Institutionalized slavery had seismic consequences for Africa, while leading to the transformation of the Americas and to the material enrichment of the West, yet in its final days it collapsed quickly, and shook the foundations of those Western countries. While some histories suggest that Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist movement were solely responsible for this turnabout, James Walvin surveys the crucial resistance of the enslaved themselves, from sabotage and escape to full-blown uprisings. Walvin powerfully argues that slaves—whether in fields or manor houses, factories or ships—found ways to thwart their captors and undermine the systems that held them in chains.