Barack Obama's

 

speech on race and racism has quite honestly triggered an avalanche of interest in the whole issue of slavery. I recently bought Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History and having read this wonderful book would like to share my thoughts with the bloggers on this site.



Dr Rediker is currently the Professor of History at the University of Pittsburg and has taken his Ph D from the University of Pennslyvania. He is a noted maritime historian and has an ear...

The recent speech by Senator Barack Obama raised once more the spectre of race and slavery in the USA and indeed, in other parts of the world. On this anniversary of the Jamaican Slave uprising of 1768 I would like to reflect on this issue from a historians perspective. Race, I must add is too important an issue to be left only to social workers and politicians.

The rise of the Atlantic Slavr trade was made possible by a combination of 3 factors: First, the interniecince watrfare among the Af...