| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807. By Emma Christopher. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xviii, 241 pp. Cloth, $65.00, ISBN 0-521-86162-4. Paper, $21.99, ISBN 0-521-67966-4.)
The "Atlantic turn" in American historiography since the 1990s has made the transatlantic slave trade a subject of great interest. Emma Christopher focuses on the many-layered experiences of seamen, black as well as white, in the nefarious trade, which was full of "paradox and contradiction" (p. 229). Rendered unfree by the exigencies of maritime service, sailors were notorious for their antiauthoritarianism; among the multiracial and multiethnic crews, white sailors discovered their "whiteness" even as they became exemplars of cosmopolitanism; in a racist venture white sailors were often quite accepting of their black and African fellow "tars." In general, slave ship sailors were the most direct abusers of African captives, responsible for the dehumanization during the middle passage that turned captives into slaves, and yet the seamen were also abused by the workings of the slave trade.	1
The number of slave-trade sailors involved in the long eighteenth century (c. 1680–1810) was not inconsiderable. Christopher estimates that in the first half of the century, some 25,000–40,000 sailors were at work on slavers at any one time; the number rose to 60,000 from 1750 to 1807. Overall, some one-third of a million sailors plied the Atlantic in the British slave trade alone.	. . .

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