The Hundred-Year War Nobody Taught You , the first of many.
They had no army, no power, and no vote. They took on the ruling classes of the world, sent their sailors to die on foreign shores, spent a century and a fortune, freed millions of people they would never meet, and changed what it meant to be human. They were ordinary British people. And nobody taught you their story.
Slavery was universal. Every civilisation on earth had accepted it for thousands of years. One nation's ordinary people decided it would end. Everywhere.
The argument of the book
The book is written. It is in proof-reading and final editing now. Each chapter will also get its own short video, 8 are already live on the channel, the rest are being produced one by one. Chapters marked Watch now already have a video you can see today.
Slavery existed for thousands of years across every continent and civilisation. The story of how it began to end is the story of one nation's ordinary people, and what they did when nobody was coming to make them. This is not a story about governments or empires. It is a story about a people who saw something wrong and refused to stop until it was fixed.
How the English developed the moral compass that would change the world. From serfdom to Somerset. Five centuries of fighting for freedom on their own soil, against their own system, until the principle was locked into law.
How the English character was formed through centuries of resistance to bondage at home. The foundation that made abolition possible.
Granville Sharp, Jonathan Strong, and the beginning of the fight.
Somerset v Stewart, the moment the English character was locked into law.
The Zong massacre, the horror that turned a legal principle into a movement.
How twelve men in a printing shop started a hundred-year war. The campaign, the evidence, the boycott, the voices, and the man who introduced the same bill eight times.
The Quakers, the Committee, and the invention of modern campaigning.
Thomas Clarkson's evidence crusade, the most important person in the movement that nobody remembers.
The first consumer boycott in history, invented by British women.
Wilberforce's eighteen-year campaign, the French contrast, and the standing ovation.
Equiano, the Sons of Africa, Mary Prince, the enslaved and formerly enslaved who spoke for themselves.
The trade was banned. Slavery wasn't. Twenty-six years of continued bondage, the women who refused to wait, the enslaved who rose up, and the night it finally ended.
1807–1823, the trade banned but slavery continues within the Empire.
Elizabeth Heyrick and the push for immediate abolition.
Demerara (1823) and Sam Sharpe's Baptist War (1831–32), the enslaved fighting for themselves.
The 1833 Act, the £20 million, and Wilberforce's last three days.
Emancipation Night, 31 July 1838.
Britain freed its own slaves. Now it sent its sailors to free everyone else's. For sixty years, ordinary British men patrolled 3,000 miles of African coastline, died in their hundreds from tropical disease, and freed 150,000 people they never met.
The West Africa Squadron, the most unlikely humanitarian naval campaign in history.
Death on the West Africa Station.
A slave ship turned slave-ship hunter.
Captain Joseph Denman and the Gallinas action, going beyond orders.
The Creole, the Hermosa, and the principle that British soil means freedom.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther, from slave ship to bishop.
The patrol was at sea. But ending the global slave trade needed more than sailors. It needed diplomats, threats, and sometimes warships in the harbour. Britain took on every major power on earth.
Vienna, 1814, Britain demands the world change.
The Barbary Coast, Britain fought all slavery.
Cuba and seven decades of broken promises.
The biggest slave-trading nation in history.
The Stars and Stripes as the slave trader's favourite flag.
Warships in the harbour, the climax of the enforcement campaign.
The African campaign, going ashore.
The last slave trade, East Africa and the closing of the Zanzibar market.
The Lancashire Cotton Famine, the proof that the character lived on.
What it cost. What it meant. Why nobody teaches it.
The total cost, financial, human, political.
The untaught history, and why it matters.
A complete timeline (1086–1888). The ships of the West Africa Squadron. All 45+ African treaties with dates and signatories. Biographical summaries of key figures. A full bibliography by chapter. And a reference to the UCL Legacies of British Slavery database, 46,000 names.
The manuscript for Britain vs Slavery is finished and in proof-reading. Leave your email and you'll be the first to know when it's published, plus updates as each chapter's short video is released and as future books are announced.
Book One is in final edits. 8 of its 31 chapters already have short videos. More books in planning.