Britain's Slave Traders

Based on a comprehensive, landmark investigation, this ground-breaking history reveals the true significance of the trade in enslaved Africans in Britain’s development as a modern nation.

*ACCOMPANIED BY A MAJOR BBC DOCUMENTARY*

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, their power and their 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 helped win wars, shaped modern industry, and built ports, canals and thriving cities, helping make Britain the global and imperial force it eventually became. Disturbingly, the drive to liberate the trade in enslaved people from monarchical monopoly also contributed to Britain’s reputation as a progressive, freedom-loving nation. Within Britain, slavery’s profits fuelled philanthropy and helped promote social mobility, improving the lives of the neediest through hospitals, alms-houses and schools.

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 within Britain’s history.

‘Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

‘Vital and necessary’ SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB, author of The King is Dead

‘Ambitious, original and extensively researched’ AMANDA FOREMAN, author of A World on Fire

‘No place to hide. William Pettigrew’s compelling narrative reveals how slave-trading shaped British society, economy and government, through and through’ CLARE JACKSON, author of Devil-Land

© William A. Pettigrew 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026