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Slaves to inhuman greed
DAN GLAZEBROOK recommends a book on the apocalyptic consequences of 17th century settler colonialism

The Apocalypse Of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in Seventeenth Century North America and the Caribbean
by Gerald Horne
(Monthly Review Press, £18.99)

THE EIGHTEENTH century was the slavers’ century. At least six million Africans were kidnapped and shipped to the Americas — with far more killed resisting capture — making the trade in enslaved Africans the most valuable in the world.

Yet it was the tumult of the 1600s that put the pieces in place for what was to come and in this fascinating new book Gerald Horne shows just how pivotal that century was for the trade itself, as well as capitalism and white supremacy, its economic and ideological corollaries.

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