1839 or the odyssey of freedom

Rounded up in Africa, detained in Cuba, the slaves ofAmistad revolted in 1839, before joining the United States where they were incarcerated. The survivors will finally be repatriated to Sierra Leone, after a long publicity tour intended to pay for their trip.

On this supposedly known episode, the revolt ofAmistadthe author offers us an excellent study, better in my eyes than his previous work translated in 2013. The latter was remarkable, but somewhat biased by the thesis he intended to defend: racial violence still present in the United States today Today would find its origins in the revolts and the scandal of repressions on slave trade ships.

Certainly, in part, but slavery-related violence originated well before, from Africa, with kidnappings, raids, barracons, coastal ports and the knowledge that the “enslaved” had acquired of their condition for several months already. , if not years, on the African continent. There was also an element of somewhat strong emotional advocacy to convince the white American public of the horror of the condition faced by blacks. Nothing of the sort here, which only reinforces the point: the presentation of the facts and the inventory of their complexity is fascinating.

The revolt

The author has collected extraordinary documentation, written and oral, in Cuba, the United States and Sierra Leone. He gives a detailed account, constantly accompanied by the analysis of his sources, their reliability, their decryption, their effects on contemporaries, both Westerners and Africans. Very well written, the book also reads like a novel, which it is not, of course, since everything is verified very closely and the story is terrifying even if it ends “well”.

Let us recall the facts, popularized by a film by Steven Spielberg released in 1997. Leaving clandestinely from a fort in Sierra Leone, a British stronghold which has prohibited trafficking since 1807, the shipAmistad transported more than fifty slaves, mostly Mendé and Temné from the interior of the country, including a few women and around ten children including three little girls. The destination was the slave island of Cuba.

They were common men, some already slaves. Born into societies which shared a certain community of culture and belief, they learned collective self-organization as soon as they were taken to the “factory” where they had been parked. In the hell of the Middle Passage, their relationship deepened and they became shipmates cooperating to survive, aided by their membership in a West African secret society powerful in their region, the Poro, and by the personality outside the common of the one who will become their de facto leader, Cinqué.

Detention and press campaign

Detained for two weeks in the barracks of Havana before being sold again, they were able to organize themselves to carry out their revolt on the ship, after having killed a boss and neutralized the others. As best they could, they then managed to pilot the ship more than 2,250 km to the northern tip of Long Island, where they were incarcerated in New Haven, Connecticut, a non-slavery state.

A long American sequence then opens where slaveholders and anti-slavery activists are alerted: journalists, writers, artists leaving numerous portraits of them, theater directors popularizing their adventure, lawyers, judges, politicians and citizens of all opinions will find themselves involved. From their prison, the captives are educated, in English and in religion.

After three years of various epics, they were finally, to the surprise even of their protectors, acquitted. The survivors, around thirty, were finally repatriated, not without difficulty, to Sierra Leone, after a long publicity tour intended to pay for their trip.

A field investigation

All this, extremely documented, allows us to understand the personality of each of the protagonists (in particular thanks to the diary, unearthed by the author, of a young girl from one of the host families where they stayed eight months after the arrest of the Supreme Court of March 1841 which gave them their freedom). The vagaries of the anti-slavery struggle in the United States in the 1840s are dissected, the evolution of popular opinions, but also that of the involuntary heroes of this story, who admirably know how, with remarkable cohesion and intelligence, to defend their cause. .

Perhaps the most original part of the investigation concerns the return of survivors to Africa and their future. The author’s work on the ground was effective. The memory of this story has been preserved much more than one might think. This part of the work – as well as the analysis of their starting environment several years previously and the monitoring of their evolution throughout their adventures – allows us to grasp all the facets of this extraordinary story as well seen from Africa as of Cuba and, of course, the United States, twenty years before abolition.

Everything is placed in a way that is both precise and intelligent in the contexts of the time. A great book indeed, far from being limited to micro-history.