The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls - Softcover

Hazlewood, Nick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060935693 ISBN 13: 9780060935696

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2005

Synopsis

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery - often described as America's shame - can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her kingdom but also knew her country's economy could not finance her dreams for it. On direct orders from Her Majesty, John Hawkyns set sail from England. His destination: West Africa. His mission: to capture human lives.

After landing on the African coast, he used a series of brutal raids, violent beatings, and sheer terror to load his ships. As the first major slave trader, Hawkyns's actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years. In The Queen's Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood's haunting discoveries take you into the mind-set of the men who made their livelihoods trafficking human souls and at long last reveals the man who began it all - and the woman behind him.

About this title

About the Author:

Nick Hazlewood has a degree in history and, in 1994, left his job with the trade union UNISON to travel throughout South and Central America. He is a freelance journalist and writer and lives in Madrid.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. This impressively researched and disturbing biography tells the story of John Hawkyns, an Elizabethan privateer who conducted profitable slave trading expeditions, capturing his victims on the west coast of Africa and selling them illegally in Spanish ports in the Americas. British journalist Hazlewood (Savage: The Life and Times of Jenny Button) traces Hawkyns's move from "roughneck" Plymouth to London, his formation of a trading syndicate and his successful and brutal slave trading voyages of 1562–1563, from which he returned to England with a show of riches. Having won the patronage of Elizabeth I, Hawkyns departed on an another eventful voyage. Here Hazlewood is able to draw on a wide array of archival resources, both Spanish and English, as he recounts Hawkyns's exploits in Sierra Leone and South America. Hazlewood furnishes yet more scintillating detail in his account of Hawkyns's next, fateful 1567 voyage, focusing on various members of the crew, many pressed into service as young boys. After savagely capturing yet more African slaves, Hawkyns suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a Spanish squadron in Veracruz. Lacking drinking water and supplies for the journey home, he abandoned a number of his men in Mexico; their pathetic fates at the hands of the Spanish enemy are painstakingly traced. Brilliantly evocative of 16th-century Anglo-Spanish rivalry and the brutality of Elizabethan maritime life, Hazlewood's book is a tour de force that condemns rather than romanticizes its thuggish adventurer. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060935693
• ISBN 13: 9780060935696
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464