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.