Slave: Snatched off Britain’s streets. The truth from the victim who brought down her traffickers.

Product Information

And where are the limits of international involvement? Mende was literally enslaved to a Sudanese diplomat. There's a scene where someone tells Mende that in the UK you can't work and not get paid and this surprises her. At what point does culture relativity stop? Eventually she escaped and they were caught. But not only got away with it but sued a newspaper for saying they were slavers instead of legitimately employing an au pair (who was brought in on false papers). The newspaper did not investigate Mende's claims (pressure from the UK government?) and paid out. The diplomats had previously been charged with slavery but that time claimed diplomatic immunity to escape prosecution. It was a way of life for them. Why pay for an au pair, a nanny, a cook and a cleaner when you can enslave a child and instead of regular pay cheques, give her regular beatings. Both in their various ways, ensure compliance.

Ottobah Cugoano, ed. Vincent Carretta, 'Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery' (Penguin Classics 1999) I wish there was more about how she got used to living in the UK because that scene with the bus was really interesting. Recovered Histories Anti-Slavery International has digitised its collection of 18th and 19th century literature on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Recovered Histories captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels.William St. Clair, 'The Grand Slave Emporium: Cape Coast Castle and the British slave trade' Profile Books 2006 Melinda Elder, 'The Slave Trade and the Economic Development of 18th Century Lancaster Keele University Press 1992 After all those years, Rahab [the woman who owned me] had completely destroyed my sense of my own identity and my own self-worth. I believed that I didn't deserve to be paid for my work. I lived in a state of complete terror of her. And I was still only a child. To rebel against the woman whom I called "master" and who called me "slave" had become unthinkable. It lay outside the range of possibilities that I could contemplate. (200) The contentious core of the book by Williams – who was the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago for 25 years until his death in 1981 – was that the abolition of the slave trade was not born out of humanitarian wishes but of economic necessity. To think that, almost 80 years after it was published, Britain is finally discovering Capitalism and Slavery is amazing Erica Williams Connell There have been many rebuttals and affirmations of what has become known the Williams Thesis since it was first published in 1944, and in answer to these, Williams Connell quoted from the foreword of the recent third edition, by William Darity of Duke University in North Carolina, who wrote: “Although scholars of the British Industrial Revolution generally have ignored Williams’s proposition, they only can continue to do so by placing their own intellectual integrity at peril.”

This book is roughly split into three parts. The first part details her childhood in the Nuba Mountains. While Mende describes it positively, there were definitely some heartbreaking scenes here, such as her experiences with female genital mutilation. However, as a whole, Mende's family seems so full of love and warmth and hearing stories of her childhood was really interesting. The second part describes her abduction and work in Khartoum. Finally, the last part talks about London and her eventual escape. this freedom was a terrifying thing. I was captured when I was still a child. I spent my teenage years and my early adulthood in slavery. For all that time, I had no freedom. I was a non-person. I didn't really exist. (311)

Mary Prince, 'The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave' ed. Sarah Salih, Penguin Classics 2000

Paul Lovejoy, 'Transformations in Slavery: A history of slavery in Africa' Cambridge University Press Most of us think of slavery as something in the past. A subject relagted to history books and a subject that most find difficult to come to terms with. How could some one own another. But as i was about to find out with this book it is a trade that is still alive and flourishing. Unlike most storeys of slavery this one come streight from the source. Mende was captured a held as a slave for so long she did not believed she would every feel what freedom was like again.The next portion describes her capture, abuse, and rape, and then her being sold as a slave to a respected family in Sudan’s capital. There she worked for seven years, suffering physical, verbal, and emotional abuse before being sold to her “master’s” relatives, who ironically worked for the Sudanese embassy in London. London is where Mende escaped to freedom, but even there such an escape was an unlikely possibility. His thesis was that slavery just became economically unviable, and that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was driven more by the Industrial Revolution changing the way that Britain did business rather than any moral desire to stop the practice of slavery in its colonies. Mende eventually came of age, started to attract the attention of adult male visitors to the household, then was "traded" to a family in London. She eventually escaped and was granted amnesty within the UK with aide from fellow Sudanese and British supporters. One of those supporters, Damien Lewis, is the co-author of the novel. Both he and Mende dedicate their time and resources supporting human rights organizations and government assemblies. She has since learned that her parents survived the raid and are alive near her village and communicates with them periodically. Unfortunately with her sensationalized trial, publicized battle for political asylum in the United Kingdom and the release of the novel, came noteriety that prohibits her from returning to the Sudan. Thus Mende's ultimate plea for the abolition of slavery everywhere is coupled by a simple desire to see her family again. One of my professors is convinced megacities are the future. Even today, London's budget is bigger than several countries. Such mega-cities are fascinating because they are so international. There are so many cultures represented everywhere. Reading this book was the first time I had considered that international cities also import the troubles of their residents. It makes me think about how our world is so connected, slavery in Sudan also means slavery in London just as covid-19 in China can easily mean covid-19 everywhere else.