| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

If We Must Die: Shipboard Insurrections in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade. By Eric Robert Taylor. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xviii, 266 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-3181-7.)

In acknowledging Claude McKay's seminal poem of the same name in its title, Eric Robert Taylor's If We Must Die valorizes the often unheralded acts of resistance that occurred on vessels that plied the routes of the transatlantic slave trade. This work demonstrates conclusively that a pattern of sustained struggle characterized the slave-trading experience "beyond the line" as vessels navigated the African littoral, the mid-Atlantic, and the coastal and inland waters of the Americas with human cargoes destined for the auction block. Taylor's study refutes the notion that the middle passage was simply a dehumanizing episode endured by millions of nameless, nondescript captives; the record of names and deeds found in If We Must Die shatters any mythic perceptions that might linger. In chronicling the actions of captive Africans, this work recognizes the essential humanity that many demonstrated through deliberate action to regain their stolen liberty.

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