Sean M. Kelley is professor of history at the University of Essex. He is the author of The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina and Los Brazos de Dios: A Plantation Society in the Texas Borderlands, 1821–1865. He lives in Colchester, UK.
“A work of impressive breadth, deep research, and evenhanded analysis.”—James Oakes, New York Review of Books “An authoritative historical account of American involvement in the slave trade. . . . A brutal but compelling read.”—The Tablet Received an honorable mention for the 2023 Lyman Book Award for North American Maritime History, sponsored by the North American Society for Oceanic History (NASOH) “This book will for many years to come be the only comprehensive and integrated overview of U.S. involvement in the North American–based slave trade from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade “This is one of the best syntheses of the history of the U.S. slave trade ever written. A book that offers not only a great historical narrative of a long-term process but also dives into specific themes in new ways.”—Leonardo Marques, Universidade Federal Fluminense