Updated April 22, 2024
Books
Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine (London: Robinson; New York: Basic, forthcoming 2025).
Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain (Robinson Books/Little, Brown Book Group, 2020)
Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution. The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, October 2017.
- Winner, 2018 James A. Rawley Prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to the outstanding book on the history of the Atlantic world before the 20th century;
- Winner, 2018 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, awarded by the Canadian Historical Association to the outstanding book in a field of history other than the history of Canada.
Peer-reviewed articles and book chapter
“The Great Distress: Wage Labour and British Antislavery after 1815.” Journal of Modern History. Accepted for publication, forthcoming September 2024.
“Slaves and Peasants in the Era of Emancipation.” Journal of British Studies 59, no. 4 (2020): 495-520.
“Revisiting Freedom’s Debtors.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société Historique du Canada 30, no. 2 (2019): 255–72.
“Emancipation and Captivity in the British Empire.” History and Anthropology 30, no. 5 (2019): 503-508
“Bureaucratic Civilisation: Emancipation and the Global British Middle Class,” in The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire, edited by Christof Dejung, Jürgen Osterhammel and David Motadel. Princeton: Princeton University Press (2019) 143-162.
“The Colonial Rebirth of British Anti-Slavery: The Liberated African Villages of Sierra Leone, 1815-1823.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 4 (2016): 1085-1113.
“Blood, Money and Endless Paper: Slavery and Capital in British Imperial History.” History Compass 14, no. 5 (2016): 218–230.
“The Rewards of Their Exertions: Prize Money and British Abolitionism in Sierra Leone, 1808–1823.” Past & Present 225, no. 1 (2014): 113–142.
Selected recent reviews and essays
“Triangular Trade: The Part Played by Slavery in the Growth of British Prosperity.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 6284, September 8, 2023.
“The Emancipated Empire.” Aeon, October 22, 2021.
“Perspective: Aug. 1 Is Emancipation Day. But the End of British Slavery Didn’t Mean Freedom.” Washington Post, August 1, 2021.
“Men on Horseback by David A. Bell Review – the Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution.” The Guardian, December 20, 2020, sec. Books.
“The White Man’s Boredom.” The New Inquiry. March 15, 2019.
“A Fistful of Shells by Toby Green Review – the West African Slave Trade.” The Guardian, March 8, 2019, sec. Books.
“Damon’s Case and the Meaning of British Antislavery.” EuropeNow - a Journal of Research and Art, November 7, 2018.
“Book Review: Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy by Richard E. Ocejo.” LSE Review of Books, May 14, 2018.
“Long Read Review: The New Poverty by Stephen Armstrong.” LSE Review of Books, April 9, 2018. “Factory Made.” The New Inquiry, March 30, 2018.