Traders in Men

Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

By: Nicholas Radburn

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

A sweeping new history that reveals how British, African, and American merchants developed the transatlantic slave trade

During the eighteenth century, Britain's slave trade exploded in size. Formerly a small and geographically constricted business, the trade had, by the eve of the American Revolution, grown into a transatlantic system through which fifty thousand men, women, and children were enslaved every year.

In this wide-ranging history, Nicholas Radburn explains how thousands of merchants collectively transformed the slave trade by devising highly efficient but violent new business methods. African brokers developed commercial infrastructure that facilitated the enslavement and sale of millions of people. Britons invented shipping methods that quelled enslaved people's constant resistance on the Middle Passage. And American slave traders formulated brutal techniques through which shiploads of people could be quickly sold to colonial buyers. Truly Atlantic-wide in its vision, this study shows how the slave trade dragged millions of people into its terrible vortex and became one of the most important phenomena in world history.

©2023 Nicholas Radburn (P)2023 Tantor

The best book on the British slave trade

This outstanding book is now the must read book for any reader/listener interested in Britain’s role in the slave trade from the 1600s to 1807. It is also superbly and efficiently written. The book could easily have been twice as long but the author possesses an economy of words. He gives equal focus to three parts of the slave trade: the acquisition of African captives in Africa; carrying the captives in the Middle Passage; and the sale of the captives by factors in slave ports and the inner-workings of the internal slave trade. This last part is hardly discussed in some slave trade books. As for the first part the author has a thorough discussion of the roles of African middlemen and the the wars that made captives available for the trade. He does not spend much time discussing the abolitionist movement. This book is about the inner workings of the slave trade, how it changed and the traders in men who profited. The author discusses the latest scholarship but without impinging on his narrative and adds many new insights of his own. The narration is excellent.

Gives voice to the unheard players in the Atlantic slave trade

The author does an excellent job explaining both sides of the Atlantic slave trade - supply and demand. The insights detailed such as the infrastructure developed in Africa to support the supply chain and the incentive structure for European and African participants are key takeaways in this book.

The only suggestion would be to contextualize the economics better by providing the reader a way to put the financial data into perspective rather than abstractly listing historical prices in multiple currencies.

Excellent book

The best book on the British slave trade. Describes the British slave trade in Britain, Africa, and the Americas in equal measure. The research is very impressive. The book is clear and easy to follow. Very timely.