Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery

The Trader, The Owner, The Slave

A unique and dramatic book about the Atlantic slave trade.

Much more than just a catalogue of horrors... James Walvin is extraordinarily alert to the contradictions within the human heart... Walvin is never blind to the horrors of slavery, nor to the responsibility of individuals for their actions. But he recognises that the world was different then and that the institution of slavery encouraged individual acts of evil that would otherwise never have occurred

Taken together, their stories provide a remarkably intimate insider's perspective on the slave trade, and give us some sense of its staggering human cost

How did Britain, the 'slave trading poacher' of the 18th century, transform herself into the 'abolitionist game-keeper' of the 19th century?... James Walvin, a renowned historian of black people in Britain, finds answers to this mystery in the lives of three men who contributed, sometimes unwittingly, to the demise of a seemingly unassailable evil

James Walvin here addresses the enormity of the slave trade by looking in depth at three individuals inextricably bound up in it

A remarkable and gripping story, asking profound questions

James Walvin provides engrossing portraits of three individuals at the centre of the slave trade

Deftly crafted... The power of Walvin's stories lies in their details

James Walvin is the Emeritus Professor of History at the University of York. He has published widely on slavery and the slave trade. His book Black and White won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize and his book on the Quakers was named as a 'Notable Book of the Year' by the New York Times. Walvin's book The People's Game has long been the standard work on the history of football.

There has been nothing like Atlantic slavery. Its scope and the ways in which it has shaped the modern world are so far-reaching as to make it ungraspable. By examining the lives of three individuals caught up in the enterprise of human enslavement. James Walvin offers a new and an original interpretation of the barbaric world of slavery and of the historic end to the slave trade in April 1807. 
 
John Newton (1725-1807), author of 'Amazing Grace', was a slave captain who marshalled his human cargoes with a brutality that he looked back on with shame and contrition. Thomas Thistlewood's (1721-86) unique diary provides some of the most revealing images of a slave owner's life in the most valuable of all British slave colonies. Olaudah Equiano's (1745-97) experience as a slave now speaks out for lives of millions who went unrecorded. All three men were contemporaries but what held them together, in its destructive gravitational pull, was the Atlantic slave system.

A Short History of Slavery

Publication timed for the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 - the Heritage Lottery Fund is making awards of over £15 million to promote this important bicentenary.

James Walvin taught for many years at the University of York where he is now Professor of History Emeritus. He also held visiting positions in the Caribbean, the U.S.A. and Australia. He won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for his book Black and White, and has published widely on the history of slavery and the slave trade, including more recently Black Ivory. A History of British Slavery. His book The People&rsquo;s Game was a pioneering study of the history of football and remains in print thirty years after its first publication.

As we approach the bicentenary of the abolition of the Atlantic trade, Walvin has selected the historical texts that recreate the mindset that made such a savage institution possible - morally acceptable even. Setting these historical documents against Walvin's own incisive historical narrative, the two layers of this extraordinary, definitive account of the Atlantic slave trade enable us to understand the rise and fall of one of the most shameful chapters in British history, the repercussions of which the modern world is still living with.

James Walvin

The History of Football Revisited

At the beginning of the twentieth century, soccer was widely accepted as the most popular game in the western world. In the space of a few decades, it had become the best-supported team game in Britain, watched and played by more boys and men than any other sport. Yet here was a game with strong traditional folk roots and a history that stretched back to the late Middle Ages. In the course of the nineteenth century, football was transformed, mainly within the British public schools, to become the codified and disciplined game of urban working men. The passion for the game spread from one town to another, a passion that, though familiar today, was new in the years after 1870. Thereafter, the game rapidly spread to much of the world: to Europe, South America and a host of other societies. 
 
 This book tells the story of the rise of this remarkable British game and the way it became the game of the masses across the world. In the wealth of literature about football published in recent years, no other book provides so concise and colourful an account as The People's Game.

James Walvin

Books by James Walvin

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