Slavery

Slavery is the primary focus of Flash for Freedom! and is examined from all angles. For slave owners and transporters, it is an amoral matter of commerce. Slaves are commodities, bringing some much per pound, cared for only in order not to lose profit, and dealt with as "talking cattle." Abolitionists in Britain decry white people exploiting and degrading black people, but do not condemn the exploitation of women and children in factories and mines. Narrator Harry Flashman finds this hypocritical, and also notes that slavery would dry up if black chieftains in Africa stopped capturing and delivering people to the white dealers.

Still, Flashy is not anxious to be part of the system and tries to escape Balliol College when he discovers the barque is a slave ship. Unable, he applies himself to his job as supercargo, learning to squeeze the maximum number of tortured black bodies...