Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an American Institution

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America. Pirates of the Slave Trade follows three fascinating figures whose fates would violently converge: John Conny, a charismatic leader of the Akan people who made lucrative deals with pirates and smugglers while fending off British and Dutch slavers; the infamous pirate Black Bart, who worked his way from an anonymous navigator to one of the British Empire's most notorious enemies in the region; and naval captain Chaloner Ogle, tasked by the Crown with hunting down and killing Black Bart at all costs. At the Battle of Cape Lopez, these three men and the massive historical forces at their backs would finally find each other--and the world would be transformed forever. In this landmark narrative history, historian Angela Sutton outlines the complex network of trade routes spanning the Atlantic Ocean trafficked by agents of empire, private merchants, and brutal pirates alike. Drawing from a wide range of primary historical sources, Sutton offers a new perspective on how a single battle played a pivotal role in reshaping the trade of enslaved people in ways that affect America to this day. Between its engaging narrative style filled with swashbuckling naval battles and tales of adventure at sea, its wide array of rigorous and detailed research, and its implications toward modern America, Pirates of the Slave Trade is an essential addition to every history reader's shelves.

Author: Angela C. Sutton
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 10/17/2023
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781633888449

About the Author
Angela Sutton is an Assistant Research Professor at Vanderbilt University, where she has taught a variety of history courses including Seapower in History, The Golden Age of Piracy, and Comparative Slavery. She is Director of the Fort Negley Descendants Project, an oral history archive of the descendants of the enslaved who built and defended a Civil War fortress in Nashville on the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples. A native German speaker who has studied 17th-century Dutch language and paleography with the Dutch governing body of language at Columbia University, Sutton is able to read and translate new primary sources almost entirely inaccessible to American historians. In 2010, she received a Fulbright research grant to the Netherlands for research in the Dutch National Archives and Royal Library in The Hague, the basis of which formed her dissertation and this book. Sutton has published articles with academic journals including The Historical Journal, the Afro-Hispanic Review, Archipelagos, and Slavery & Abolition. She currently serves as subject expert & consultant for various history-related multimedia projects, most recently a documentary podcast for BBC Radio 4 on ghosts of slavery (A Natural History of Ghosts: The Whitewashed Ghost), a historical documentary produced by Joseph Hill on the United States Colored Troops, and an upcoming podcast segment on Southern history & memory with the NEH-funded Oxford American's Points South.