The Empire of Necessity

Starred review from October 7, 2013
This dark yarn is simultaneously a philosophical, sociological, and literary inquiry, as the historic facts of an 1804 maritime slave rebellion interact dialectically with Benito Cereno, Melville’s novel inspired by the revolt. Through rich contextualization, the central events are understood as both singular and allegorical for the surrounding social milieu. As Melville wrote about “slavery as a proxy for the human condition,” Grandin (Fordlandia) addresses the encounter of Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, with the rebelling West African slaves and their Spanish hostage as a proxy for the manifold forces intersecting in the development of the New World. Delano, described by Grandin as a sort of “republican Zelig,” embodies the ethical dilemma of antebellum America, contemplating freedom while mired in a system enabled by slavery. Less biographical information is available for the Africans, but Grandin infers that the “inverted moon... was yet another sign of not just their world but heaven turned upside down” for these slaves forced across the equator, and the occurrence of the Night of Power, an Islamic holy day, as fomenting the rebellion by evoking prophetic proclivities. Grandin’s insightful, poetic explorations offer profound insight into a critical moment in the modern development of the struggle between freedom and enslavement.

Starred review from December 1, 2013
Pulitzer Prize finalist Grandin (History/New York Univ.; Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, 2009, etc.) offers a splendid account of the 1804 slave rebellion made famous in Herman Melville's novel Benito Cereno. On a sealing expedition in the South Pacific, veteran captain Amasa Delano (1763-1823) encountered a ship in seeming distress, boarded it to provide food and water, and discovered a great deception: The black-skinned people on board--West African slaves--were in command of the vessel and holding its Spanish captain hostage. The clever role-playing by mutinous slaves sharply contradicted the prevailing belief that slaves lacked cunning and reason, and Grandin uses the episode as a revealing window on the Atlantic slave trade and life in Spanish America in the early 1800s. Delano, a veteran seaman from New England, where slavery supported the economy, is seen as "a new man of the American Revolution" who, like many, championed freedom and found slavery morally reprehensible, yet nonetheless played his own role in the system. He eventually led an attack on the rebel-held ship and tortured many captives. Grandin's research in the archives, libraries and museums of nine countries shines forth on each page of this excellent book. He writes with authority on every aspect of the "slavers' fever" that gripped the New World and details vividly the horrors of disease-ridden slave ships ("floating tombs"), the treks of slave caravans overland through the pampas to Lima from Buenos Aires, and the harsh, brutal life of sealers, who clubbed and skinned their victims, annihilating many seal rookeries of the Argentine and Chilean islands. The author also examines the parallels between Melville's novel and the historic incident, and he reflects on evidence of the omnipresence of slavery as an institution that he discovered on his research travels. Deeply researched and well-written, this book will appeal to general readers and specialists alike.

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December 1, 2013
Amasa Delano was a widely traveled mariner who recounted his exploits in a memoir. One of the brief, seemingly minor experiences he described was actually rather extraordinary and revealed much about racial attitudes in the early nineteenth century. In 1805, Captain Delano and his crew were hunting seals off the coast of South America. They encountered and came to the aid of an apparently damaged and distressed ship carrying a cargo of West African slaves. A few of the slaves seemed to stick surprisingly close to the ship captain, but Delano was initially prepared to see nothing amiss. Then the captain escaped the presence of the slaves and revealed the truth to Delano: there had been a slave rebellion, and after seizing control of the ship, the slaves had slaughtered most of the crew and passengers. Delano was a New Englander imbued with republican ideals and even abolitionist sympathies. Yet when he discovered the ruse, he and his crew reacted with outrage and visited extreme violence upon the rebels. Grandin, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a professor at New York University, delves into Delano's motives and examines the broader contradictions between theoretical and actual commitment to political liberty and equality in this thoughtful and unsettling work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2014

Grandin (history, New York Univ.; Fordlandia) tells the larger story of slavery in Spanish colonial America through focusing on a slave revolt on a ship off the coast of Chile in 1805. It's an episode most known to readers through Herman Melville's treatment of it in his novella "Benito Cereno" (1855), and Grandin does not lose track of Melville here. Amasa Delano, captain of the seal hunting ship the Perseverance came upon the slave ship Tryal and was fooled into thinking that its Spanish captain, Benito Cerenno, was still in control. He was not. The ship had been taken over by its slaves. Grandin presents a deeply examined historical study of the encounter and what followed, also telling us the much larger horror story of slavery in Spanish colonial America, as well as about the rugged, often brutal life of early 19th-century sailors. VERDICT This is an important history of slavery and the slave trade that chronicles what happened to the small percentage of slaves (400,000 out of 10.7 million) who were shipped to U.S. ports. For scholars of slavery, race relations, and U.S. and Latin American history, as well as readers of Melville and 19th-century American studies. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/13.]--Robert B. Slater, Stroudsburg, PA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2013

Having triumphed with Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Fordlandia, Grandin tells the story of Capt. Amasa Delano, who helpfully boarded a foundering Spanish slaver in 1805 only to react with surprising violence (given his abolitionist roots) when he discovered that the slaves had taken over. The inspiration for Herman Melville's Benito Cereno.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2013

Having triumphed with Fordlandia, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Grandin returns with the equally eye-opening story of Capt. Amasa Delano. In 1805, Delano, a seal hunter by trade, boarded a foundering Spanish slaver and distributed food and water, initially failing to notice that the slaves had taken over the ship. When the truth dawned, his reaction was surprisingly violent for someone with abolitionist New England roots. Yes, this same incident inspired Herman Melville's Benito Cereno. Pushed back from October.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.