Introduction

In Adam Hochschild's introduction he sheds light on the grim world of slavery which we thought we knew.  Although we begin in a positive place where abolitionists once met it is sharply contrasted by the lack of historical significance the site holds.  The reader is immediately exposed to drastic figures which describe a world in which "well over three quarters of all people alive were in bondage".  This is a side of the world we were never introduced to in our beginning education.  The introduction helps to shed light on what little people know about a mass human trafficking that happened only three hundred years ago.