The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
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. --Jay Freeman