William A. Pettigrew

Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority. I wish I had been given this book at school

In this vital and necessary book, William Pettigrew challenges the cultural amnesia and omissive history around Brtain's involvement in the trafficking of enslaved Africans. His astute analysis reveals how the wealth, technologies and rationalisations generated by the slave trade created the very institutions, structures and identities that still define Britishness today

Suzannah Lipscomb, author of The King Is Dead

Ambitious, original, and extensively researched, William Pettigrew’s Britain’s Slave Traders is an important book and a timely addition to the current debate on national identity and cultural memory

No place to hide. William Pettigrew's compelling narrative reveals how slave trading shaped British society, economy, and government, through and through. Look behind the merchant traders at those who invested in slave trading, and you find that every section of British society was involved

An important and illuminating book, based on remarkable research, but also one written with great clarity and pace

Jonathan Healey, author of The Blood in Winter

A Forgotten History

Since 2021, William Pettigrew has led a team of nine historians in a project to unearth every known investor in Britain’s transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on what is now known of these 13,000 individuals, he has written a new version of Britain’s history which transforms our understanding of who these traffickers were and reveals – for the first time – the impact they had on the nation’s development during this formative era. 
 
They came from a wide range of backgrounds: plumbers as well as politicians, instrument-makers as well as monarchs, women and immigrants alongside aristocrats and merchants; playwrights, poets and artists, too. They were a tiny minority but their wealth, power and appetite for risk influenced not just Britain’s economy but its politics, science, arts and institutions – from the development of the Royal Navy and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy to the emergence of two-party politics, the free press and Parliament itself. They financed wars, shaped modern industry, and built ports, canals and thriving cities, helping make Britain a global and imperial force. 
 
Ironically, their drive to liberate their trade in enslaved people from monarchical monopoly contributed to Britain’s reputation as a progressive, freedom-loving nation. In fact, for the British themselves, the slave trade often had a healing effect, resolving tension in the Civil War, binding England and Scotland together after the Act of Union, and offering common cause between rival political factions. It also promoted social mobility and fuelled philanthropy, improving the lives and health of the neediest Britons and leaving a legacy of benefit for generations. 
 
Abolitionists realised that ending the trade would require the quiet erasure of the traders’ identities. By restoring them to view and rewriting our national story in light of what that tells us, Britain’s Slave Traders corrects a profound distortion of our past, revealing a previously obscured but vital thread through Britain’s history.

William A. Pettigrew

Praise for Britain's Slave Traders

Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority. I wish I had been given this book at school

In this vital and necessary book, William Pettigrew challenges the cultural amnesia and omissive history around Brtain's involvement in the trafficking of enslaved Africans. His astute analysis reveals how the wealt ...

Ambitious, original, and extensively researched, William Pettigrew’s Britain’s Slave Traders is an important book and a timely addition to the current debate on national identity and cultural memory

Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority. I wish I had been given this book at school

In this vital and necessary book, William Pettigrew challenges the cultural amnesia and omissive history around Brtain's involvement in the trafficking of enslaved Africans. His astute analysis reveals how the wealt ...

Ambitious, original, and extensively researched, William Pettigrew’s Britain’s Slave Traders is an important book and a timely addition to the current debate on national identity and cultural memory

Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority. I wish I had been given this book at school

In this vital and necessary book, William Pettigrew challenges the cultural amnesia and omissive history around Brtain's involvement in the trafficking of enslaved Africans. His astute analysis reveals how the wealt ...

Ambitious, original, and extensively researched, William Pettigrew’s Britain’s Slave Traders is an important book and a timely addition to the current debate on national identity and cultural memory

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