Neptune’s Trident

Neptune’s Trident traces the foundations of Britain’s merchant service from the opening of Atlantic trade around 1500 to the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807. Tudor voyages, the struggle with Spain, colonial expansion and the growth of private commerce show how seaborne trade developed beside—but not always under—the Royal Navy.

The volume follows merchants, shipowners and crews through war, privateering and the expansion of global markets. It also confronts the central place of enslaved labour and the Atlantic slave trade in Britain’s commercial rise, ending with the political campaign that produced the Slave Trade Act of 1807.