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showing 285 library results for 'slave trade'

Africans in English caricature 1769-1819 : black jokes, white humour /Temi Odumosu. Between 1769 and 1819 London experienced an unprecedented growth in the proliferation of texts and images in the popular sphere, engaging learned citizens in discussion and commentary on the most pressing social and political issues of the day. From the repeal of the Stamp Act to the French revolution, the local Westminster election or the abolition of the slave trade, these prints, political pamphlets, plays, novels and periodicals collaborated (sometimes intentionally) in critique, praise and assessment of the country's changing socio-economic climate. African people were a critical aspect of this world of images, and their presence conveyed much about the implications of travel, colonialism and slavery on the collective psyche. Whether encountered on the streets of the city, in opulent stately homes, or in tracts describing the horrors of the slave trade, the British paid attention to Africans (consciously or not), and developed a means of expressing the impact of these encounters through images. Scholarship has begun to interrogate the presence of Africans in British art of this period, but very little has been written about their place in visual and literary humour created in a metropolitan context. This book fills this scholarly lacuna, exploring how and why satirical artists both mocked and utilized these characters as subversive comic weaponry. [2017] • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 741.5/6942
Slavery, geography and empire in nineteenth-century marine landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica / Charmaine A. Nelson. "Slavery, Geography and Empire in Nineteenth-Century Marine Landscapes of Montreal and Jamaica is among the first Slavery Studies books - and the first in Art History - to juxtapose temperate and tropical slavery. Charmaine A. Nelson explores the central role of geography and its racialized representation as landscape art in imperial conquest. One could easily assume that nineteenth-century Montreal and Jamaica were worlds apart, but through her astute examination of marine landscape art, the author re-connects these two significant British island colonies, sites of colonial ports with profound economic and military value. Through an analysis of prints, illustrated travel books, and maps, the author exposes the fallacy of their disconnection, arguing instead that the separation of these colonies was a retroactive fabrication designed in part to rid Canada of its deeply colonial history as an integral part of Britain's global trading network which enriched the motherland through extensive trade in crops produced by enslaved workers on tropical plantations. The first study to explore James Hakewill's Jamaican landscapes and William Clark's Antiguan genre studies in depth, it also examines the Montreal landscapes of artists including Thomas Davies, Robert Sproule, George Heriot and James Duncan. Breaking new ground, Nelson reveals how gender and race mediated the aesthetic and scientific access of such - mainly white, male - artists. She analyzes this moment of deep political crisis for British slave owners (between the end of the slave trade in 1807 and complete abolition in 1833) who employed visual culture to imagine spaces free of conflict and to alleviate their pervasive anxiety about slave resistance. Nelson explores how vision and cartographic knowledge translated into authority, which allowed colonizers to 'civilize' the terrains of the so-called New World, while belying the oppression of slavery and indigenous displacement."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1
Wives of the leopard : gender, politics, and culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey /Edna G. Bay. "Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions. Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it."--Provided by the publisher. 1998. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 320/.082/096683
The lifeboat baronet : launching the RNLI /Janet Gleeson. "The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is a treasured charity whose mission is to save lives at sea, but what is known of its founder, Sir William Hillary? Back in the early nineteenth century, when death from shipwreck was a tragic reality of life, the handsome, charismatic and adventurous Hillary decided to atone for his chequered past and do something to prevent it. His journey from Regency rake to national hero led him to leave his slave-owning family in Liverpool, travel abroad, mingle with royalty, marry an heiress and, during the Napoleonic Wars, head the largest volunteer army in Britain. Then, financial and marital catastrophe struck. Forced to seek exile on the Isle of Man, a harrowing shipwreck and guilty conscience inspired his historic campaign. Having battled to found the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck (today's RNLI) in 1824, Hillary's commitment never faltered. He frequently took to the lifeboats, braving terrifying storms and saving hundreds of lives, despite never learning to swim. Thanks to him the sea remains a safer place today. In this comprehensive biography of Sir William Hillary, Janet Gleeson draws on previously unpublished lettersm - many written by Hillary himself - revealing the RNLI's development, Hillary's links with the Jamaican slave trade, as well as the tribulations of his private life."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92HILLARY
Liverpool a history of 'The Great Port' / Adrian Jarvis. "This book by internationally-recognised port historian, Dr. Adrian Jarvis, is the first new comprehensive history of the Port of Liverpool to have been written for over forty years. Whilst Liverpool was founded by King John in 1207, it was only in the last quarter of the 17th century that Liverpool really began the process that was to take it to the level where it arguably became the No 1 export port in the whole British Empire. Liverpool the port and Liverpool the city have always been inextricably linked and this comes across strongly in Adrian's highly readable narrative. All the big themes are covered - from the creation of the world's first enclosed wet dock to the part played by the slave trade, privateering, cotton and the great shipping lines such as Cunard, White Star, Blue Funnel, Ocean Steamship, Leyland etc. The great entrepreneurs, the merchant class and the dockers who made it all happen are given their due too. The development of the Port's dock system ? stretching for nearly seven miles along both banks of the Mersey, and one of the wonders of the 19th century world - is looked at in some detail. You may already be familiar with the names of some of these great docks - Albert, Princes, Gladstone and Royal Seaforth to name just a few. The book concentrates on the crucial 300 years between 1672 and 1972, the year that the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board virtually abandoned the entire South Docks system. By then the Port of Liverpool had faced decades of decline caused by two World Wars, changing patterns of world trade, dock labour problems and containerisation, and more besides. Comprising 280 pages, the book is lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and black and white."--Provided by the publisher. 2014. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 627.2(427.2)
