This event takes place at the Institute of Historical Research and is sponsored by MMoR

Location: Institute of Historical Research and online

Speaker: Lou Roper (The State University of New York New Paltz)

Using the 1647 slaving voyage of the Mayflower to modern Venezuela by way of illustration, this paper tracks how the Guinea trade became fully integrated into English affairs during the four decades between the first recorded English slaving voyage to an English colony in 1626 and the onset of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. During this period, as English trafficking of enslaved Africans became normalized, the importance of this commerce meant that the chief participants in it—such as Samuel Vassall in the Mayflower case—directed overseas affairs and so set the socio-political character of the English Empire and its constituent parts.

Lou Roper is the SUNY Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus (The State University of New York, New Paltz)