I am elated that Liverpool University Press will publish my latest book The Infernal Tambopata: British Slavery in 20th Century Peru and Bolivia later this year in their series Liverpool Studies in International Slavery.  It describes how a British rubber company operating in the Amazonian Selva between 1907 and 1913 enslaved over 700 indigenous people.  Conditions were brutal.  Workers were flogged.  Four were shot dead after escaping.  There were severe food shortages leading to starvation.  Disease was rampant.  Over one fifth of the work force perished.  The book lists the names of 150 men who died.  Some bodies were left unburied, to rot or be eaten by birds.  There was sexual abuse of women and girls.  The company bribed judges and local officials.  British Prime Minister Asquith misled Parliament about the company.  The Foreign Office prevented British diplomats from investigating.  The Infernal Tambopata is a sensational historical exposé which demonstrates that slavery did not end on abolition.  This was contemporary slavery of the kind that continues to exist throughout the world today.  

Academic peer reviewers have written

• This is a study that cannot be ignored.
• No one is going to match, let alone outdo, Nic Madge’s research. It represents a major point of departure in the historiography of the rubber industry and draws attention to glaring oversights on the part of academics.
• Madge presents a watertight case that the historical evidence meets the academic and legalistic definitions of enslavement in the modern world.  The case is conclusive and irrefutable.
• This is a significant addition to the Latin American History field.

Early versions of my research were published in La Revista de Historia de America and the Bodleian Library blog.   Click here for the Bodleian Blog.

Travel Writing