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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 McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.S THE FIRST RAYS of the sun struck the Brittany coast of France on May 31, 1731, the crew of the Diligent was already hard at work preparing the ship for its departure. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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4.0 out of 5 stars
An exciting and informative voyage through history,
This review is from: The Diligent: Worlds Of the Slave Trade (Paperback)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
ambitiously planned and executed,
By Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Diligent: Worlds Of The Slave Trade (Hardcover)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good start on the subject,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Diligent: Worlds Of The Slave Trade (Hardcover)
Harms adds a valuable contribution to the literature on slavery.However, he neglects the larger context of slavery in Africa, that being an unbroken history of trading in Black Africans by Islamic arab slave traders who removed as many as 11 million Black Africans from their homes by force between 650 and 1900. This slave trade was fully in place centuries before the Atlantic trade began and continued for centuries after the Atlantic trade was abolished. Its longevity was reinforced by the endorsement of human slavery by Islamic scripture. Saudi Arabia did not abolish slavery until 1964. For those who insist that Islamic slavery was more benign, please consider the routine practice of castrating all males slaves. Males were routinely conscripted for military service and lost their lives in battle for their masters. Females became life long sexual slaves whose children were not their own. African language and culture was suppressed in Arabia by the practice of castration of men and assimilation of the children of slave women.
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