The Ledger and the Chain


Book Description

An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America's internal slave trade—and its role in the making of America. Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men—who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South—were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States. In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.




Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West


Book Description

The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth century—formed the vanguard of the American empire and became the heroes of American adventure. This volume brings to the general reader brief biographies of eighteen representative mountain men, selected from among the essay assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965-72). The subjects and authors are: Manuel Lisa (Richard E. Oglesby); Pierre Chouteau Jr. (Janet Lecompte); Wilson Price Hunt (William Brandon); William H. Ashley (Harvey L. Carter); Jedediah Smith (Harvey L. Carter); John McLoughlin (Kenneth L. Holmes); Peter Skene Ogden (Ted J. Warner); Ceran St. Vrain (Harold H. Dunham); Kit Carson (Harvey L. Carter); Old Bill Williams (Frederic E. Voelker); William Sublette (John E. Sunder);Thomas Fitzpatrick (LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen); James Bridger (Cornelius M. Ismert); Benjamin L. E. Bonneville (Edgeley W. Todd); Joseph R. Walker (Ardis M. Walker); Nathaniel Wyeth (William R. Sampson); Andrew Drips (Harvey L. Carter); and Joseph L. Meek (Harvey E. Tobie).




Ship of Magic


Book Description

The first book in a seafaring fantasy trilogy that George R. R. Martin has described as “even better than the Farseer Trilogy—I didn’t think that was possible.” Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships—rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown’s oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea’s young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the Vivacia, the ship is a life sentence. But the fate of the ship—and the Vestrits—may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider: the ruthless buccaneer captain Kennit, who plans to seize power over the Pirate Isles by capturing a liveship and bending it to his will. Don’t miss the magic of the Liveship Traders Trilogy: SHIP OF MAGIC • MAD SHIP • SHIP OF DESTINY




The World for Sale


Book Description

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should. In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the world economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centres. And it is the story of how some traders acquired untold political power, right under the noses of western regulators and politicians - helping Saddam Hussein to sell his oil, fuelling the Libyan rebel army during the Arab Spring, and funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin in spite of western sanctions. The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.




Where the Negroes Are Masters


Book Description

Annamaboe--largest slave trading port on the Gold Coast--was home to wily African merchants whose partnerships with Europeans made the town an integral part of Atlantic webs of exchange. Randy Sparks recreates the outpost's feverish bustle and brutality, tracing the entrepreneurs, black and white, who thrived on a lucrative traffic in human beings.




Metal Men


Book Description

This true story of the multibillionaire who fled to Switzerland “reads like a mystery novel” (USA Today). How did Marc Rich make over ten billion dollars while paying hardly any taxes? Journalist A. Craig Copetas infiltrated the inner circle of the commodities market and Rich’s associates to show not only how the metals and minerals trader pulled off the scam, becoming one of America’s most wanted criminals, but also how other traders have used the same model to evade taxes as well. A continuing figure of controversy even after his death, Rich, a hedge fund manager and the founder of Glencore, was wanted for evading almost ninety million dollars in taxes and if caught, could have spent life in prison. From a former staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Metal Men is a story of international intrigue spanning the globe, from the inside of the White House to the Kremlin, a brilliantly researched work that exposes the inner workings of one of country’s largest scams. “Mr. Copetas is at his best evoking the high-stakes, fast-paced life of the commodities traders: the greed and corruption that consume them are the stuff of high drama.” —The New York Times Book Review




Slave Owners of West Africa


Book Description

In this groundbreaking book, Sandra E. Greene explores the lives of three prominent West African slave owners during the age of abolition. These first-published biographies reveal personal and political accomplishments and concerns, economic interests, religious beliefs, and responses to colonial rule in an attempt to understand why the subjects reacted to the demise of slavery as they did. Greene emphasizes the notion that the decisions made by these individuals were deeply influenced by their personalities, desires to protect their economic and social status, and their insecurities and sympathies for wives, friends, and other associates. Knowing why these individuals and so many others in West Africa made the decisions they did, Greene contends, is critical to understanding how and why the institution of indigenous slavery continues to influence social relations in West Africa to this day.




The American Dreams of John B. Prentis, Slave Trader


Book Description

As a young man, John B. Prentis (1788–1848) expressed outrage over slavery, but by the end of his life he had transported thousands of enslaved persons from the upper to the lower South. Kari J. Winter's life-and-times portrayal of a slave trader illuminates the clash between two American dreams: one of wealth, the other of equality. Prentis was born into a prominent Virginia family. His grandfather, William Prentis, emigrated from London to Williamsburg in 1715 as an indentured servant and rose to become the major shareholder in colonial Virginia's most successful store. William's son Joseph became a Revolutionary judge and legislator who served alongside Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison. Joseph Jr. followed his father's legal career, whereas John was drawn to commerce. To finance his early business ventures, he began trading in slaves. In time he grew besotted with the high-stakes trade, appeasing his conscience with the populist platitudes of Jacksonian democracy, which aggressively promoted white male democracy in conjunction with white male supremacy. Prentis's life illuminates the intertwined politics of labor, race, class, and gender in the young American nation. Participating in a revolution in the ethics of labor that upheld Benjamin Franklin as its icon, he rejected the gentility of his upbringing to embrace solidarity with “mechanicks,” white working-class men. His capacity for admirable thoughts and actions complicates images drawn by elite slaveholders, who projected the worst aspects of slavery onto traders while imagining themselves as benign patriarchs. This is an absorbing story of a man who betrayed his innate sense of justice to pursue wealth through the most vicious forms of human exploitation.




The Slave Trade


Book Description

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated.




Trappers of the Far West


Book Description

In the early 1800s vast fortunes were made in the international fur trade, an enterprise founded upon the effort of a few hundred trappers scattered across the American West. From their ranks came men who still command respect for their daring, skill, and resourcefulness. This volume brings together brief biographies of seventeen leaders of the western fur trade, selected from essays assembled by LeRoy R. Hafen in The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West (ten volumes, 1965–72). The subjects and authors are: Etienne Provost (LeRoy R. Hafen); James Ohio Pattie (Ann W. Hafen); Louis Robidoux (David J. Weber); Ewing Young (Harvey L. Carter); David F. Jackson (Carl D. W Hays); Milton G. Sublette (Doyce B. Nunis, Jr.); Lucien Fontenelle (Alan C. Trottman); James Clyman (Charles L. Camp); James P. Beckwourth (Delmot R. Oswald); Edward and Francis Ermatinger (Harriet D. Munnick); John Gantt (Harvey L. Carter); William W. Bent (Samuel P. Arnold); Charles Autobees (Janet Lecompte); Warren Angus Ferris (Lyman C. Pederson, Jr.); Manuel Alvarez (Harold H. Dunham); and Robert Campbell (Harvey L. Carter). Trappers of the Far West is the companion to Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West.