This volume documents the practice of bringing enslaved people to early modern Europe not only as a side effect of overseas colonial regimes but as a pan-European experience that even developed its own dynamics on the continent. Drawing on examples from France, Scotland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Holy Roman Empire, the contributors show how slavery affected both the enslaved and the enslavers' societies, changing European notions of freedom, dependence, and subjugation. At the same time, Afro-European families and cultural productions challenge the view of the Black diaspora as Europe's "other." The volume thus reveals not only the roots of present-day racism extending far back into the past, but also a common heritage yet to be discovered.

The European Experience in Slavery assembles experts on the repercussions of the transatlantic as well as Mediterranean slave trade in different countries of early modern Europe for the first time, demonstrating that human trafficking was indeed a pan-European phenomenon. Focusing on entanglements between slavery and other forms of dependency, this collection shows how the former was woven into the fabric of early modern European society.

While the economic involvement of early modern Germany in slavery and the slave trade is increasingly receiving attention, the direct participation of Germans in human trafficking remains a blind spot in historiography. This edited volume focuses on practices of enslavement taking place within German territories in the early modern period as well as on the people of African, Asian, and Native American descent caught up in them.

Dutch historiography has traditionally concentrated on colonial successes in Asia. However, the Dutch were also active in West Africa, Brazil, New Netherland (the present state of New York) and in the Caribbean. In Africa they took part in the gold and ivory trade and finally also in the slave trade, something not widely known outside academic circles. P.C. Emmer, one of the most prominent experts in this field, tells the story of Dutch involvement in the trade from the beginning of the 17th century–much later than the Spaniards and the Portuguese–and goes on to show how the trade shifted from Brazil to the Caribbean. He explains how the purchase of slaves was organized in Africa, records their dramatic transport across the Atlantic, and examines how the sales machinery worked. Drawing on his prolonged study of the Dutch Atlantic slave trade, he presents his subject clearly and soberly, although never forgetting the tragedy hidden behind the numbers – the dark side of the Dutch Golden Age -, which makes this study not only informative but also very readable.

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Atlantic slavery does not loom large in the traditional telling of Welsh history. Yet Wales, like many regions of Europe, was deeply affected by the forced migration of captive Africans. Welsh commodities, like copper and brass made in Swansea, were used to purchase slaves on the African coast and some Welsh products, such as woollens from Montgomeryshire, were an important feature of plantation life in the West Indies. In turn, the profits of plantation agriculture flowed back into Wales, to be invested in new industries or to be lavished on country mansions. This book looks at Slave Wales between 1650 and 1850, bringing the most up-to-date scholarship on Atlantic slavery to bear on the Welsh experience. New research by Chris Evans casts light on previously unknown episodes, such as Welsh involvement with slave-based copper mining in nineteenth-century Cuba, and illuminates in new and disturbing ways familiar features of Welsh history - like the woollen industry - that have previously unsuspected 'slave dimensions'. Many Welsh people turned against slavery in the late eighteenth century, but Welsh abolitionism was never a particularly powerful force. Indeed, Chris Evans demonstrates that Welsh participation the slave Atlantic lasted well beyond the abolition of Britain's slave trade in 1807 and the ending of slavery in Britain's Caribbean empire in 1834.