Imoinda, however, prefers execution to submission, but is sold to a white slave-trader instead by a character not in the original, the king's wicked minister, Orumba.

ECONOMIST: Theatre at Stratford

Several buildings in Odessa are adorned with reliefs of two young girls with nooses round their necks: they hanged themselves, legend has it, after falling prey to white-slave traders.

ECONOMIST: A hub of the modern slave trade

"Hal" Rand, as he was known to most, was a white farmer and slave owner.

CNN: The story

At the height of the civil-rights movement, many readers were furious at the idea of a white Southerner writing as a black slave rebel.

ECONOMIST: William Styron

Some of the earliest works, like those of Joshua Johnston, a freed slave born in 1765, depict white subjects almost exclusively.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The play darkens, naturally, for the Surinam act, but equally naturally it becomes predictable: the chain gangs, the brutal punishments, the odious English slave owners, though Mr Bandele keeps Behn's one good white, the Governor's agent Mr Trefry, to balance Orumba.

ECONOMIST: Theatre at Stratford