Book Review: Freedom in White and Black: A Lost Story of the Illegal Slave Trade and Its Global Legacy by Emma Christopher

Over the past several decades, scholars have analyzed the evolving support within the international community to prohibit the international trade in African slaves during the 18th and 19th centuries. The TransAtlantic Slave trade's multiple actors, such as slavers, bankers, seaman and middlemen, witnessed piracy proliferate during the legality of the slave trade. As well, municipal slavery remained legal within these nation states' borders for additional decades after the end of the international trade. Still, even after international law precluded the international and specific domestic trades in their entirety, another unlawful enterprise emerged as a consequence of this ban. It was the era of illegal slave trading. Emma Christopher begins her examination of historical accounts of the illegal period of the slave trade and a plethora of court documents by introducing characters who are indeed historical figures or actual persons and how their lives would become entangled in this unlawful trade. From the relationships that European slavers, primarily Robert Bostock and John McQueen, developed with one another, she creates a method of discussing ploys to engage in slave trading under the currents of the seas in which abolitionist ships sailed. For the author, this demonstrates the residual financial gains that many sought even as abolitionism was the dominant legal discourse. Specific to her main characters, Bostock hailed from a wealthy family whose prominence was only garnered by slave trading many years prior. He associated with an American, Charles Mason who assisted in his illegal slave trading operations