An account of the slave trade in the West Indies, and the islands' development since emancipation. In a town in the West Indies, the cricketer George Copeland Grant talks about the locals' mixed descent and of their loyalty to Britain.

The history of the slave trade in the West Indies is described with the aid of maps and prints: the Portuguese expansion in the fifteenth century, the sailor Anton Goncalvez who introduced negro slaves to the Portuguese, the discovery of America and further discoveries by explorers like Vasco da Gama, and the development of the slave trade in Africa, thanks in part to African village chiefs collaborating with the slave traders.

A slave ship is described, alongside statistics of deaths en route. In 1791, Toussaint l'Ouverture was one of many slaves who rebelled, leading to the growth of the anti-slavery movement. This led to the 1807 Slave Trade Act and the 1833 Act of Emancipation, though Grant points out that "emancipation" often effectively meant starvation at first.

In present-day Jamaica, sugar, bananas and cocoa are grown with the aid of cheap West Indian labour employed by Europeans. Education is growing, and native West Indians have an increasing share in government, but have not yet reached the stage of self-government. Despite considerable progress, much remains to be done.