A vivid and wide-ranging examination of the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and running away to outright violent rebellion - that shines fresh light on the end of slavery in the Atlantic World.



It is past time that this resistance, in addition to abolitionism and other factors, was given its due weight in seeking to understand the overthrow of slavery. Fundamentally, as Walvin clearly shows, it was the implacable hatred of the enslaved for slavery and their strategies of resistance that made the whole system unsustainable and, ultimately, brought about its downfall.

Walvin looks at the French and Spanish Empires and Brazil as well as the British Empire, to cast new light on one of the major shifts in Western history. Over 300 years, slavery had become a widespread and critical institution. It had seen twelve million Africans forced onto slave ships and had transformed the Americas and materially enriched the Western world. It had also been largely unquestioned - at least among slave owners, traders and those who profited from the system.

Yet, within a mere seventy-five years during the nineteenth century, slavery had declined, collapsed and been destroyed by a complexity of forces that, to this day, remains disputed. As Walvin shows so clearly here, though, it was in large part overthrown by those it had enslaved.

Praise for James Walvin's How Sugar Corrupted the World:

'Entertaining, informative and utterly depressing global history of an important commodity'
Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

'Shocking and revelatory'
David Olusoga

'A brilliant and thought-provoking history of sugar and its ironies'
Bee Wilson, Wall Street Journal