Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture by Andrew Wells

Animals played a central role in the history of transatlantic slavery that has only recently attracted scholarly interest. Of vital importance to plantation agriculture, animals were also key to other aspects of slavery and the process of enslavement. Horses played a crucial part in the African warfare that supplied slaves and sharks were a useful instrument of terror for the captains of slavers to overawe their crew and human cargo. A small but significant trade in exotic animals, especially birds, was conducted by slave traders in parallel with their main business, and pets were important companions in Britain’s slaveholding colonies for both black and white. Dogs were a source of pleasure as well as workers in their own right: notoriously bred and used to hunt runaway slaves, they also served to combat vermin infestation on cane fields and offered protection from intruders and thieves.