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This series revealed the British in denial of a key fact in their history – the contribution made by slavery to British civilisation. It also challenged the view that the arrival of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain began with the docking of the SS Empire Windrush in 1948.

Three hundred years of trading in African slaves allowed Britain to become a world economic power and financed the Industrial Revolution. In fact, many high street ban–- grew out of slave labour and slave dealing.

A great deal of British heritage and culture was actually built on the back of slave labour. Many stately homes were the glittering rewards of nouveau riche plantation 'millionaires'. Art collecting and ostentatious philanthropy both became ways in which slave dealers and exploiters of slave labour could buy their way into the aristocracy.

Twenty thousand black slaves, brought to England from the 1640s onwards, have disappeared from the historical records and sometimes even from their families' memories. Britain's Slave Trade traced their descendants.

Bristol's 600-year history as a great port is celebrated by its people, but there has been little recognition until recently that its wealth lay in the slave trade. Bristolian Christopher Marsden-Smedley's ancestor Azariah Pinney - the forebear of one of Bristol's great merchant families, which made its fortune from sugar and slavery - was himself was one of the first Caribbean slaves, sent to the island of Nevis as a political exile following the defeat of the duke of Monmouth at Sedgemoor in 1685.

Today, Pinney's descendants and the city of Bristol itself are now facing up to their slave past as a new bridge has been dedicated to Pero, a former slave of the Pinney family, brought to England in the late 18th century. Pero's story is one that could be repeated in many parts of Britain. It shows how many British families and towns owe their very existence to a past in the slave trade.

By the 18th century, the British slave trade was, by today's standards, a multi-billion pound industry and its players were some of the richest people in the world. The combined trades of sugar and slavery offered a level of wealth never before seen, but few in Britain acknowledged that the empire's affluence was acquired from brutal practices inflicted thousands of miles away.

Part II of Britain's Slave Trade - which moves the story of the country's slave roots from Bristol to Liverpool, which became the greatest slaving port in human history - shows how some of today's high street banks and insurance companies have their foundations in slavery. It also brings together descendants of both slaves and slave owners face to face for the first time, as together they make the painful journey into a complex past.

Part III of Britain's Slave Trade challenges the accepted version of the history of abolition: that passive, suffering Negroes were freed by benevolent white crusaders. Descendants of the main players in the struggle for abolition tell how the battle for freedom was really won.

It also shows how the planters sowed the seeds of their own downfall - these corrupt social upstarts became ridiculed and hated back in England. In addition, the lavish lifestyles of the merchants and their inhuman treatment of African people were finally acknowledged.

From the great Victorian monuments to some of today's high street banks, almost everything in Britain has a link to slavery. But for thousands of individuals, it is stronger than they ever imagined. The final part of Britain's Slave Trade goes under the skin of modern-day Britain to examine its Caribbean connections and follows those who are unearthing astonishing facts about their own family histories.

It also examines how the legal emancipation of former slaves could not prevent an anti-abolitionist backlash, encouraging institutionalised bigotry and discrimination. And it looks at how a population of 20,000 black people living in Britain at the time of abolition had become invisible by the end of Victoria's reign. The abolition movement was intended to free those who had suffered under slavery; instead, it sentenced them to another 200 years of racism.

Britain and the Slave Trade by S I Martin (Channel 4 Books, 1999) £14.99.
Exploring how and why the slave trade grew, this book looks at the controversial role that the West African city-states played in facilitating it. Through contemporary first-hand accounts, it reveals how the business of slavery worked and describes the lives of the slaves, their owners and traders. It shows the pivotal role that the trade played in the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of Britain as a world leader, making a direct link between the barbarities of slavery and the prosperity, culture and diversity that Britain enjoys today.

The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (2 vols) by J Rodriguez (ABC-Clio, 1998) £89.95.
These two volumes, covering more than 4,000 years of world history, reflect on the impact that slavery has had on humanity.

Black People in the British Empire by Peter Fryer (Pluto Press, 1989) £12.99.
The history of exploitation, oppression and underdevelopment perpetrated by British capitalism in the colonies is examined, starting with an account of the British invasion of Ireland in the 12th century and encompassing the Caribbean, India and Australasia.

Africans in Britain by David Killingray (Frank Cass Publishers, 1994) £14.99.
A collection of essays looking at the history of African people in Britain over the past 200 years.

Black England by Gretchen Gerzina (Allison & Busby, 1999) £8.99.
A study of the little-known black society in England during the 18th century.

