The Diligent: Worlds of the Slave Trade Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Diligent: Worlds of the Slave Trade Book

From the 16th to the 19th century, more than 40,000 slave ships plied the waters of the Atlantic, bringing human cargo to the Americas. Drawing on a memoir by a lieutenant, historian Robert Harms tells the story of one such ship, a story that, although shocking to modern readers, "was distressingly ordinary in its own time and place." Designed to transport grain over short distances, the Diligent was perhaps not the most seaworthy of vessels. Still, by ship's officer Robert Durand's account, it transported nearly 300 victims at a time from the African coast to the French colony of Martinique, often at a terrible cost in life because of disease, malnutrition, and harsh shipboard discipline. Harms carefully reconstructs episodes in the ship's life, including the curious trial that ended its 1731 ocean crossing. More than that, he untangles the complex business of the slave trade, which was far from monolithic, depending instead on ever-shifting alliances and private agendas in the race for profit. As Harms notes, though more than 17,000 ships' logs from the slaving voyages of the 18th century have been recovered, only a few shed light on daily life aboard those vessels. His troubling narrative does just that, and it gives new evidence of the ordinariness of evil. --Gregory McNameeRead More

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  • Product Description

    In The Diligent, historian Robert Harms uses an entirely new approach to uncover the complex workings of the slave trade. Drawing upon the recently discovered private journal of First Lieutenant Robert Durand, Harms re-creates the macabre journey of a French slave ship and interweaves it with the remarkable dramas of its route. The result is an astonishingly detailed look at the voyage of a single slave ship that sheds new light on the slave trade and how it shaped morality, politics, and economics on three continents.

    The Diligent began her journey in Brittany in 1731, and Harms follows her along the African coast where her goods were traded for slaves, to Martinique where her captives were sold to work on sugar plantations. Harms brings to life a world in which slavery was a commerce carried out without qualms. He shows the gruesome details of daily life aboard a slave ship, as well as French merchants wrangling with their government for the right to traffic in slaves, African kings waging epic wars for control of European slave trading posts, and representatives of European governments negotiating the complicated politics of the Guinea coast to ensure a stead supply of labor for their countries' colonies. The Diligent is filled with rich stories that explain how the slave trade worked on all levels, from geopolitics to the rigging of ships.

  • 0465028721
  • 9780465028726
  • Robert Harms
  • 30 November 2002
  • Basic Books
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 496
  • Reprint
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