Price
- £6.00
Length
- 60
Presented By
- LITFEST
VENUE: The Lecture Theatre, The Storey
With Nick Radburn
‘Ambitious, original and extensively researched’ Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire
Based on the comprehensive and landmark research he did with Nick Radburn while Professor of History at Lancaster University, Will Pettigrew, in this ground-breaking history, reveals the true significance of the trade in enslaved Africans in Britain’s development as a modern nation. They 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.
‘Essential, forensic analysis from a global authority’ Sathnam Sanghera, author Empireland and Empireworld
Will Pettigrew is Professor of Global British History at King’s College London, where he is leading a European-wide research project to identify and study the people who financed the transatlantic slave trade. He is the author of Britain’s Slave Traders: A Forgotten History (2026) and series consultant of the two-part BBC2 TV documentary Finding Britain’s Slave Traders which will be broadcast this autumn.
Dr Nick Radburn is Senior Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500–1800 at Lancaster University and author of Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
AGE GUIDANCE: 16+
Venue Details
VENUE: The Lecture Theatre, The Storey.
Meeting House Lane, LA1 1TH / 01524 582226 / thestorey@lancaster.gov.uk
