EVENT DETAILS

Liberated Africans Series: "To El Dorado via Slave Trade: English Trafficking to Spanish America"

Prof. Gregory O’Malley, University of California, Santa Cruz
Author of "Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807" (forthcoming, UNC Press 2014)

Prof. O’Malley explores a neglected aspect of the forced migration of Africans to the Americas. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans continued their journeys after the Middle Passage across the Atlantic. Colonial merchants purchased and then transshipped many of these captives to other colonies for resale. Not only did this trade increase death rates and the social and cultural isolation of Africans; it also fed the expansion of British slavery and trafficking of captives to foreign empires, mainly to the Spanish colonies from Venezuela to Cuba. This contributed to Britain's preeminence in the transatlantic slave trade by the mid-eighteenth century. The pursuit of profits from exploiting enslaved people as commodities facilitated exchanges across borders, loosening mercantile restrictions and expanding capitalist networks.

Lecture is free and open to public. For further information: UCI Department of History, 949-824-6521 or history@uci.edu