Product Description

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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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132298 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Review

'A shockingly vivid work . . . from a gifted chronicler of history’s lower decks, at home in the unruly Atlantic world of pirates, slavers, sailors, runaways and rebels'

(Boyd Tonkin, Independent )

'Enlightening and moving . . . Rediker comes closer than anyone so far to recreating the horrifying social reality of the Atlantic slave ship . . . If anyone doubts the reality of that human story, they only need to read Rediker’s book'

(James Walvin, BBC History Magazine )

'Meticulously researched . . . a terrible tale told here with great skill, clarity and compassion' Siobhan Murphy, Metro

(Siobhan Murphy, Metro )

'The slave ship is a powerful focus for a profound drama'

(Iain Finlayson, The Times )

'A brilliantly organised and compelling study of the Atlantic slave trade . . . A truly magnificent book'

(Sunday Telegraph )

'The Slave Ship provides eloquent testimony to the high human drama of Atlantic 'trafficking'; the greed of the few and the manifold misery of the many that was endured in the trivial cause of sweetness'

(Ian Thomson, Spectator )

'Rediker has made magnificent use of archival data; his probing, compassionate eye turns up numerous finds that other people who've written on the subject, myself included, have missed'

(Adam Hochschild, International Herald Tribune )

'Rediker has produced a gripping study of one aspect of a great evil'

(Sunday Herald )

'Gripping drama of human suffering'

(Lucy Sholes, Observer )

'Brilliant study'

(Socialist Review )

'The Slave Ship is dramatic, moving and kaleidoscopic'

(London Review of Books )

‘In this compelling books Marcus Rediker extends his widely known and highly respected  mastery of the social history of the Anglo-American North Atlantic to the slave ship ... the book  is intricately conceptualized and written beautifully’

(International Journal of Maritime History )

About the Author

Marcus Rediker holds a Ph.D in history from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. One of Americas foremost maritime and Atlantic historians, he has held several fellowships and lectured around the world. He is author of four books, including (with Peter Linebaugh) the prize-winning The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.

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Customer Reviews

The Human Factor in the Inhuman Trade
The Slave Ship itself is the focus of Marcus Redikers well written and thoughtful book on the British and American slave trade of the 18th Century: the ships themselves, the people who owned them, their captains, officers and ordinary sailors aswell as the enslaved Africans. The picture that the book paints is detailed and vivid covering everything from the construction of the Slave ships, to their manning, the voyage out from Britain loaded with trade goods, the time spent off Africa buying up slaves and the middle passage to the West Indies and mainland America.

Rediker captures the experiences of all those involved from a variety of sources (ships logs, autobiography, the anti-slavery societies, testomony to parliament). The experiences of the enslaved Africans whose journey often started deep within the continent, to capture and sale by their fellow Africans, collaborators in the noxious trade. Their experience on the ships, the brutality of the disciplinary regime and frequent resistance to enslavement are illuminated in countless examples that Rediker generalises into persistant themes. The ordinary sailors lot is put across well, from how they were recruited, their treatment at the hands of the ships captain and his officers, the effect the various stages of the trade had on them, and the risks they faced. Once the cargo of slaves was eventually sold in the Americas and the ships loaded with commodities for the final leg of the journey back to Britain a proportion of the crew seem to have been regarded as surplus, the high manning levels that were required for a cargo of slaves were no longer necessary. They frequently seem to have been left in the Americas, no longer needed and very seldom paid: an earlier ages flexible labour market.

An interesting and readable book that writes of the slave trade from a different perspective, there are no tables of slaves shipped, imports or exports - many other books already cover that important angle of the trade - only the human experience of the countless people who participated in the slave trade and those who were themselves the commodities of that trade. Rediker describes this experience in general terms, but it is the anecdotal accounts that give the general experience a vivid presence.

Excellent read
Rediker's perspective - seeing the slave ship as a machine or technology of imprisonment - is an interesting view that's not received as much coverage as other aspects of the transatlantic slave trade. The book is well researched and really well written - flows pretty evenly while not shirking from the more grisly aspects of the story. It's scope is impressive.