Not made by slaves : ethical capitalism in the age of abolition /Bronwen Everill. "'East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves'-with these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists in the Atlantic world shaped emerging ideas of ethical commerce to fight the system of plantation slavery that had become an engine of modern capitalism. How did consumers define ethical commerce? How did producers create markets for their products? Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world rather than on the more familiar boycott movements against slave-produced goods. Different approaches to making money in ethical commerce-through commercial agriculture, government contracts, international trade, and money management-shaped the relationship between production, consumption, and morality in ways that determined how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. Companies such as Macaulay & Babington in Sierra Leone, Roberts & Colson in Liberia, and Forster & Smith in the Gambia used commercial networks and government subsidies to make 'legitimate' commerce pay. Ethical commerce was also promoted by former slaves in such organizations as the Colored Free Produce Society, which promoted the idea that consumers bore responsibility for the plight of the slave and could change their buying behavior. This book illuminates global consumer society and industrial capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century, as well as underscores the roles of slavery and antislavery movements in the development of international capitalism. It also reminds us that concerns over fair trade and labor conditions remain relevant today"--Provided by publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 174/.409182109034
England's shipwreck heritage : from logboats to U-boats /by Serena Cant. What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters. Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage. England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. 2013. • FOLIO • 2 copies available. 656.61.085.3(42)"05/19"
The interest : how the British establishment resisted the abolition of slavery /Michael Taylor. "For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for self-congratulation - but no longer. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire, but for the next quarter of a century, despite heroic and bloody rebellions, more than 700,000 people in British colonies remained enslaved. And when a renewed abolitionist campaign was mounted, making slave ownership the defining political and moral issue of the day, emancipation was fiercely resisted by the powerful 'West India Interest'. Supported by nearly every leading figure of the British establishment - including Canning, Peel and Gladstone, The Times and Spectator - the Interest ensures that slavery survived until 1833 and that when abolition came at last, compensation worth ¹340 billion in today's money was given not to the enslaved but to the slaveholders, entrenchign the power of their families to shape modern Britian to this day. Drawing on major new research, this long-overdue and groundbreaking history provides a gripping narrative account of the tumultuous and often violent battle - between rebels and planters, between abolitionists and the pro-slavery establishment - that divided and scarred the nation during these years of upheaval. The Interest reveals the lengths to which British leaders went to defend the indefensible in the name of profit, showing that the ultimate triumph of abolition came at a bitter cost and was one of the darkest and most dramatic episodes in British history."--Provided by the publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3620941
Outsourcing empire : how company-states made the modern world /Andrew Phillips and J. C. Sharman. "From Spanish conquistadors through to pith-helmeted British colonialists, the prevailing vision of European empire-builders has been staunchly statist. But from the early 1600s through to the early twentieth century, from the East Indies to North America to Africa and the South Pacific, it was company states - not sovereign states - that played the most important role in driving European worldwide commercial and colonial expansion. In Asia, the Dutch and English East India Companies ingratiated themselves with mighty Asian rulers such as the Mughal and Qing Emperors to infiltrate Asian markets. In North America, the Hudson's Bay Company maintained a network of forts and factories across the continent closely integrated with American Indian trading routes and practices. And in Africa, the company states were first key intermediaries in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and later the colonial vanguards of the 'scramble for Africa.' Notwithstanding their central importance for both International Relations scholars and students of global history, company states remain largely ignored in studies of the modern international system's evolution and expansion. Beholden to an outdated historiography, most scholarship on the expansion of the international system looks only at sovereign states. Historians and historical sociologists have done more to acknowledge company states' pioneering role. But these studies have typically focused on individual company states in isolation, and have thus missed the significance of company states as key progenitors of the modern international system. As a result of this neglect, we lack an understanding of what defined the company states as a distinctive form of international actor, and how they served as crucial but now largely forgotten builders of the world's first truly global international system. Existing works struggle to account for rise, fall and fleeting nineteenth century resurrection of company states as agents of long distance commerce and conquest, as well as their sharply contrasting fortunes in different regions. Finally, unless we understand the nature and significance of company states, we cannot understand how inter-civilizational relations were mediated across trans-continental distances and deep cultural differences for the majority of the modern era. These are the vital gaps in our knowledge which the authors seek to address in this book."-- 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909.08