Original Decks of a Slave Ship Engraving

Decks of a Slave Ship. Folio from W.O. Blake’s The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern. ~6 x 9 1/2

Impactful schematic of the realities of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Diagrams such as these were instrumental in educating the general public about the conditions that enslaved individuals endured on the voyages from their homeland to the shores of America. This illustration appeared in Blake’s monumental work on slavery published in the late antebellum and wartime period. Blake’s book was first published in 1857 with subsequent editions printed throughout the 185 and 1860s.

Featured in virtually every modern textbook on the subject, this iconic print or one of its variations is often used to illustrate the full extent of the horror wrought on enslaved people trafficked in the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries.










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