Based on the comprehensive and landmark research he did with Nick Radburn while Professor of History at Lancaster University, Will Pettigrew reveals the true significance of the trade in enslaved Africans in Britain’s development as a modern nation.

The slave traders came from a wide range of backgrounds: plumbers as well as politicians, instrument-makers as well as monarchs, women and immigrants alongside aristocrats and merchants, playwrights, poets and artists, too. They were a tiny minority but their wealth, their power and their appetite for risk influenced not just Britain’s economy but its politics, science, arts and institutions – from the development of the Royal Navy and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy to the emergence of two-party politics, the free press and Parliament itself.

By restoring them to view and rewriting our national story in the light of what this tells us, Britain’s Slave Traders corrects a profound distortion of our past, revealing a previously obscured but vital thread within Britain’s history.

Will Pettigrew: Britain’s Slave Traders: A Forgotten History