This book represents the final instalment of research and analysis by one of the Caribbean's foremost historians. In this volume, Eric Williams reflects on the institution of slavery from the ancient period in Europe down to New World African Slavery. The book also includes other forms of bondage which followed slavery, including Japanese, Chinese, Indians and Pacific peoples in many locations worldwide. The book points ways in which this bondage led to European and American prosperity and the manner in which bonded peoples created their own spaces. This they did through the preservation and revival of the transported culture to the new locations.

The book makes a significant contribution in that it moves beyond African slavery. It continues the narrative after abolition by showing how the capitalist impulse enabled Europe and the United States to devise other (non-slavery) ways of further exploitation of non-African people in third world countries. These nations fought this further exploitation in banding together to create the south-to-south nonaligned movement which gave mutual assistance in a number of areas. Most other works tend to separate these issues or deal with them on a regional basis. Eric Williams offers a comprehensive view, tying up many themes in a vast compendium.