The Transatlantic Slave Trade resulted in the forced migration and enslavement of more than 12 million African men, women, and children for the purpose of slave labour in the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
This course examines key aspects of the Transatlantic Slave Trade from its establishment until its abolition. It considers how systems of racial slavery in the Americas shaped our modern world with enormous economic, cultural, social, ideological, and political consequences.
There will be a focus on gender throughout the course and participants will compare slavery in North America with that in the Caribbean and South America. The course explores a range of themes including resistance, slave labour, the infamous middle passage, the origins of racial slavery, and the effects of abolition.
Crucially, we will explore the history of transatlantic slavery from the perspective of those who were forcibly kidnapped and enslaved on European ships bound to the Americas. In centring the voices and experiences of the enslaved, you will engage with an array of archival materials including enslaved people’s testimony, fugitive slave autobiographies, slave voyage ledgers, runaway slave advertisements, plantation journals, and bills of sale.