Britain's War Against the Slave Trade: The Operations of the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, 1807-1867

Long before recorded history, men, women and children had been seized by conquering tribes and nations to be employed or traded as slaves. Greeks, Romans, Vikings and Arabs were among the earliest of many peoples involved in the slave trade, and across Africa the buying and selling of slaves was widespread. There was, at the time, nothing unusual in Britain’s somewhat belated entry into the slave trade, transporting natives from Africa’s west coast to the plantations of the New World. What ...