This short read is one of the many accounts of the transatlantic slave trade and the culpability of African nations. It deals with both the transatlantic slave trade to the “Americas” and the East African/Indian Ocean slave trade fueled by “European greed.” It fueled the plantation economies of the new world and created a “human” commodity market. The book hints that the industrial revolution was a catalyst for the abolition of slavery, but that’s a reach in my opinion. It also sheds light on the East African slave trade – also referred to as the Arab slave trade – as being older and more nuanced than its transatlantic counterpart.
The book starts with a narrative that although the invention of the sail united the world, it also served as the catalyst that brought the “Americas” into play for the exploitation of Native Americans as well as Africans. The growth of the commodities markets for tobacco, sugar and other goods fueled slave trading. This matter of fact read on slave trade is a good foundational source and relates the evolution of the slave trade to shipping routes created by the Ottoman blockade and the need to find alternate routes by European countries, specifically the Portuguese.
Its vivid description of East African holding dungeons, and the horrid conditions slaves were held in, is one of the most graphic you’ll read. It describes how the decades of the flow of feces and urine from holding pens, like Cape Coast Castle, into the ocean became “dried and compacted below, but liquid and rancid at the surface.”
The Slave Trade in Africa: The History and Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and East African Slave Trade across the Indian Ocean is a quick, high-level overview of the transatlantic slave trade and a number of historical figures and locations that can serve as a conduit for deeper research.