Missions Resources - Bibliography
Atlas of Slavery
Authors: James Walvin
ISBN: 0582437806
Publisher: Longman
Number of pages: 160
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
The greatest shame, after everything else, was the frivolousness of it all. Sugar!
Over a period of hundreds of years, millions of Africans were bought by agents from several countries, transported across the ocean in what were essentially floating prisons, sold as property in dozens of countries and colonies, and worked to death toward unmarked and anonymous deaths far from a their homelands - all to make someone's birthday cake sweeter.
With the special exception of the United States, where cotton eventually became king, most transatlantic slavery involved sugar cane. Originally from Southeast Asia, cane sugar traveled westward over the centuries, for the simple reason that it tastes good. By the 1400s, several Arab and European countries were growing their own sugar cane, in addition to sugar beets and honey.
The Mediterranean region is too far north for successful plantations, and sugar bought by trade was too expensive. Africa would be a great place to grow sugar, but alas, European powers were not really powers yet, able to occupy enough land in Africa to grow their own sugar. As of the year 1500, African countries were too powerful.
Then the Europeans stumbled upon the Americas: the perfect climate for sugar cane, without scary African kings to deal with. The obvious problem with sugar plantations across the sea was: cane sugar was a labor intensive crop. A simple problem with an easy solution: Portugal was already growing sugar with slave labor (some African, some European); why not just sent those folk to the new Brazilian plantations? So it began.
Soon nearly every European country was in on it. The motive was certainly not to oppress people. The motive was profit: sugar could be sold for a lot of money. Meanwhile, an entire civilization’s tastes were changing. We wouldn’t have Swiss chocolate without transatlantic slavery; we wouldn’t have lollipops. Why did it come to this? Mothers giving children a penny to buy a sweet pastry were not thinking about where the sugar came from.
Why couldn’t the slave economy have been at least beneficial to Africa? Certainly, a class of African princes and merchants gained from the slave trade, but ultimately these people saw very little of the gain.
Furthermore, slave trade and slave owning were dangerous careers (hardly as dangerous, of course, as being a slave), requiring massive financial support. Those who made the most money off the slave trade rarely saw any slaves with their own eyes: insurers, bankers, and investors.
London’s bankers or Connecticut’s insurance companies were the real moneymakers in a global trade involving millions of lives, and ruining entire countries. But the real power driving the whole wretched business was a sweet tooth.
Atlas of Slavery is a new book that tells the whole story. The value of this book is its global perspective. Slavery was so much more than slave ships and the Mississippi delta. It was one of the biggest enterprises in human history, but in James Walvin’s skilled hands, it becomes understandable. Walvin rarely fulminates, which allows him to sustain a slow burn throughout the book. Transatlantic slavery was not inevitable; nor was it an entirely natural outgrowth of earlier slavery.
Well-written, passionate and economical, this is an excellent tool for filling in the gaps of your historical understanding. Walvin looks at the big picture, and manages to maintain the Africans’ dignity amid such massive crimes that they could (and often do) become mere statistics.
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