The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade [Hardcover]

Robert Harms (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465028713 | ISBN-13: 978-0465028719 | Publication Date: December 18, 2001 | Edition: 1

The slave trade is one of the best known yet least understood processes in our history. The popular image of traders in slave ships going to Africa and rounding up slaves as if they were cattle is not only historically inaccurate, it also disguises the fact that the slave trade was a highly organized Atlantic-wide system that required close collaboration at the highest levels of government in Europe, Africa, and the New World. Using the private journal of First Lieutenant Robert Durand, and supplementing it with a wealth of archival research, Yale historian Robert Harms re-creates in astonishing detail the voyage of the French slave ship The Diligent.We have histories of the slave trade, most recently Hugh Thomas's massive and authoritative The Slave Trade, but The Diligent is something entirely different: a deep bore into the economic, political, and moral worldviews of the participants on all sides of the trade, complete with a vivid dramatis personae. Nobody who reads this book will ever look at the slave trade in the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Yale historian Harms (Games Against Nature) explores the global scope of an odious industry by tracking the slave ship Diligent, which sailed from Vannes, France, in 1731. Using First Lieut. Robert Durand's journal, Harms fleshes out the multinational web of trade relationships and transactions, both legal and illegal: European countries competing for profits; government-sanctioned monopolies giving way to private enterprise; African rulers vying for their share of the profits. The Diligent's cargo of 256 Africans was destined for Martinique's plantation industries, and the profit-and-loss ledger was the lieutenant's primary concern, writes Harris: "Durand mentioned the African captives only twice during the entire sixty-six days of the middle passage, and then only to record deaths." Paradoxically, given the nature of his business, Durand complained when having to leave a hostage in Elmina after a Bordeaux slaver abducted several African merchants, that such deceit made it difficult for "honest men" like himself to conduct trade. Most of the book offers observations based on Durand's journal rather than a patchwork of quotes from it. His reflections blend with other surviving accounts to reconstruct the events of the voyage, and copious footnotes document the extensive research Harms has done to tell the story. By fixing the French ship within the context of its 18th-century world, Harms explores part of a multilayered story "how the slave trade operated in certain places at a certain time... during a crucial period of economic and political transformation." In doing so, he extends our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade by shedding light on new aspects of its tragic history. 65 illustrations, many by Durand. (Jan. 15)Forecast: The middle passage has been a subject of interest in recent years; this should refocus attention on it and achieve good sales.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (December 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465028713
• ISBN-13: 978-0465028719
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ambitiously planned and executed, August 16, 2002

By 

Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Diligent: A Voyage Through the 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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An exciting and informative voyage through history, July 26, 2003

By 

events3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Diligent: A Voyage through the 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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Book, January 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (Hardcover)

This is the best book on the slave trade I have read. Based on an account written by a French mariner, it traces one ship's sailing from France, to Africa, to the French colonies in America and then back to France.

It places the slave trade in an economic perspepctive while showing the evils of this barbaric trade. The section on the Middle Passage is especially noteworthy.