During my research I have come across my fair share of ancestors labeled as mulattos and other racial designations indicating that they may have black ancestry. As I have mentioned before some people go as far as to deny their African roots by saying that it is just a fluke on their DNA.
Through my research I have come across some persons that have up to 14% African ancestry in their DNA. I’ve always wanted to know more about how they got to Mexico. I can only assume but I want to be able to make an educated guess and that is the reason that I am now reading another book by Hugh Thomas titled “The Slave Trade” I have yet to finish reading it but I thought I let you in on what I am reading. Since so far this book has not been disappointing. I already came across a familiar name Bartolome de las Casas.
I yet have to find out how much Mexico is mentioned in this book but so far the kings of Spain are mentioned and thus the Slave trade of the Spanish Empire will provide a great glimpse into the past. Hopefully provide evidence of slave trade form the part of Africa that my DNA suggests my ancestors came from.
Cover of Book: The Slave Trade
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Description of book by Amazon:
After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade.
Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, he describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas’s achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time but to answer as well such controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. Thomas also movingly describes such accounts as are available from the slaves themselves.
Table of Contents:
Here is the table of contents of this book so that you may know exactly what it contains.
Book One: Green Sea of Darkness
What Heart Could be so Hard?
Humanity is Divided into Two
The Slaves Who Find the Gold Are All Black
The Portuguese Served for Setting Dogs to Spring the Game
I herded Them As If they Had Been Cattle
The Best and Strongest Slaves Available
For the Love of God, Give us a Pair of Slave Women
The White Men Arrived in Ships with Wings
Book Two: The internalization of the Trade
A Good Correspondence with the Blacks
The Black Slave is the Basis of the Hacienda
lawful to Set to Sea
He Who Knows How to Supply Slaves Will Share this Wealth
Book Three: Apogee
No Nation Has Plunged so Deeply Into This Guilt As Great Britain
By the Grace of God
Book Four: The Crossing
A Filthy Voyage
Great Pleasure form Our Wine
Slave Harbors I
Slave Harbors II
A Great Strait for Slaves
The Blackest Sort with Short Curled Hair
If You Want to Learn How to Pray, Go to Sea
God knows What we Shall do with those that remain
Book Five: Abolition
Above all a good soul
The loudest yelps for liberty
The Gauntlet Had Been Thrown Down
Men in Africa of As Fine Feeling As Ourselves
Why should we see Great Britain getting all the slave trade?
Book Six: The Illegal Era
I see… We have not yet begun the Golden Age
The slaver is More Criminal than the Assassin
Only the poor Speak ill of the Slave Trade
Slave Harbors of the Nineteenth Century
Can we resist it the torrent? I think not
They all eagerly desire it, protect it, and almost sanctify it
Cuba, the forward sentinel
About the Author:
Hugh Thomas has written numerous histories on the Spanish speaking world, including The Spanish Civil War, for which he won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1962, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom, The Conquest of Mexico and The Slave Trade. His book The Unfinished History of the World won the first National Book Award for History in 1980. Hugh Thomas was chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies 1979-89 and was awarded a peerage as Lord Thomas of Swynnerton in 1981. – Amazon.com
Get Your Copy of This Book:
At the moment of writing this the only place that I could find it was at Amazon.com and was selling starting used at $2.97 used and $16.66 new. If you are interested in buying this book click here BUY NOW to buy form Amazon.
I hope that you find this book useful and informative as I have. Please let me know in the comment area of what you thought about this book.