper: accounting for slavery -- Managing slavery -- Brute force -- Working -- Part five. Demanding freedom. Finding a voice -- Demanding freedom -- Part six. A world transformed. Beauty and the beast -- A world transformed -- Slavery matters