In Review

07 January 2009 12:24 BST

A Short History of Slavery by James Walvin

Published by Penguin Books, out March 1st, paperback, 234 pages, £9.99.

In a nutshell…

Sobering. Eye-opening. Wide-ranging. A teasing introduction.

What's it all about?

Some 300 years of the Atlantic slave trade dragged more than 11 million Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean – with millions more dying en route. No other slave system in the world was so brutally regulated, removed so many people from their homeland or resulted in such incredible wealth for the slave-owning classes. Yet 200 years ago, Britain turned its back on the slave trade, despite having grown fat in wealth and power on the back of the slaves. Why did they change their minds about it? And what significance should we attach to this, two centuries later?

Walvin brings together a narrative history of the slave trade and couples it with selected historical texts to show how British people's perception of the trade, both politically and morally, changed over time.

Who's it by?

Students of slavery should need no introduction to James Walvin as he has become one of the most prolific writers on the African slave trade. His CV rattles on and on - a professor of history at York University here, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature there, but perhaps the stand out item on the list is that he won the prestigious Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for his book Black and White.

So an authority on slavery then, but Walvin has another side to him. Three or four or his books over the last 30 years have focused on the lighter subject of football. Granted his first was called Football and the Decline of Britain, so not a great deal lighter, but his book The People's Game was a pioneering study of football throughout history and remains in print more than 30 years after it was first published.

As an example…

"Though it scarcely raised a moral whisper for centuries in the west, slavery ended in a crescendo of outrage and ethical disgust. The institution which had survived for centuries without attracting very much opposition ended its days denounced as an offence to Christian values and a blot on the western conscience. Clearly something had changed."

Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster

Slavery has already featured at the core of many films, most famously with Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, but Michael Apted's Amazing Grace, released on March 23rd, will be the most recent. However, as it focuses mainly on the abolitionist William Wilberforce's struggle to get parliament to end slavery rather than the brutality faced by the slaves, it has already been criticised for "prettifying" the slave trade.

What the others say

Praise for Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery:

"Black Ivory is about the tragic aspects of slavery, the weakness of the strong, and the strengths of the week… [Walvin's] description of slave trading in Africa – the European forts, the painful delays, ceremonial relations with African merchants, the deceptions of traders – is absorbing." (The William and Mary Quarterly, 1995)

So is it any good?

Accessibility is the key word here as this year sees the bicentennial celebration of Britain's abolition of slavery and Walvin's book is aimed at picking up on hoped-for stirrings of interest in the issue.

But attempting to concentrate a deeply complicated issue like the slave trade into a little over 200 pages means you have to cut corners.

Taking this to heart Walvin admirably drives straight on through any bends with his eyes firmly on the finish; however the pressures of writing an easy-going short history for the general public unfortunately create a fragmented picture of the slave trade.

Some of the more complicated points, especially the economic factors in the ending of slavery, are briefly described while the chapters end with a block of historical texts which, although they are lively and descriptive, are not as incisive as Walvin's own explanations.

For a history book, this method struck me as rather circumspect, leaving the firsthand accounts to inject feeling and life into the events.

You almost expect Walvin to break from the script of accessibility to delve into the nitty gritty of slave revolts or Wilberforce's efforts in parliament but he stays true to the nature of the book and achieves what he set out to do by providing a teasing glimpse into the slave trade.

7/10

Nicholas Claxton