eBook

Freedom's Debt

WILLIAM A. PETTIGREW

2013,2014

Overview

In the years following the Glorious Revolution, independent slave traders challenged the charter of the Royal African Company by asserting their natural rights as Britons to trade freely in enslaved Africans. In this comprehensive history of the rise and fall of the RAC, William A. Pettigrew grounds the transatlantic slave trade in politics, not economic forces, analyzing the ideological arguments of the RAC and its opponents in Parliament and in public debate. Ultimately, Pettigrew powerfully reasons that freedom became the rallying cry for those who wished to participate in the slave trade and therefore bolstered the expansion of the largest intercontinental forced migration in history.Unlike previous histories of the RAC, Pettigrew's study pursues the Company's story beyond the trade's complete deregulation in 1712 to its demise in 1752. Opening the trade led to its escalation, which provided a reliable supply of enslaved Africans to the mainland American colonies, thus playing a critical part in entrenching African slavery as the colonies' preferred solution to the American problem of labor supply.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press,Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press,University of North Carolina Press
• Subject: 17th century / 18th century / Africa / Great Britain / History / Law and legislation / Political aspects / Royal African Company / Royal African Company -- History / Slave trade / Slave-trade -- Africa -- History / Slave-trade -- Political aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century / Slave-trade -- Political aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century / Slave-trade -- West Indies, British -- History / Slavery / Slavery -- Law and legislation -- Great Britain -- History / Sociology / West Indies, British
• ISBN: 9781469629858, 9781469611815, 1469611813, 1469629852