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Title: The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade by Robert Harms ISBN: 0-465-02872-1 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An exciting and informative voyage through history
Comment: The Individual who has read AFRICA AND AFRICANS IN THE MAKING OF THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1400-1800 by John Thornton & THE SLAVE TRADE: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 by Hugh Thomas will likely find THE DILIGENT: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade to be a welcome addition to their reading material while the individual for whom this is a introduction to the subject will likely find the work both stimulating and informative.
Nominally, THE DILIGENT is a history of the 1731 -32 journey of the slave ship THE DILIGENT from the Ile aux Moines near the port of Vannes, in Brittany, France to the Guinea Coast, then to Martinique and back to Vannes. It is, however, much more than that. The reader is treated to a rather informative economic and social history (especially as it relates to the slave trade) of France at the beginning of the 18th century, including the "reforms" of John Law. It is also a brief history of the involvement of the European powers with the native peoples of the Gold Coast, a much more detailed history of Whydah and Dahomey (for the slightly gory origin of the name see Harold Courlander's A TREASURY OF AFRICAN FOLKLORE) and the effects of the slave traders on those States, a brief history of the status and struggles of free blacks under mulatto control in Principe and Sao Tome (focusing on the life of the black Archdeacon Pinto during this period), a study of daily life for both crew and human cargo on a slave ship - especially during the arduous Middle Passage, and a brief look at the struggles and dangers facing slaves and, to a lesser degree, coca and coffee growers in Martinique. The work finishes off by examining the questionable benefits of the various parties (including the financiers, suppliers and the officers of the ship) from the slaving voyage.
This is an excellent work (aside from a couple editing errors which aren't worth mentioning but, going by reviews written elsewhere, may be greatly exaggerated by some future detractor of the work) and should be read by any serious student of slave trade.
Rating: 5
Summary: History that puts you there
Comment: I think the author did an excellent job of blending together the experiences of one slave-trading ship, the environmeent it fit within, and the way slaves were treated, with somewhat less emphasis on the latter. The author did a great job of detailing the motives of those involved in the trade, which helped a lot to put me there, rather than feeling like I was just observing events from a distance.
Rating: 4
Summary: ambitiously planned and executed
Comment: Robert Harms took on a wide-ranging, difficult task in writing "The Diligent, A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade". He writes in great detail of the journey of the French ship on its only slave trading voyage from the coast of Brittany to Martinique in the New World. Relying of the shipboard journals of Robert Durand, a young First Lieutenant, Harms gives us an account of the political, economic, and social worlds of the European empires, of the African societies, and the new plantations of the Americas. We read brutal accounts of pirate ships, of crew mutinies, of slave uprisings aboard ships.
Profit was the motive, of course, and when the Diligent returned home to Vannes, a smallish French city with a rising merchant class, the ship owners, the Billy brothers, sued the captain, Pierre Mary, for cheating them on the profits of the voyage. Bad luck, weather, illness, and mismanagement no doubt all played a role in the low profits of the first voyage. The Diligent never made another slave-run into the West Indies.
Written in fairly dry, fairly academic prose, this book will not be a best-seller, but you will find it profitable reading of those harsh times and places not so distantly removed from our own.
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Title: Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade by Boubacar Barry ISBN: 0521597609 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $32.00 |
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Title: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 by John Thornton ISBN: 0521627249 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Disorienting Encounters: Travels of a Moroccan Scholar in France in 1845-1846 : The Voyage of Muhammad As-Saffar by Muhammad Saffar, Susan Gilson Miller ISBN: 0520074629 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: 1440 - 1870 by Hugh Thomas ISBN: 0684835657 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Africans: The History of a Continent by John Iliffe ISBN: 0521484227 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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