Making the slave ship real, "historian Rediker (History/Univ. of
Pittsburgh) revivifies the horror of this world-changing machine.By
1807, more than nine-million Africans in shackles, manacles, neck
rings, locks and chains had been carried to New World plantations,
a crime impossible without ships, the most complex machines of the
age, turned for this evil purpose into floating dungeons. Rediker's
multilayered narrative - marred only by an occasional eruption of
academic lingo and a clunky economic analysis - examines first the
captains, whose absolute authority and mastery of many duties -
warden, straw boss, international merchant, technician - made them
indispensable. Their violent tyranny animated the "Savage Spirit of
the Trade," cascading downward to the victimized crews, the dregs
of the waterfront, who in turn became victimizers, liberally
employing the cat-o'-nine tails on their captives. Boarding the
ships, the slaves, themselves prisoners of African wars, criminals
in their own societies or kidnap victims, transitioned to European
control and found their world completely changed. Here Rediker
(Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, 2004,
etc.) excels, detailing their strategies of resistance - refusing
to eat, jumping overboard, rising up against their captors - their
shipboard punishments, deaths and deprivations and the new kinship
that arose among the survivors of the harsh Middle Passage, a
bonding that helped sustain the resistance movement for centuries.
Finally, the author includes stories by and about abolitionists
such as Thomas Clarkson, who gathered the horror stories of the
seamen; William Wilberforce, Parliament's most persistent anti -
slave trade voice; James Stanfield, an old jack tar who wrote from
the common sailor's perspective; Captain John Newton, whose
religious transformation turned him into an opponent; and Olaudah
Equiano, a slave who wrote movingly about the Atlantic crossing.
Rediker's dramatic presentation powerfully impresses. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The slave ship was the instrument of history's greatest forced
migration and a key to the origins and growth of global capitalism,
yet much of its history remains unknown. Marcus Rediker uncovers
the extraordinary human drama that played out on this
world-changing vessel. Drawing on thirty years of maritime
research, he demonstrates the truth of W.E.B DuBois's observation:
the slave trade was the most magnificent drama in the last thousand
years of human history. The Slave Ship focuses on the so-called
golden age of the slave trade, the period of 1700-1808, when more
than six million people were transported out of Africa, most of
them on British and American ships, across the Atlantic, to slave
on New World plantations. Marcus Rediker tells poignant tales of
life, death and terror as he captures the shipboard drama of brutal
discipline and fierce resistance. He reconstructs the lives of
individuals, such as John Newton, James Field Stanfield and Olaudah
Equiano, and the collective experience of captains, sailors and
slaves. Mindful of the haunting legacies of race, class and
slavery, Marcus Rediker offers a vivid and unforgettable portrait
of the ghost ship of our modern consciousness.
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