Robert Harms

The Diligent:
A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade

The Diligent began her journey in Brittany in 1731, and Harms follows her along the African coast where her goods were traded for slaves, to Martinique where her captives were sold to work on sugar plantations. Harms brings to life a world in which slavery was a commerce carried out without qualms. He shows the gruesome details of daily life aboard a slave ship, as well as French merchants wrangling with their government for the right to traffic in slaves, African kings waging epic wars for control of European slave trading posts, and representatives of European governments negotiating the complicated politics of the Guinea coast to ensure a stead supply of labor for their countries' colonies. The Diligent is filled with rich stories that explain how the slave trade worked on all levels, from geopolitics to the rigging of ships.

Winner of the J. Russell Major Prize

Awarded by the American Historical Association for the "best work in English on any aspect of French history." The citation reads as follows: "The Diligent reconstructs the story of a French slaving ship from Vannes in the early 1730s - its voyage to the Guinea Coast, thence to Martinique, and back to Vannes. Each of the three worlds of the French slave trade is reconstructed in remarkable detail and with a masterful and intimate eye. The book excels in keeping the broad themes of the history of French slavery in play - moral, political, economic, and global. Harms' own voice is direct, deeply humane, and fired by conviction, never intrusive but neither faceless. This book is a model of the highest professional standards and exhaustive knowledge turned toward a general readership."

Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. The director of the center, David Brion Davis, wrote the following citation: "Robert Harms combines extraordinary research and historical scholarship with the traits of a first-class novelist. As a result, The Diligent illuminates the nature of the appalling Atlantic slave trade as no other book, whether fiction or non-fiction, has succeeded in doing. Harms brings to life real people and shocking events while also giving us an overview of the greatest forced migration in human history."

Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize

Awarded to the "book-length work of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression." The prize is part of the Lukas Prize Project established in 1998 to honor "the best in American nonfiction writing." It is administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. The citation reads as follows: "At the heart of Robert Harms' extraordinary book is an extraordinary document: the journal of Robert Durand, who served as First Lieutenant on The Diligent during its voyage to West Africa, Martinique and thence home to France in 1731-1732. It is one of the most complete and descriptive of such documents in existence, and Harms has made the most of it in a vivid and thought-provoking narrative history. His tale centers on the Diligent's voyage, but Harms sets it in a remarkably rich context, drawing on impeccable research and expertise to explain everything from the economics of the slave trade, to the political divisions of West Africa, to the nature of plantation society in the West Indies. Along the way, in a series of wonderfully told digressions, he presents such remarkable characters as John Law, the Scottish adventurer who became the effective Prime Minister of France, and Bulfinch Lambe, an Englishman who became a slave of the King of Dahomey. But he never loses sight of the most important, if unnamed characters in the story: the 256 Africans who were forcefully taken from the world they knew, crammed into the Diligent's hold under inhuman conditions, and shipped across an ocean to a life of miserable and dangerous servitude. Fourteen did not survive the voyage. One of the most tragic stories in history has been brought to life in Robert Harms' talented hands."

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the category of History.

The prize is awarded annually at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Finalist for the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award

Awarded by the Boston Globe newspaper and PEN New England, an organization for authors and writing professionals. The award is given for "the best book-length work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry with a New England topic or by an author whose principal residence is New England." The citation reads as follows: "Yale University historian Robert Harms' The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade is a chilling and mesmerizing blend of scholarship and storytelling. By following a single 1714 voyage of the French slave ship Diligent from the south of France to West Africa thence to the West Indies, Professor Harms recalls in almost unbearably minute detail the monstrous wholesaling and retailing of human beings."

Finalist for the Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize

Awarded by the French Colonial Historical Society. The award was presented in Toulouse, France on May 17, 2003. The citation reads as follows: "Drawing on the recently discovered journal of Robert Durand, a young French sailor hoping one day to command his own vessel, Robert Harms recreates the 1731-1732 journey of a French slave ship and interweaves it with glimpses of the drama of mid-18th century life along its entire slave route - from Brittany, to the African coast where goods were traded for slaves, to Martinique, where the captives were sold to work on sugar plantations. The study sheds light on the integrated nature of the slave trade and how it shaped morality, politics, and economics on three continents."

• Robin Blackburn
• W. Jeffrey Bolster
• David Barry Gaspar : Duke University
• James A. Miller
• Megan Vaughan : Professor of Commonwealth Studies at the University of Oxford.