Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery.

The editors of Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery point out that this book is a revisiting of a compilation written some 30 years ago under the title Liverpool, the African Slave Trade and Abolition (Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Liverpool, 1976, edited by Roger Anstey and Paul Hair), utilizing more recent commentators researching this topic and in the light of modern statistical information and methods. The present book is not yet another chronological account of the slave trade from the middle passage to Abolition. Instead, it adopts a thematic approach, dealing with a wide spectrum of human players, including the merchants, plantation owners, Abolitionists and, of course, slaves, plus a geographical area covering Lancaster and Liverpool to North America, the Caribbean and West Africa.

Presenting a new book on the generic topic of the transatlantic slave trade might have been impeded by the fact that this is the year following the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade, with the expected plethora of authors and their publishers taking the opportunity to launch related books. But the potential danger of rehashing well-used material has been happily avoided in this publication, not the least important reason being the willingness of several of the contributors...