Freedom

The European-driven transatlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the largest forced movement of human beings in history. Over 15 million Africans were shipped to the New World and another 5 million died in captivity over a period of 250 years. The bicentenary of the abolition of the British Transatlantic Trade in Africans for enslavement was commemorated in 2007 and the University of the West Indies Mona campus marked the anniversary by making the bicentenary the focus of its annual Mona Academic Conference on the theme Freedom: Retrospective and Prospective. This volume represents an edited collection of papers that were delivered at the 2007 conference. Freedom: Retrospective and Prospective examines the historical experience of slavery that has helped to shape the Caribbean and its contemporary challenges. In this volume, the contributions both academic and personal, reflect on various aspects of memorialisation; reparations; capitalism and slavery; sovereignty; globalization and trade liberalization; education and gender; freedom and development; migration and Diaspora.