Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, The

Robert Harms. The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002. xxx + 466 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendixes. Index. $30.00. Cloth.

On May 31, 1731, a converted grain ship, the Diligent, left the French port of Vannes for a slaving voyage along Africa's west coast and then across the Atlantic to Martinique. The voyage was not noteworthy in its own right: Forty thousand vessels made similar voyages over the centuries, and several hundred left European ports the same year to do the same thing. What set the Diligent apart was its literate, ambitious, twenty-six-year-old first lieutenant, Robert Durand. On his maiden slaving voyage, and intent on learning every aspect of the work, Durand kept ajournai, 113 pages of text and 58 leaves of drawings, of activities aboard ship and in ports of call. Yale's Sterling Library acquired the journal in 1984. Robert Harms has now used Durand's descriptions, bolstered by his own research, to recreate the Diligent's voyage and describe the various environments it touched in Europe, Africa, and America.

Harms is careful to warn that this is a narrative of one voyage and not the story of the entire slave trade, but his main argument has broad applicability. Each slaving voyage consisted of one ship coming in contact with various "worlds" along the way. Though not always far apart geographically, these worlds tended to differ considerably in local circumstances. Political, economic, social, religious, and personal matters at each spot the slaver touched, as well as on the vessel itself, affected the nature of the experience for all concerned. The 1731-32 worlds of the Diligent included the port of Vannes, where thoughts on the morality of slaving echoed amid louder talk about the grain trade; several Atlantic islands or coastal regions, where lines separating color, caste, ethnicity, and religion blurred as residents sought their niche in the Atlantic economy; Whydah and neighboring Jakin, where warfare between local authorities and the Dahomey and Oyo kingdoms disrupted trade while providing captives for purchase; and St. Pierre on Martinique, where economic aftershocks of a 1727 earthquake were driving down slave prices five years later. In every "world" or its surrounding waters, we watch the Diligent's crew of thirty-seven maneuver the vessel, buy supplies, barter for slaves, suffer through (and sometimes die from) the "bloody flux," feed and control 256 slaves (including nine who died), and end up testifying in a French court about their captain's shady dealings.

This is a nrarvelous book that will help bring the findings of recent scholarship on the slave trade to a wider public. One has to respect the breadth of Harrns's reading and his ability to integrate so many different, seemingly unrelated, stories into one coherent, honest tale. Still, it holds some frustrations for the reader. Durand was selective and unequally descriptive. It is not always clear when Harms is basing his narrative on Durand's descriptions or on his own ideas of what likely occurred based on broader research. One's frustration grows the more one recognizes that Durand held no greater regard for enslaved Africans than for other items of cargo. (Over the sixty-six days of the Middle Passage between Sâo Tomé and Martinique, Durand mentions the captives on board only twice.) Thus, as seems forever the case with the trade of humans, we get here a perspective of governors and financiers, captors and sellers, buyers and haulers, ship captains and plantation owners, but not of slaves. Remaining true to his evidence, Harms cannot provide the view, literally, from the bottom up, through the eyes of the men, women, and children peering through the grates from the Diligent's lower decks.

Donald R. Wright

State University of New York

Cortland, New York

Copyright African Studies Association Apr 2003
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