Book Launch – The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade by Jake Subryan Richards
Tuesday 14 October 2025, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm BST, London, UK
Join us for a free public event to celebrate the publication of The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade by Jake Subryan Richards.
Based on a decade’s research on four continents, The Bonds of Freedom tells the forgotten story of people seized from slave ships by maritime patrols, “liberated,” then forced into bonded labour between 1807 and 1880. Using extensive archival research from Sierra Leone, South Africa, Brazil, Cuba, the United Kingdom, and the United States, historian Jake Subryan Richards uncovers the contrasting ideas and practices of authoritarianism and freedom that empires and liberated Africans developed during the protracted end of the illegal slave trade.
Copies of the book will be available to purchase.
About our speaker:
Jake Subryan Richards is a historian of the Atlantic world and global history, with interests in legal history, the history of empires, and the African diaspora. Richards earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge (2020) and was a visiting fellow in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University on a US-UK Fulbright Commission Postgraduate Scholarship (2016-2017). Richards’s interests in historical methods and storytelling run through his teaching and public work: he co-curated the exhibition Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2023–24). He has presented research on BBC Radio and written for History Today. Richards regularly consults with organisations, including museums, galleries, and charities, regarding historical research into slavery and emancipation and the implications of this research.
About our chair:
Larry Kramer became President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science in April 2024. He previously served as President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation from 2012 to 2024. Under his leadership, the foundation significantly adapted its strategies to meet changing circumstances and seize new opportunities, including new efforts to respond to pressing and timely challenges related to democracy, economics, climate change, and racial justice.
From time to time there are changes to event details so we strongly recommend that if you plan to attend this event you check back on this listing on the day of the event.
Find more information and book your free place here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-history/the-bonds-of-freedom-liberated-africans-and-the-end-of-the-slave-trade
This event will be held at MAR 1.04, Marshall Building, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London.