The Queen's Slave Trader - by Nick Hazlewood (Paperback)

About the Book

In the 17th and 18th centuries, England became the greatest slave trading nation in the world. This painstakingly researched biography of Jack Hawkyns, the queen's personal slave trader, explores his life and chronicles the rise of the English slave trade.

From the Back Cover

Throughout history, blame for the introduction of slavery in America has been squarely placed upon the slave traders who ravaged African villages, the merchants who auctioned off human lives as if they were cattle, and the slave owners who ruthlessly beat their helpless victims. There is, however, above all these men, another person who has seemingly been able to avoid the blame due her. The origins of slavery -- often described as America's shame -- can actually be traced back to a woman, England's Queen Elizabeth I.

During the 1560s, Elizabeth was encouraging a Renaissance in her kingdom but also knew her country's economy could not finance her dreams for it. On direct orders from Her Majesty, John Hawkyns set sail from England. His destination: West Africa. His mission: to capture human lives.

After landing on the African coast, he used a series of brutal raids, violent beatings, and sheer terror to load his ships. As the first major slave trader, Hawkyns's actions and attitudes toward his cargo set the precedent for those who followed him for the next two hundred years. In The Queen's Slave Trader, historian Nick Hazlewood's haunting discoveries take you into the mind-set of the men who made their livelihoods trafficking human souls and at long last reveals the man who began it all -- and the woman behind him.

Review Quotes

"A gripping tale and a sterling analysis of England's first foray into the nastiest of human enterprises." - Kirkus Reviews
"Hazlewood's book is a tour de force." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A superb job of telling an exciting swashbuckling tale... Hazlewood tells this story in a sweeping narrative that often contains ingredients similar to a novel. He has also performed exceptional research that gives the slave trade a whole new framework. Unlike many biographers who develop such a bonding with their subjects that their objectivity is compromised, Hazlewood tells the story both dramatically and straight." - Deseret News (Salt Lake City)
"[A] fascinating study of this comparatively unexplored chapter of British history... The Queen's Slave Trader is an adventure story first and foremost... both harrowingly graphic and at the same time impossible to put down." - Richmond Times-Dispatch
"[A] tough-minded work... Hazlewood brilliantly reconstructs the chaotic struggle on land and sea... [The Queen's Slave Trader] would make a fine Hollywood movie... Hazlewood paints a persuasive portrait of Hawkyns as a brave, intelligent and resourceful man, but with the ethics of a thug." - The Nation
"Elizabethans may have deplored the slave trade but upon it the British Empire was built... The Queen's Slave Trader reshapes the traditional view of Elizabeth I as a kind of secular saint among monarchs... Hazlewood tells the story with verve, and it touches most of the sore points of Elizabeth's reign." - The Weekend Australian
"Hazlewood knows how to spin a good yarn, and there is plenty of excitement as Hawkyns' adventures span four continents. This engrossing, well-researched account is likely to leave readers alternatively exhilarated and repelled, but it is a ride worth taking." - Booklist
"[An] engrossing, well-researched account." - Booklist
"Hazlewood writes with precision, passion and the ease born of familiarity with his subject." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"[An] impressively researched and disturbing biography. . . . Brilliantly evocative of 16th-century Anglo-Spanish rivalry and the brutality of Elizabethan maritime life, Hazlewood's book is a tour de force that condemns rather than romanticizes its thuggish adventurer. - Publishers Weekly (starred review)