A century before Britain became involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, whole villages and towns in England, Ireland, Italy, Spain and other European countries were being depopulated by slavers, who transported the men, women and children to Africa where they were sold to the highest bidder. This is the forgotten slave trade. Starting with the practice of slavery in the ancient world, Simon Webb traces the history of slavery in Europe and examines the experiences of those who were forcibly taken from their homes. He describes how thousands of European boys were castrated and then sold in Africa and the Middle East, and also explains how the role of the newly-independent United States helped to put an end to the trade in European and American slaves. He also discuss the importance of towns such as Bristol, which had been an important staging-post for the transfer of English slaves to Africa over 1,000 years before it became a major centre for the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Reading this book will forever change how you view the slave trade and show that many commonly held beliefs about this controversial subject are almost wholly inaccurate and mistaken.