The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HUDLKOA | Format: PDF
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World Description
From the acclaimed author of Fordlandia, the story of a remarkable slave rebellion that illuminates America' s struggle with slavery and freedom during the Age of Revolution and beyond
One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans he thought were slaves. They weren' t. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse, acting as if they were humble servants. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception, he responded with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents, The Empire of Necessity explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event - an event that already inspired Herman Melville' s masterpiece Benito Cereno. Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, uses the dramatic happenings of that day to map a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas, capturing the clash of peoples, economies, and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 11 hours and 27 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Recorded Books
- Audible.com Release Date: January 14, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HUDLKOA
The Empire of Necessity is a marvelous example of a kind of popular history that I particularly like:
o The author chooses some fascinating, perhaps neglected, event, the narration of which might only comprise a chapter.
o He researches the hell out of it: following leads forward and backward in time, not unlike James Burke in Connections.
o He then tells every interesting story that arises from his research, often revealing unsuspected themes linking events separated by space and time.
The result can be delightfully discursive; sometimes the tangents overshadow the main event, but Grandin, with the help of Melville as a sort of tour guide, is never dull.
In this case, the main event involves a slave revolt on a ship, the Tryal, off the western coast of South America. The slaves rely on one member of the crew, Benito Cerreno, to guide the ship back to Africa, a geographically daunting proposition to begin with, as it would involve rounding Cape Horn. Inevitably, another ship, in this case a sealing ship (meaning a ship devoted to the profitable slaughter of seals), spots the Tryal and sends boats over to assist the obviously ailing ship. The slaves strategy for handling this visit is to pretend that they are still captives under the control of the few remaining whites aboard their ship. The ruse only works for a few hours; the denouement is a bloody mess. But the story resonates and serves as a launching pad for the author's exploration of slavery, sailing, capitalism, and freedom.
In college, I was engrossed and disturbed when I read BENITO CERENO, a novella by Herman Melville. In it, African slaves revolt and take over a slave ship. Then pretend to still be enslaved when confronted by an American vessel, making their prisoner, the slave ship’s Spanish captain, play along with them. I chose to read THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY because it is centered on the true historical episode upon which Melville based his novella. The author presents a factual account of this event, and tells us what is known about the individuals involved. It’s a chilling, dramatic story and also significant history, well worth reading. Delano, the American captain, comes off as venal and quite capable of brutality not only toward the rebel slaves but his own crew. Did his supposed political ideals, derived from the American revolution, have any impact at all on his actual behavior? It does not seem so. One would like to know more about the slaves who led the shipboard rebellion. Were they Moslems, perhaps highly literate, even scholars? Much of what Grandin writes about them has to be conjecture—but it is interesting conjecture. They—the slaves—are certainly the most sympathetic figures in the narrative. They deserve to be remembered.
Grandin's refections on Melville's novella were quite interesting to me. Did Melville see the rebel slaves as evil? The varying moral judgments it is possible to read into Melville's story is part of what makes it so haunting. At different times, people have interpreted BENITO CERENO in various ways, as the Grandin shows us.
The author uses the shipboard rebellion as a centerpiece as he paints a larger picture of the slave trade in the New World. He takes us aboard slave ships and to their ports of call.
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