Customer Reviews

Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution

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Schama is always an interesting writer, but he has seldom been as easy to read as in Rough Crossings. Perhaps the subject itself is so unambiguous that he finds his way to simplicity. That subject is the fate of African and African-American refugees from the Thirteen Colonies, the bold proclaimers of Liberty, during and after the Revolutionary War. Unmentioned in most American textbooks of history, thousands of slaves and some free blacks took refuge with the British army and navy during the war. After the war, many of them were transported to other British lands, especially to Nova Scotia. Schama details their hopes and their misery quite eloquently. Eventually, the tale focuses on the efforts of English abolitionists to establish a "homeland" for liberated American and British slaves in Sierra Leone. The English abolitionists, especially John Clarkson, are the central personages of the book, but the former slaves themselves are the most compelling figures.

For a sometime-American reader like myself, the most enlightening portion of this book comes first, i.e. the chapters that describe the role of the defense of slavery in the southern colonies against perceived threats of abolition and strategic offers of freedom from Britain. The motives of our Founding Fathers, in other words, were not always as idealistic as we were taught. An understanding of the American Revolution can't always be limited to Boston and taxes. The story of Virginian expansionism, the problems of colonial indebtedness, and colonial racism towards both slaves and Native Americans must also be told, and Schama does a good part of that job. Particularly revealing are Schama's pages devoted to George Washington, whose slaves were as willing to run away to the British as most others. Inevitably, certain British generals who have been execrated in American history books emerge as more sympathetic and honorable than "we" expect. I don't want to "spoil" the narrative with too many revelations; taken as a "novel of facts", Rough Crossings is an exciting book to read, with plenty of picturesque scenes, humorous encounters, pathos and rage.

The book won and deserved to win the National Book Critics Circle Award.

This well written and informative book provides yet another useful reminder that Americans like me shouldn't be too smug about being shining beacons of freedom throughout the world. It goes into interesting detail about the debates in the Continental Congress on slavery prior to the Revolution, the compromises made, and who made them. The British offered freedom to slaves who came over to their side during the Revolutionary War, and they actually tried to keep these promises, but not always to the satisfaction of the freed slaves. However, a movement to abolish the slave trade was gathering momentum in Britain, one result of which was the establishment of the state of Sierra Leone in West Africa as a home for many of these formerly enslaved people and their families. It is a very interesting story, and the author tells it in a lively style.

However, I can't help wondering if the author hasn't applied a little melodrama to add sparkle to his story; for example, individuals and groups of individuals tend to be characterized as all good or all bad. The author also uses rather nasty sarcasm in describing people and events. I can see his point in using it to describe George Washington's hypocrisy, but he also uses it when talking about Granville Sharp, who may have been quite an eccentric but nonetheless was a leading figure in abolishing the slave trade. It seemed mean-spirited. Finally, I wish I had counted the number of times the author referred to British air as being "too pure for slaves to breathe." Maybe it was, but that never stopped the British from fouling other countries' air: India, Australia, South Africa, etc., etc., etc.

On the whole, I recommend this book as a readable history of an important but not widely discussed event in the establishment of the United States.

An interesting book about a part of U.S. and British history a lot of us didn't hear about in school.

Schama's book is primarily a history of African Americans who were loyalists during the American Revolution although it delves deeply into abolitionist history, especially in Britain.

The British made promises to the blacks, but as is so often the case in history when government makes a promise, it was not always kept. And when a promise was kept, it was often with an eye toward the word of law rather than the spirit.

Until reading the book, I had no idea that the British promised freedom to blacks who fought for them during the war, nor did I know that those freed blacks were to be transported and given land in Nova Scotia.

The book provides a fascinating history of the founding of the colony at Sierra Leone and the progression of Britain from a slavery-condoning nation to a free one.

The big problem with the book is the writing. Schama is not the liveliest writer in the world and his style is very uneven. It whips from quick-paced to a dull slog from page to page. It's just not that enjoyable a read. If the topics and history itself had not been so interesting, there is no way I would have stuck with the book.

Read it for the story it tells. Just know that it is not going to be the best writing you have read.

I first heard of this book when reading the Herald Tribune on an airplane... the review began with something like this...."This is the American history you don't learn in school". How could one resist to read it. They were right! A great read and wonderful historical portrayal of what most Americans do not know about slavery and African Americans in that time period. Live on Lord Dunmore!

Premier British historian Simon Schama explores an often overlooked aspect of the American Revolution and its aftermath, at least among Americans. At the same time that our forefathers were loudly proclaiming and fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, many were keeping slaves. The freedom promised by the Revolution was generally whites only.

On the eve of the conflict slavery was legal in every colony, not just in the plantation south. Schama explores how the British appealed to the slaves to abandon their masters and join the Loyalist cause. Many did, and when the Revolution succeeded, many followed the white Tories into exile, especially to icy Nova Scotia, where their treatment was not what they expected or had been promised.

