author

Pedro de Zulueta

Best known today for the book that grew out of his 1843 London slave-trading trial, this 19th-century merchant wrote from the center of one of the era’s fiercest debates over commerce, law, and abolition. His surviving work reads less like a conventional memoir and more like a firsthand document of a public scandal.

1 Audiobook

Trial of Pedro de Zulueta, jun., on a Charge of Slave Trading, under 5 Geo. IV, cap. 113, on Friday the 27th, Saturday the 28th, and Monday the 30th of October, 1843, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London A Full Report from the Short-hand Notes of W. B. Gurney, Esq.

Trial of Pedro de Zulueta, jun., on a Charge of Slave Trading, under 5 Geo. IV, cap. 113, on Friday the 27th, Saturday the 28th, and Monday the 30th of October, 1843, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, London A Full Report from the Short-hand Notes of W. B. Gurney, Esq.

by Pedro de Zulueta, William Brodie Gurney

About the author

Pedro de Zulueta is associated with Trial of Pedro de Zulueta, Jun., on a Charge of Slave Trading, published in London in 1844. Library and archive records describe it as a report of proceedings at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, from October 27, 28, and 30, 1843, with an added address by Zulueta himself.

The available sources make clear that he was a merchant whose name became publicly tied to a major slave-trading prosecution in Britain. Because the book centers on the case rather than on his personal life, easily confirmed biographical details are limited, so he is best understood through that historical episode and the document it produced.

For modern listeners, his importance is mainly historical. The book offers a direct window into 19th-century arguments about trade, responsibility, and the legal fight against the slave trade, making it notable as a primary-source account from a deeply contested moment.