Black and British: A Forgotten History, from the acclaimed historian and star of 'Celebrity Traitors'

by David Olusoga

Even in 1807, there were more enslaved people in Africa than in the Americas, although the institution of slavery existed in Africa in many varying forms of differing degrees of severity and not all of them were permanent. In parts of the continent new slave-trading states were on the rise and in many societies slavery – in its domestic, agricultural and even military forms – was so normalized as to be ubiquitous and largely unquestioned. Various African leaders puzzled, after 1807, as to why the British, formerly their most enthusiastic trading partners, had become so squeamish about the trade in human flesh, a commerce that they themselves had so recently dominated.