SuitabookThe Story of Slavery
Sarah Courtauld
- Reading
- Read in short sections, stopping to distinguish historical explanation from individual testimony. Invite questions about language, perspective and change over time, and check the treatment of contemporary slavery before reading those sections independently.
- Themes
- Slavery across time: The book traces slavery from ancient times through the Americas and the slave trade to official abolition and slavery in the twenty-first century. Its angle is historical and informational, presenting slavery as a subject that changes across periods rather than ending solely with abolition.
- Enslaved people’s experiences: The book recounts stories of individual enslaved people, including journeys and escape stories, and discusses life in the New World and on plantations. Personal accounts appear to place lived experience alongside the wider history, but whether the treatment centres agency or mainly suffering is not established.
- Truth and selection in historical nonfiction: The book has been used as a basis for asking what should be included in a book about slavery and how truthful such accounts are. It offers an opportunity to question how historical nonfiction selects facts and perspectives, without establishing that the book is comprehensive or definitive.
- Worth knowing
- Consider reading alongside discussion about whose perspectives are included and how the book explains power, resistance and abolition. Be ready to pause around accounts of enslavement, punishment, escape or present-day slavery.