The Diligent: A glimpse at globalization already in place linking Africa, Europe, and colonial Americas in the 1730s.

I thought Robert Harm’s The Diligent – A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade was a wonderful example of the inter-connectedness via trade and commerce of Europe, the African coast, the Atlantic Ocean, and the colonies of the Americas.  Although Harms relies heavily on the mariner Lt. Robert Durand’s journal of the 1731-32 voyage of the French slave ship Diligent, the book is about much more than a single trading voyage, as the author connects all of the elements of a complete slaving voyage while giving the reader a detailed account of triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the colonies in the Americas.  Harms uses the voyage of the Diligent (a modest grain ship converted to slave trade) to take us through the political and social interactions (web) that puts colonial trade and commerce into context.  Just as important as what Durant’s journal says, is that which it doesn’t say.  Harms recognizes the silences in Durand’s journal and remarks that the mariner only mentions African captives twice during the 66 days of the middle passage, and then only to record deaths.  Harms does confront the absences in the journal and seems to logically “reconstruct” events in order to flesh out a narrative, although it seemed to be more “filling in the blanks,” the likes of which we’ve consistently seen this semester.  So many lives, and so much history was lost to slavery, and the middle passage experience is no exception.  Ultimately, I think Harms is effective as he uses a wide range of archival sources to round out Durand’s account.  In contemplating / researching the role of the historian and writing about absences, silences, and missing information I came across a quote attributed to Toni Morrison in reference to her handling of the middle passage in her Pulitzer Prize winning Beloved:  “a historian is not a novelist, and arguably only a novelist (or a poet) can represent the unrepresentable trauma of the middle passage.”  Food for thought / discussion.