Serious research in and around the history-and contemporary reality-of slavery is very wide-ranging, and flourishes as never before. This new four-volume collection from Routledge's acclaimed series, Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, meets the need for a reference work to help users make sense of the subject's vast and dispersed literature, and the continuing explosion in research output.

Edited by two of the leading scholars in the area, the four volumes bring together in one 'mini library' both classic and contemporary contributions to provide authoritative coverage of the transatlantic slave trade; slavery in Africa and the Indian Ocean region; slave culture; the slave economy; and slave resistance. Other topics include family, gender, and community. The collection also gathers the best and most influential scholarship on attempts to abolish the trade, and the legacy of emancipation.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected materials in their intellectual context, Slavery is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often inaccessible material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar-and sometimes overlooked-texts. For scholars and advanced students of Slave Studies, it is a vital one-stop resource.