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

By Robert Harms

17 March 2002
The Boston Sunday Globe
Third Page E.5 - © 2002

The Slave Trade's Wide-Ranging Web

In spite of the literally thousands upon thousands of words that have been dedicated to examining the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the African continent and the West, it is amazing to realize how much more there is to learn. Visual spectacles like the television miniseries "Roots" (now celebrating its 25th anniversary) and, more recently, Steven Spielberg's film "Amistad" have successfully etched indelible images of the slave trade on the popular imagination, to be sure, but the devil is in the details - as Robert Harms, professor of history and former director of the African Studies Program at Yale University, reminds us.

Terms like the "Atlantic slave trade" or the "slave trade," Harms points out, "can create the impression that it was a monolithic phenomenon with uniform characteristics. A closer look, however, reveals that the slave trade was really a kaleidoscope of diverse national and local endeavors that was constantly changing over time." Harms's emphasis on the complex interplay among local social, economic, and political dynamics and national and international events - and particularly his insistence on the volatile and mutable nature of the slave trade - inform his fascinating and groundbreaking account of the voyage of the French slave ship Diligent in 1731-32.

The French entered the Atlantic slave trade relatively late in its development, and the Diligent was the first slave ship to sail from the port city of Vannes. Twenty-six years old at the time, and a newcomer to the African slave trade, First Lieutenant Robert Durand kept a detailed journal of the Diligent's voyage - including numerous and skillfully drawn sketches of scenes he witnessed. On the basis of Durand's journal - purchased by Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in the mid-1980s - Harms has painstakingly re-created the terms of a world that may seem morally and politically repugnant from the perspective of the early 21st century, but "was distressingly ordinary in its own time and place."

Harms's story begins in Nantes, the city adjoining Vannes on Brittany's southern coast and the leading slaving port in France, with an account of the precedent-setting court case of Pauline Villeneueve, a slave from the French West Indies. Villeneueve successfully sued for her freedom in the early 18th century on the basis of the customary principle in France that any slave who set foot on French soil automatically became free. In this way Harms introduces us to the moral universe of the French slave trade, replete with ambiguities and contradictions. In a similar fashion, Harms's account of the Billy brothers, the owners of the Diligent, provides him the opportunity to explore in intricate detail the battles between state-chartered monopolies and aggressive private entrepreneurs in 18th-century France. Also examined are the deep social fissures between wealthy and socially aspiring merchants like the Billy brothers and the French nobles who disdained commerce and feared losing their privileges if they engaged in trade.

Much like the voyage of the Diligent, Harms's narrative zigzags from one locale to the next, moving backward and forward in time, as the author draws on a wealth of archival research to illuminate the overalpping contexts of the slave trade. Within the rich tapestry of Harms's narrative, a wide range of characters appears. As the Diligent sails toward Whydah on the Guinea coast of West Africa, the single largest slaving port on the African continent in the early 18th century, Harms considerably enriches extracts from Durand's diary with meticulous descriptions of daily life on board the Diligent; an anatomy of the racial and cultural dynamics of the Cape Verde Islands; an account of the notorious pirate Bartholomew Roberts; an absorbing portrayal of the political and economic intrigue among various European countries and Africans on the Gold Coast of West Africa; the rise of the military empire of Dahomey and the rivalry between King Agaja of Dahomey and Captain Assou of Whydah for control of the slave trade in the region - and so on.

The Diligent wends its way down the West African coast, purchases its cargo of Africans, then heads for the Portuguese islands of Principe and Sao Tome to purchase food before making the "middle passage" to Martinique, and simultaneously a compelling picture of the interconnected worlds of the slave trade emerges: "The slave trading activities of Robert Durand and his companions along the West African coast...were heavily influenced by local events such as the rise of the military empire of Dahomey and the rivalry between King Agaja and Captain Assou of Whydah.... The crew and captives of the Diligent could never have made it across the Atlantic had not the populations of Principe and Sao Tome specialized in producing food for slave ships after the collapse of their sugar economy. When the Diligent arrived with its cargo of captives in Martinique, the conditions of their sale were shaped by a crisis in the local economy resulting from the destruction of the cocoa trees. In short, a voyage that spanned three continents was largely shaped by local events and local rivalries originating in widely scattered parts of the Atlantic world. There was no overarching 'global' context to the voyage, only a series of interesting local contexts."

In the final analysis, Durand's journal provides the springboard for Harms's probing exploration of human enterprise over several continents. At the end of this harrowing - and fascinating - journey, we do not know anything about the lives and fates of the 256 Africans who were the raison d'etre of the Diligent's voyage. But we do know a great deal more about the "dark underside of the Atlantic world during a crucial period of economic and political transformation."