The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

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From the acclaimed author of Fordlandia, the story of a remarkable slave rebellion that illuminates America s struggle with slavery and freedom during the Age of Revolution and beyond.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 he thought were slaves They weren t Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse, acting as if they were humble servants When Delano, an idealistic, anti slavery republican, finally realized the deception, he responded with explosive violence.Drawing on research on four continents, The Empire of Necessity explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary event an event that already inspired Herman Melville s masterpiece Benito Cereno Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, 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. New Download The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World Author Greg Grandin For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr I was lucky to receive this book from a Goodreads giveaway The importance of this book is really not clear in the description on the book s cover This is the history of a slave rebellion in the South Pacific that is thwarted by a New England ship Captain, Amasa Delano However, this book is so muchthan the story of that rebellion Mr Grandin uses that story as a springboard to illustrate and explore the history of freedom and slavery in all of the Americas The rebellion takes place in I was lucky to receive this book from a Goodreads giveaway The importance of this book is really not clear in the description on the book s cover This is the history of a slave rebellion in the South Pacific that is thwarted by a New England ship Captain, Amasa Delano However, this book is so muchthan the story of that rebellion Mr Grandin uses that story as a springboard to illustrate and explore the history of freedom and slavery in all of the Americas The rebellion takes place in 1805, not long after the Age of Freedom in the US when independence was being celebrated The history covered in the book looks at different aspec...Benito Cereno was a 19th century sea captain Benito Cereno is also a novelette that was written by Herman Melville Melville s story was based on a true life slaver, Cereno, and a slave uprising that Melville s relative, another sea captain named Amasa Delano, happens upon in the Pacific in 1805 Slave uprisings happened but were fairly unusual but on Cereno s ship, the Tryal, the Muslim slaves decide to murder their captors and requisition the ship to take them back to Africa Most of this Benito Cereno was a 19th century sea captain Benito Cereno is also a novelette that was written by Herman Melville Melville s story was based on a true life slaver, Cereno, and a slave uprising that Melville s relative, another sea captain named Amasa Delano, happens upon in the Pacific in 1805 Slave uprisings happened but were fairly unusual but on Cereno s ship, the Tryal, the Muslim slaves decide to murder their captors and requisition the ship to take them back to Africa Most of this takes place during their holiest holiday Ramadan.It seems like life on the sea was a risky proposal during this period and often an unsavory one The way to make the big money didn t revolve around regular goods Hunting whales for their ...Among the finest, most compelling works I ve ever read on Latin America, on slavery, and on Melville Also a complement or prequel to another great recent work on slavery, Walter Johnson s River of Dark Dreams.If you re not immediately tempted to buy this book, but are at least tempted to test it, read the Epilogue Herman Melville s America pp 265 273 These few pages will give you a good idea of what you re in for should you make the investment in time and money.I, like most Americans, am well acquainted with the legacy of slavery at least as far as slavery in these United States is concerned But I must confess, I had no idea of the full extent of slavery in the Western Hemisphere until I read If you re not immediately tempted to buy this book, but are at least tempted to test it, read the Epilogue Herman Melville s America pp 265 273 These few pages will give you a good idea of what you re in for should you make the investment in time and money.I, like most Americans, am well acquainted with the legacy of slavery at least as far as slavery in these United States is concerned But I must confess, I had no idea of the full extent of slavery in the Western Hemisphere until I read Professor Grandin s The Empire of Necessity. Nor was I acquainted with the polemic surrounding slavery as shared by many of young America s literati and aspiring philosophers.As a philosophy major in college myself, I was naturally intrigued by observations such as the following, which we find on p 89 Not too long after this event, the German philosopher G W F Hegel published his Phenomenology of Spirit, which contains what the historian David Brion Davis describes as the most profound analysis of slave...Frankly, much about this book was really uncomfortable to read And yet paradoxically, I finished its almost 300 pages including reading most of its many footnotes in a very few days The book s surface narrative follows the seafaring peregrinations of New Englander Amasa Delano, focusing in on his 1805 encounter with a slave rebellion on the ship Tryal off the coast of Chile The undercurrents of the book were about the enslavement of one race by another about inner darkness invading the Frankly, much about this...I ll be reviewing this for the Historical Novel Review Until then, I can say that this was a powerful book It will be one to reread to fully appreciate its depths Highly recommended.An excellent book about the South American slave trade I recommend it for lovers of history, literature, and excellent writing.I expected this book to haveinformation earlier in the book about the slave rebellion it is supposed to be about Instead, I found myself readingabout slavery in general, especially in South America I did find parts of it interesting, and learnedabout the economic impact of slavery on New England even while slavery there was not common, and about slavery before the southern US was as heavily mired in it as it would become.However, the writing felt disjointed to me It didn t I expected this book to haveinformation earlier in the book about the slave rebellion it is supposed to be about Instead, I found myself readingabout slavery in general, especially in South America I did find parts of it interesting, and learnedabout the economic impact of slavery on New England even while slavery there was not common, and about slavery before the southern US was as heavily mired in it as it would become.However, the writing felt disjointed to me It didn t flow well, and I felt like I was looking at a kaleidescope 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 killi...I didn t choose to read this book because of the topic but, rather, because of the author I m a great admirer of the work of Greg Grandin That said, I was hooked after the first few pages of this book Mr Grandin tells this story like no one else could Amazing read amazing scholarshipFirst, the bad 1 I could have done without the graduate school like philosophical navel gazing Grandin becomes somewhat incoherent in these sections, and since I did not pick this up as a discourse in Herman Melville s political beliefs, these sections made me impatient Grandin includes them because he is writing about the historical 1804 slave uprising on Benito Cerreno s Tryal Grandin uses Melville s 1855 fictional account Benito Cereno to discuss not only Melville s life, but his views First, the bad 1 I could have done without the graduate school like philosophical navel gazing Grandin becomes somewhat incoherent in these sections, and since I did not pick this up as a discourse in Herman Melville s political beliefs, these sections made me impatient Grandin includes them because he is writing about the historical 1804 slave uprising on Benito Cerreno s Tryal Grandin use...

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
  • English
  • 18 April 2019
  • Hardcover
  • 384 pages
  • 0805094539
  • Greg Grandin
  • The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World