1619 Interviews – Trevor Burnard on the Demise of the Royal African Company

Trevor Burnard
Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull
Director of the Wilberforce Institute

Trevor Burnard is Wilberforce Professor of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull and Director of the Wilberforce Institute. He is a specialist in the Atlantic World and slavery in plantation societies. He is the author of Only Connect: A Field Report on Early American History (Virginia, forthcoming); Jamaica in the Age of Revolution (2020) and The Atlantic World, 1492-1830 (2020). He recently curated a special forum in Slavery and Abolition on Black Lives Matter and Slavery

Professor Burnard discusses his article “Pack of Knaves: The Royal African Company, the development of the Jamaican plantation economy and the benefits of monopoly, 1672‒1708.” Prof. Burnard focuses on how the demise of the Royal Slave Trading monopoly led to a concentration of wealth in the enslaver class and the rise of the large plantation system.

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