Aspects of British Black History by Peter Fryer (Index Books, 1993) £4.99.
Based on lectures given by the author, this book analyses the rise and development of British racism, describes black resistance to slavery and colonialism and shows black people as active freedom fighters.

Black Ivory by James Walvin (Fontana, 1993) £9.99.
A social history that examines the Atlantic and African slave trade over 300 years.

The Bahamas from Slavery to Servitude, 1783-1933 by Howard Johnson (University Press of Florida, 1997) £31.95.
Examines the last phase of slavery in the Bahamas as one element in the foundation of later, and perhaps more exploitative, labour systems.

Black Rebellion: Five slave revolts by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and James M McPherson (Da Capo Press, 1998) £10.95.
An account of five insurrections by slaves, who successfully resisted the British army, and how the white population reacted with panic.

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The Bristol Slave Trade Walk
oasis.fortunecity.com/tropicana/294/bristol.htm
Details of the walk - which takes in sites connected to Bristol's involvement in the slave trade - and the Bristol Slave Trade Action Group.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Provincial Britain
www.uwe.ac.uk/humanities/history/sconfcal.htm
An international conference organised by the Regional History Centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol in April 1999. Includes abstracts from some of the papers presented.

St Kitts & Nevis History Page
website.lineone.net/~stkittsnevis
Contains information about the Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis and their history, including the links - through the slave trade - between the islands and the British cities of Bristol and Liverpool.

National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside
www.nmgm.org.uk/.html
At the Merseyside Maritime Museum (click on the appropriate picture at the top of the page), the 'Transatlantic Slavery - Against Human Dignity' gallery examines the slave trade and seeks to increase understanding of what has happened to people of African descent in the modern world. There is also information (under 'See and Do') on the Transatlantic Slavery History Trail (guided walks, 4 September to 19 December 1999).

African Reparations Movement (ARM)
the.arc.co.uk/arm/home.html
A UK-based pressure group that campaigns for reparations for the enslavement and colonisation of African peoples, the return of African cultural artefacts to their countries of origin and an accurate portrayal of the contribution of Africans to world history.

Society for Caribbean Studies (UK)
www.btinternet.com/~sandra.courtman/carib.htm
A multidisciplinary organisation - based at the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick - which has brought together an international group of individuals interested in research in all fields to do with the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora.

The Homeward Bound Foundation (HBF)
middlepassage.org/foundation.htm
A non-profit organisation created for the purpose of encouraging black people around the world in taking an active interest in each other culturally, economically, politically, and socially. The HBF is also devoted to promoting the collective healing from the ravages of transatlantic slavery and its aftermath of racism.

The African-American Mosaic
lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html
A Library of Congress resource guide for the study of black history and culture, with an obvious American bias.

Excerpts from Slave Narratives
vi.uh.edu/pages/mintz/primary.htm
Edited by Steven Mintz of the University of Houston. Variety of extracts from primary sources, divided into 'Enslavement', 'The Middle Passage', 'Arrival', 'Conditions of Life', 'Childhood', 'Family', 'Religion', 'Punishment', 'Resistance', 'Flight', 'Emancipation'.

UNESCO ASPnet Slave Route Project
www.saltdal.vgs.no/prosjekt/slavrute/slavkey.htm
A rapidly growing information base about everything related to the triangular slave trade of the 16th-19th centuries and its consequences.

The Brookes of Liverpool
oasis.fortunecity.com/tropicana/294/thecargo.htm
This ship was employed in the slave trade in 1783 and was legally allowed to carry 450 slaves. However, it has been proved that it once carried a total of 609 enslaved Africans on the four-month journey from Africa to the Caribbean. The site has a diagram of the ship and its dimensions.

The Fredensborg
www.saltdal.vgs.no/prosjekt/slavrute/fredensborg/start.htm
The Danish-Norwegian slaver Fredensborg, which was sunk by a violent gale off the coast of Arendal, Norway in 1768, and rediscovered in 1974. The site is still under construction.

A Slave Ship Speaks: The wreck of the Henrietta Marie
www.henriettamarie.com/
An exhibit of historical artefacts from a 17th-century slave ship that sank off the coast of Florida in 1700.

Slavery and Abolition: A journal of slave and post-slave studies
www.frankcass.com/jnls/sa.htm
Ordering details for a hard-copy journal.

Studies in the World History of Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation
h-net2.msu.edu/~slavery/
An online journal.

Britain's slave trade.