William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp are justly famous for their activities on behalf of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807. Schama tells the story of how the redoubtable Sharp, with help from Wilberforce, was behind the settlement of relocated former slaves, many from Nova Scotia, in Sierra Leone. But Sharp's plans for an African utopia ultimately failed, and Schama skilfully tells the story of how the dream turned into just another imperial outpost.

Simon Schama is the most readable of historians. Citizens was brilliant, but a bit of a grind to get through. More recently, he's published books like this. Important topics delivered with confidence, and often with new perspectives. His fame is well deserved.

Simon Schama loves run-on sentences. And awkward sentence construction--the awkwarder, the better. And unhelpful punctuation. And overlong paragraphs. And, as another reviewer has pointed out, the phrase "too pure an air for Slaves to breathe."

In short, Schama's not a great writer, or at least not a great composer of text. But Rough Crossings does tell an important story, viz., that of black Americans who sided with the British during the Revolutionary War, and of what they did post bellum. And Schama's telling is, all in all, neither unreadable nor uninteresting.

Unfortunately, however, Schama tends to elevate white Britons' contributions to the survival and prosperity of the black loyalists far above the blacks' own efforts. (I don't mean to diminish the exertions and sacrifices of Schama's two white heroes--Granville Sharp and John Clarkson. But surely the blacks in question weren't as passive as Schama makes them out to be?) And Schama needlessly hurries the story's resolution, and in fact, leaves unanswered many obvious questions that he could have easily addressed.

Still, for all its shoddy scripting, unbalanced perspective, and other flaws, I did learn a lot from Rough Crossings, and I'm certainly not sorry I read it. And so I don't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who might be interested in the subject.

No short review of Rough Crossings by Simon Schama could begin to do it justice. It is far too big a project, far too significant an achievement for any simple summary. It presents a momentous story, highly relevant to our own times, of partial emancipation for the enslaved. The book is not for the faint hearted. For a start there's almost five hundred pages of detailed historical narrative, several distinctly prickly characters to meet and many direct quotes from contemporary documents, complete with the writers' inconsistencies of spelling and grammar. And then there is the raw suffering that it describes. There is real human suffering here, real people who were wronged by others who perpetrated a crime for which they will remain forever unpunished. Balancing this, however, is optimism engendered by the idealism of those who campaigned and worked for freedom and justice, against the convenient populist bigotry of their time. But rising above all others are those whose personal histories are described. These are people who devoted their lives to the undoing of the wrongs that were done to them, who never lost faith in life's eventual ability to deliver justice, despite the repeated contradiction of experience. In the end, it's the enduring human spirit that seems to triumph, despite the lack of any obvious lasting victories. For all concerned, it's a struggle, has always been so and will probably remain so in the future.

Rough Crossings chronicles the politics, warfare, commerce and human experience surrounding the practical application of the campaign to abolish the slave trade. It was Gore Vidal who described several of the founding fathers of the United States as dedicated slave owners, eager to protect their investments. He thus questions their commitment to their own declarations on freedom and equality. Simon Schama provides much detail to support this theme.

He describes black soldiers fighting for the British, ex-slaves, escapees, collaborators and supporters who sided with the colonial forces. We follow some of these people to the not very hospitable but at least relatively vacant lands of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. And then, via the campaigns and vision of Granville Sharp and the active management of John Clarkson, we follow the development and enactment of a truly magnificent project. The abolitionists, not for any convenience associated with the idea of merely "shipping them back home", but born of a sincere pursuit of freedom and autonomy for human kind, suggest that freed slaves might settle in Sierra Leone and there establish an autonomous, modern and self-supporting state. Not all goes to plan, of course, but then whatever does when idealism is realised? But the plan comes to fruition and communities sail the ocean to establish themselves in warmer climes on West Africa's shore.

An observation offered late in the book will be permanently etched in this reader's memory. The first women ever to participate in electing the government of a modern state were black women in Sierra Leone in the 1790s. Rough Crossings is worth reading for that revelation alone, for it is not the fact itself but the assumptions of the protagonists that led to it that is truly fascinating. How things came about, the motives of those involved and the energy with which they pursued their ideals is the real story, the enduring fascination.

There is far too much in Simon Schama's Rough Crossings to review. There are finely drawn biographies, moving stories of human interest, political posturing and analysis, and a complete history of a commercial enterprise based on idealism. The only advice is to read the book, but also to take time along the way to reflect on what is described, to imagine what issue of our own time would be as politically risky as the applied idealism of these eighteenth century anti-slavery campaigners. And then follow that with any attempt to empathise with the experience of the cargo, whatever the direction of or motive for its transport.

This is a jam packed book of historical drama that often goes unnoticed by the majority of history surveys. It should be required reading in American history classes as it connects the slave population to the Britain and sheds some light on the appearance of the patriots as enslaved people enslaving others. That said, the writing is pretty dense. This is not a book to breeze through when drowsy. It takes pretty intense concentration. The reader should have a passable knowledge of American history in order to connect the many important events and decisions that are presented in pretty rapid fire. If you let your guard down, you will miss an important piece of the puzzle.

Happy with this book:) Needed it quick for a school project and I got it!:)