Shown in early summer 2001, both were excellent.

Simom Schama, showed how the British Military Colonial Empire grew accidentally, first out of the riches made from the slave trade, particularly from "Queen Sugar" which so exploited slave labour - and then went on to show how early protection of the slave trade, grew the empire into an expensive military giant that ultimately put Britian on a collision course with the United States, who resented the taxes to maintain such a force, which eventually led to the Empires collapse.

ITV's programme with Melvyn Bragg, dealt with the churches attitude towards slavery. Supporting it in the early days, when financial vested interests were being so well served by slavery. But finally awakened by John Wesley and Methodism to realise the injustice and barbarity of Slavery and in the end the Anglican church and christianity put its forces into the fight for the abolition of slavery, a disgraceful era for the Christian church in Britian.

The ITV programme was brilliantly illustrated and narrated and was the closest to the issues about slavery from the Gambia, though not mentioning it directly.

Bristol and Liverpool were two British seafaring towns whose wealth was built on the triangular slave trade and though both dealt directly with small numbers of slaves reaching these shores, they were mostly involved in the merchandise sent out to buy the slaves from West Africa, who were then shipped to the plantations in the carribean, befiore the ships returned to their british ports with sugar, tobacco, rum and all the other products of slave labour, making big profits on each leg of the 3 part journey.

If you get a chance to see a repeat of this programme and would like an unbiased view of slavery and its abolition, then don't miss it second time around.