| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 341 words from this article are provided below; about 623 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Emma Christopher. Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730–1807. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 241. Cloth $65.00, paper $21.99.
Two years after the Boston Tea Party set in motion the American Revolution with its world-shaking call for freedom, a similar urban commotion at the apex of the triangular slave trade, Liverpool, erupted in 1775 when three thousand sailors wearing red ribbons marched with cannon behind the red flag to heed the call of a sailor's friend, Elizabeth Schofield, "Now My boys, Fire away of the Door (meaning the Gaol Door) and let the Prisoners Free." The prison contained a few sailors who had struck with many others against the outrageous cut in wages on a slave ship from thirty shillings a month to twenty. The authorities responded by firing into this crowd, which was also threatening the houses of slave ship financiers and captains, killing several and wounding more.	1
It is with this little-known episode that Emma Christopher opens her remarkable book, which deals with the central contradiction of social and political history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: that is, the advance of human freedom on the one hand and on the other the augmentation of enslavement. That this contradiction seems to correspond to a division among continents (Europe versus Africa, with America divided) as well as to corresponding divisions among the races of mankind produces further complications and contradictions which she explores with rigor. "They were at once perpetrators and victims, heroes and villains" (p. 28). To protect against rebellion, slaver crews were fifty percent larger than those of other merchant vessels. Anomalies are uncovered: free blacks on the West African coast who helped suppress mutinies by European crews, or white sailors who assisted African slaves rebel, were rare. Was wage labor also free labor? Were wages also "wages of whiteness"? Slave ship sailors could have their wages docked in the amount of the value of slaves on board who were lost owing to the sailor's negligence.	. . .

There are about 623 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.