This course focuses on the wide implications of the slave trade for societies in Europe, Africa and the Americas. The main learning objective is an understanding of the role of the slave trade in shaping the Atlantic world and the strategies that historians develop to research this subject. Topics include the origins and debates around slavery and the slave trade, the impact of the slave trade on Atlantic societies, slave culture and resistance, the paradox of slavery and  freedom in the United States, as well as the connections between the slave trade and conceptions of race and ethnicity. The final weeks explore the origins and consequences of attempts to eradicate the transatlantic slave trade.