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Documents an early nineteenth-century event that inspired Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno," tracing the cultural, economic, and religious clash that occurred aboard a distressed Spanish ship of West African pirates. 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 who appeared to be slaves. They weren't. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception--that the men and women he thought were slaves were actually running the ship--he responded with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents, historian Greg Grandin explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event--an event that inspired Herman Melville's masterpiece "Benito Cereno". Here, Grandin 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.--From publisher description.… (more)
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What I expected when I selected Greg Grandin’s new book was an interesting tale of a New England ship’s captain who, when faced with a dramatic situation involving a Spanish ship
Even so, the book is not without its appeal. Grandin exhibits a fascination with the idea of ‘big history’ and, as a result, spends the majority of the book describing how different subjects such slavery, religion, commerce and politics relate to each other in the grand scheme of things. If you enjoy history and pondering why thing are the way they are, this is fascinating stuff.
The only thing that really bugged me about the book is the author’s habit of using the word ‘hung’ to describe someone who has been executed. I’ve always been taught that laundry is hung and people are hanged. I am reading an ARC provided by the publisher, though, so this error may be corrected by the final edition goes to press.
Bottom line: If you are considering this book just because you want to learn about the story of Amasa Delano and his encounter with the Tryal, you can do it more quickly and cheaply by reading chapter 18 of Delano's Narrative of Voyages and Travels, which he published in 1817. If, however, you are looking for a book which gives you the big picture of the salve trade and how it insinuated itself into every aspect of life around the globe, this would be a good place to start.
*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the Amazon Vine Program.
This tragic episode forms the basis of Greg Grandin's excellent The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom and Deception. Grandin starts with the various pieces of the story - the captains, the ships, the leaders of the revolt - and shows how they converged on this place and time. Along the way, he gives a brutally honest picture of the slave trade in Spanish South America. For instance, his description of the land passage across the pampas and the Andes from Argentina to Peru was absolutely horrific.
Grandin is one of those rare academics that can communicate very complicated issues in a way that's understandable but not simplistic. There's a lot to think about here, and The Empire of Necessity is a good contribution to the discussion.
Grandin's main focus is on the paradox of American countries who valued freedom and equality despite the fact that freedom and equality led to an increase in slavery- the very opposite of freedom and equality. Grandin relates this paradox through both the historical record and through frequent interludes in which he compares Melville's thoughts on the situation.
Overall, it makes for a very interesting read. Grandin's writing is not dry at all and kept me wanting to read more, and the depth of research that he did is astonishing. I learned a lot about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Spanish-American revolutions, the men involved, nineteenth century shipping, and Herman Melville. This made for a very rewarding reading experience.
I'm sure that other readers will love Grandin's somewhat aimless wandering of the historical landscape here, and I did give him 3 stars for the quality of his research, but overall the book wasn't for me.
Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this to anyone interested in Melville, New England shipping history, or in the nineteenth century slave trade.
However, the writing felt disjointed to me. It didn't flow well, and I felt like I was looking at a kaleidoscope of bits and pieces rather than a whole picture. Despite a highly emotional subject, it was somewhat dry.
I was prepared to read about slavery, as horrible a subject as that is. I was not prepared for a treatise on Moby Dick, a novel I've spent decades avoiding. And I especially was not prepared to read about the brutality, described in gory detail, of the whale and seal killing so prevalent then (and still today, to a lesser extent), even though I'd managed to make it through a description of the hide and meat market. I skimmed over some of that and started reading again, only to find that I really, really didn't want to go on. I quit halfway through. I don't often do that, but when I realize that a book has become a chore to read, I sometimes give myself a break.
While the book was interesting and did introduce me to some new material, the writing did not meet my expectations, and there was too much off-subject information I could not make myself read.
Given that, I think some readers will appreciate the good information it does contain, even though the writing disappointed me.
Perhaps some have the notion that slavery was the product of a cabal of wicked men. Grandin analyzes the gruesome economics of slavery as well as the mindset needed for it to flourish. His undeniable conclusion was that slavery was the result of an excess in freedom enjoyed by others. Slavery was a means for men and societies to become wealthy, very wealthy. The creedos of the American and French Revolutions ironically both inspired slaves in their struggle for freedom and slavers in their quest to maximize gain free from interference.
The story is of a revolt aboard a Spanish slave ship which was put down by a New England sea captain. it would inspire, Herman Melville's novel Benito Cerano. Grandin analyzes the background and philosophies of the all them men involved, without presuming to enter their minds. The slaves were Muslims from West Africa, who found in their own faith the tools and dignity to challenge slavery both philosophically and morally. After their uprising on the ship they force the Spanish captain to sign a contract to take them back home.
Grandin crunches the hard numbers of slavery while at the same time is able to deliver a visceral account of the slave pens for newly arrived survivors of the middle passage. This is literature as history and history as literature. While Grandin does not raise the point, all the themes of this book from the complicated notion of freedom, to environmental degradation, to the clash of cultures, to economic exploitation are so easily transposed onto our nightly news it is almost bone chilling.
But admittedly, its not a story that is well known.
And Grandin tells this story well. But of course, there is not a tremendous amount to tell. And so Grandin fills it out not only with the back stories of Delano, Cerreno and such of the slaves that are recorded and, as might be expected, general context of the slave trade, but also goes down many interesting rabbit holes, such as the sealing trade (brutal and devastating to seal populations, and must have obviously been so), the reasons for the distaste for Muslim slaves (but they took them anyway), how marine insurance worked, and much else.
Mostly this is interesting and works. Sometimes it feels like the padding it undoubtedly is. Grandin has, after all, managed to turn a chapter of Delano's autobiography into an entire book. None the less, the reader will come away with a much better understanding of slavery, the slave trade, and the appalling privations that slaves faced on long journeys to the other side of the world. Recommended
The American captain is followed through much of his career and how cultural mores were different than today's. Once he realizes the slaves have revolted and were in control of the ship he attacks and wrets control from them. However, the slaves, being property, were killed in the attack. Thus, much wrangling of who saved who and what was lost in the process begins.
I found this book a difficult read because the story had too many asides of significant length that the story itself was lost to me. Segments on the whaling and sealing at the time were extraneous to the main story. The book ends with a discussion of Moby Dick and the parallels to that and this revolt. I give this book 3 stars.
In addition, there are also a lot of strange connections between the slave revolt that influenced Herman Melville’s novel Benito Cereno and the book of fiction that was birthed from its non-fiction narrative. Melville and his relatives were connected to real-life players in the slave revolt drama on the Tryal (San Dominick in the novel) in ways that challenge the boundaries of “the real” and “the fictive.”
There are many digressions and interludes along the way. For me, they functioned much like many of the tangents in Moby-Dick, always leading back to the main narrative and propping it up in ways that I didn't anticipate when the break began.
I have to go back and read this again. Dense and chewy, without being overly "academic" or pretentious (although it is heavily researched and noted).
Highly recommended.