Christian on Walvin

At present in the academy, transatlantic studies concerning the Black Atlantic seem very much in vogue. This may have something to do with the ever-shrinking globe and the concomitant corollary of comparative studies in society and history. Or it could simply be that this is the next stage in comprehending another aspect of the African Diaspora experience. James Walvin, the noted British historian, has written numerous works that survey the plight of Africans in relation to British involvement in their enslavement. Making the Black Atlantic: Britain and the African Diaspora certainly makes a significant contribution to the current scholarship.

A major strength in Walvin’s text is its accessibility to the reader. One glides from chapter to chapter with ease because of the author’s clarity in engaging with a rather complex social history. Indeed, this book is written for both the layman and the scholar. It is a compact introductory volume that provides a firm foundation for further study of Britain’s deep-rooted involvement in the transatlantic enslavement of African humanity. In regard to the role of the British, Walvin states that, at the height of the Atlantic slave system, the British shipped more Africans than any other nation; their slave colonies disgorged produce (and its associated prosperity) on an unparalleled scale, and Britain itself benefited from slavery to a degree which largely goes unrecognized (p. x). Walvin provides copious evidence of Britain’s role in this ignoble enterprise and reminds us throughout that historians of Britain have persistently overlooked or minimized the degree to which British life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was integrated into the Atlantic slave system (p. x).

Much of the work being produced by scholars on the Black Atlantic is about deconstructing the historical amnesia and neglect caused by previous generations of historians. In a sense James Walvin and other scholars are producing studies that could be deemed hidden histories; with this in mind the reader will find the book most rewarding. Making the Black Atlantic begins at the onset of European contact with Africa in the fifteenth century (mainly the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch). Middle chapters journey to the plantation economies and slave cultures based in the British Caribbean and analyze the immense profits generated by the slave system. Later chapters outline the decline and abolition of British slavery; a concluding chapter assesses the legacy of the slave trade in the twenty-first century.

The actual amount of profits gleaned by the British from enslavement activities is astonishing. One sentence sums up Walvin’s analysis: The Atlantic slave system helped to transform Britain into a major mercantile and military power (p.98). The author maintains that the development of an industrialized Great Britain was fundamentally due to the profits gained from enslaving African humanity and exploiting their labor to produce the raw materials that fed the industrial revolution. For instance, Walvin points out that three-quarters of Britain’s cotton imports came from slave plantations in the late eighteenth century. The 3.3 million pounds imported annually between 1761 and 1765 rose to almost 16 million pounds between 1801 and 1805 (p.161).

Making the Black Atlantic often leaves out important historical detail when such detail would be entirely appropriate. Certain aspects of this social history remain sadly hidden. More could have been said, for example, about the twenty million pounds secured to British plantation owners in the Caribbean via the British government in compensation for the abolition of slavery in the colonies (see Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto, 1984, p. 43), while the enslaved Africans and their descendants received nothing. More also could have been said about the legacy of the enslavement process. Walvin touches on the subject but does not go far enough. Africans in the Diaspora (as it applies to Britain) have had to endure myriad forms of racial discrimination, but outside the United Kingdom this social fact remains largely unknown or unacknowledged. Further studies could explore this legacy in much greater historical and sociological depth. Nevertheless, this...