Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1612-1865 uncovers a forgotten aspect of Ireland's history and reveals the importance of the Irish in global developments surrounding the slave trade. Black slavery made fortunes for the Irish abroad as they participated in the slave trade and in the establishment of slave plantations in the Caribbean. (Should Irish 'bound servants' also involved in this process be regarded as white slaves?) At home the sale of such crops produced wealthy merchants, urban growth and an impact on politics, eventually resulting in the 1790s in an anti-slavery movement which would claim roots in the Ireland of St Patrick (Does investigation uphold this view? ) Ireland played an important role in the lives of famous slaves - Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, while the Famine emigrants found themselves confronted by a United States divided over slavery.