uthor Marcus Rediker describes "The Slave Ship" as "a painful book to write". But it's not as painful to read as he might have hoped.
In "The Slave Ship: A Human History," Rediker describes the slave trade through the eyes of its participants and witnesses: ships' captains, crew members and even the slaves themselves. He focuses on the early aspect of the trade cycle, specifically the attempts to kidnap people and transport them profitably across the seas.
Rediker draws upon details from captains' logs and the writings of later-freed slaves to weave a tapestry of human suffering. Instead of reaching sweeping generalisations and citing high-level statistics, he focuses on individual stories to help us get inside the principals' minds.
The technique generally works, especially in an early vignette of a terrified slave who tumbles into shark-infested waters, frantically but fruitlessly attempting to elude her captors.
But most of the accounts are largely dispassionate. They often lack the level of detail that evokes emotional responses, leaving the book with more of an academic tone.
For example, some slaves are described as being tortured with "instruments of woe," and others are "flogged unmercifully". But the quotes often come from authors who saw no need to elaborate on the details of human misery their cruelty caused.
The result is an informative if sometimes detached look at a life aboard a slave ship.
Rediker, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh, begins with short vignettes about slave traders' attempts to acquire captives. Some traders go so far as to provoke wars between rival tribes so they can buy captured warriors from each side. Then he describes the claustrophobic ships in which hundreds of slaves are chained nearly shoulder to shoulder, the air foul with the stench of excrement and death.
Many slaves become obsessed with suicide. But captains see slaves as profits, so they insist their "cargo" remain alive. Some captains go so far as to force-feed those captives who stage hunger strikes.
The picture Rediker paints is largely bleak. Yet there are occasionally uplifting vignettes, such as when slaves manage to launch a successful mutiny or broker a return to their homeland.
"The Slave Ship" is a fascinating account of cruelty and torture, of greed and shame, of defiance and resignation. Rediker apparently tries to appeal to readers' emotions, a technique that fails as often as it succeeds. Nonetheless, the tales remain intriguing at an academic level, so even when the stories don't appeal to the heart, they certainly appeal to the mind. – Associated Press
