The Diligent

The Diligent began her journey in Brittany in 1731, and Harms follows her along the African coast where her goods were traded for slaves, to Martinique where her captives were sold to work on sugar plantations. Harms brings to life a world in which slavery was a commerce carried out without qualms. He shows the gruesome details of daily life aboard a slave ship, as well as French merchants wrangling with their government for the right to traffic in slaves, African kings waging epic wars for control of European slave trading posts, and representatives of European governments negotiating the complicated politics of the Guinea coast to ensure a stead supply of labour for their countries' colonies. The Diligent is filled with rich stories that explain how the slave trade worked on all levels, from geopolitics to the rigging of ships.

“"History as it should be written."-- Library Journal”

"A beautifully written, meticulously researched, compelling narrative that reveals the greed, brutality and inhumanity of the Atlantic slave trade."--The News and Observer
"A compelling and illuminating narrative ...For a sense of what the trade involved and how it was made possible, Harms' story is unrivaled."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Africanist Robert Harms provides the most vivid and useful description of a typical slave trading voyage ever written. Imaginatively constructed, deftly, and engagingly written, a model of research, the book takes the reader deep into the tragic heart of the eighteenth-century Atlantic."--H Net Book Review
"Harms has brought to this undertaking decades of training, deep knowledge of his subject and a historian's fascination with the strangeness of the past. He has produced an original book that will endure... As a comprehensive and multilayered appreciation of that trade, The Diligent has no peer."--New York Times Book Review
"History as it should be written."--Library Journal

Robert Harms is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of two books about Africa, River of Wealth, River of Sorrow and Games Against Nature. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

The Diligent began her journey in Brittany in 1731, and Harms follows her along the African coast where her goods were traded for slaves, to Martinique where her captives were sold to work on sugar plantations. Harms brings to life a world in which slavery was a commerce carried out without qualms. He shows the gruesome details of daily life aboard a slave ship, as well as French merchants wrangling with their government for the right to traffic in slaves, African kings waging epic wars for control of European slave trading posts, and representatives of European governments negotiating the complicated politics of the Guinea coast to ensure a stead supply of labour for their countries' colonies. The Diligent is filled with rich stories that explain how the slave trade worked on all levels, from geopolitics to the rigging of ships.

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