The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage

The traffickers based themselves in New York for several reasons: the United States built the era's fastest ships; New York had long-standing ties to Cuba as a market for flour; and Britain's antislavery naval patrols could not board vessels flying the U.S. flag. Harris also vividly descri...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Southern History 2023, Vol.89 (3), p.565-566
Main Author: O'Malley, Gregory E
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Bantu languages
Cooperation
Globalization
Migrants
Slave trade
Slavery
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The traffickers based themselves in New York for several reasons: the United States built the era's fastest ships; New York had long-standing ties to Cuba as a market for flour; and Britain's antislavery naval patrols could not board vessels flying the U.S. flag. Harris also vividly describes the routes enslaved people traveled, their shipboard conditions, and the interplay of violence and resistance that shaped their interactions with sailors. [...]investigating parallel beliefs among captives from Kongo might have added more enslaved perspective to Harris's moving discussion of a sailor's remembrance that dead bodies discovered by the crew were "'hoisted to the deck and consigned to the deep'" with "'no pretence of any religious ceremony'" (p. 119). [...]comparing this wave of forced migrants from Kongo with earlier arrivals in Cuba might have indicated whether survivors of "the last slave ships" encountered people with familiar languages and customs.
ISSN:0022-4642
2325-6893
DOI:10.1353/soh.2023.a903207