Abolition : a history of slavery and antislavery In one form or another slavery has existed throughout the world for millennia. It helped to change the world and the world transformed the institution. In the 1450s when Europeans from the small corner of the globe least enmeshed in the institution first interacted with peoples of other continents they created in the Americas the most dynamic productive and exploitative system of coerced labor in human history. Three centuries later these same intercontinental actions produced a movement that successfully challenged the institution at the peak of its dynamism. Within another century a new surge of European expansion constructed Old World empires under the banner of antislavery. However twentieth century Europe itself was inundated by a new system of slavery larger and more deadly than its earlier system of New World slavery. This book examines these dramatic expansions and contractions of the institution of slavery and the impact of violence economics and civil society in the ebb and flow of slavery and antislavery during the last five centuries Extension A perennial institution Expanding slavery Extension and tension Crisis Border skirmishes Age of the American Revolution 1770s 1820s Franco American Revolutions 1780s 1820s Latin American Revolutions 1810s 1820s Abolitionism without revolution: Great Britain 1770s 1820s Contraction British emancipation From colonial emancipation to global abolition The end of slavery in Anglo America Abolishing New World slavery: Latin America Emancipation in the Old World 1880s 1920s Reversion Reversion in Europe Cycles actual and counterfactual