91桃色

“Africans take center stage in this fresh and original masterwork. Ferreira builds on an astonishing research effort that took him to archives in half a dozen countries, telling fine-grained stories about individuals navigating the vast and turbulent currents of world history. His argument bucks the tendency to emphasize the initiative of European powers in the making of slave trade abolition, convincingly revising long-held assumptions about pivotal globe-spanning transformations.”—Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War

“This transformative study looks at the abolition of the slave trade through the actions of enslaved Africans, protagonists in a global process marked by changing geopolitical realities. It is also a story about the adaptability of slave traders, of their ability to develop new routes to supply dwindling but profitable markets for enslaved Africans. Based on impressive multinational research, Worlds of Unfreedom places West Central Africa at the center of one of the most important chapters in Atlantic history.”—Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University

“Worlds of Unfreedom’s finely crafted chapters bring microhistory and global history into creative conversation to illuminate powerfully the contributions of subaltern women and men in West Central Africa to the final abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. The text casts bright new light on how and why the end of the slave trade in West Central Africa gave rise to a post–slave trade economic order dependent on the expansion of local slavery and other forms of unfree labor. Impressively researched and engagingly written, Worlds of Unfreedom will become an essential text on the history of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition.”—Kristin Mann, Emory University

“An important addition to this emerging field and an ambitious and wide-ranging study. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the author’s remarkable research into local records, research that enables him to explain the conduct of the trade from the Kongo in exquisite detail. The author’s focus on individuals and events, on the microhistory of the trade, makes this book distinctive.”—Randy Sparks, Tulane University