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...