Reading the two slave books back-to-back was instructive in considering how they were constructed as microhistories.
I much preferred The Diligent. It was by far the more informative of the two books, and in spite of being lengthier than The Two Princes, it seemed more cohesive in following the ship's voyage than The Two Princes did in following the story of the abducted men. This was surprising to me because The Two Princes promised to be the better story. The Diligent did this by making its supporting material more relevant and interesting than that of The Two Princes, a circumstance that would appear to be a very important lesson in how to construct a microhistory. In other words, just telling your micro-story isn't enough. You must relate it and connect it to the larger story in a way that enhances the micro-story.
I also want to mention that I thought Randy J. Sparks over-hyped The Two Princes in a way that detracted from the story, perhaps another lesson for microhistory writers. He titled his book and his characters as "princes," then said that it was the English who called them princes rather than the Africans, and continued to refer to them as princes without substantiating (as far as I could tell) the references by the English. At any rate, they weren't princes and I felt that it detracted from the book. Further, Sparks stated in his Prologue that "the evidence indicates that they also went back to their old business as slave traders" (my emphasis, p. 9). I think this was a tremendously important point for the reader, one which should cause a closer examination of the experience of these men and the impact of the clashing cultures in which they moved. But it turns out that there was only one reference to this "evidence," a letter from one, not both, of the men, and in his note on the source Sparks admitted that "given the repetition of names among the Robin Johns, attribution is difficult" (p. 178).
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