Robert Harms: The Diligent

Reviewed by HUGH LARACY

Full title: The Diligent: A voyage through the worlds of the slave trade

In 1984, from the same elusive source from which it had earlier received the controversial Vinland Map, Yale University acquired the manuscript journal of one Robert Durand. He was an officer aboard the French merchant vessel Diligent, which was on an African slave-trading expedition from 1731 to 1732. The diary, a modest work of only 113 pages of text and drawings, is now in the hands of Robert Harms, and has become the core of a masterly study of slavery.

Despite the scale of African slavery - it involved 40,000 voyages carrying off 11 million captives over four centuries - there is a lack of detailed participant accounts. Obviously, the slaves produced few records, which makes Durand's daily jottings so valuable, but it is a tribute to Harms' knowledge of the subject and to his technical proficiency that he has built a wide-ranging history book around them. Durand offers a factual, serial narrative; Harms supplies a rich, explanatory context. The Diligent voyage, like any other event, cannot be understood in isolation from a larger pattern of activity and there was a lot else going on.

Harms begins with the commercial life of the port of Vannes in Brittany, and with the Billy brothers, grain merchants who decided to redeploy their 140-ton Diligent in a slaving speculation. It was purely a business venture and the slaves were merely a commodity.

From Vannes, the Diligent went on to Whydah, near modern-day Lagos, to exchange trade goods (cloth, brandy, guns) for people. The slaves would mostly be Mahi and Oyo prisoners of war captured by Agaja, the ruler of the expansionist inland kingdom of Dahomey (modern Benin). But Whydah had lately been destroyed by a chief named Assou, so the Diligent moved on to the nearby port of Jakin. There, over a period of two months, Durand and the captain carefully selected 256 individuals from the large stocks of Agaja's harvest held by wholesale merchants. They stored them in a rented warehouse before shipment.

Then came the voyage across the Atlantic to Martinique to sell them. Unfortunately for the traffickers, the labour market there was depressed because of an earthquake that had destroyed many of the estates, so most of the cargo had to be offloaded at discount rates to wholesale dealers. The proceeds from that transaction were used to buy sugar and cotton for sale in France, but the final return did cover the cost of the voyage.

Consequently, the Billy brothers did not risk another such venture. They did, though, take legal proceedings against the ship's captain for defrauding them by trading for slaves on his own account while he was in their employment. Strict business ethics applied even in the slaving ports. Thus, Captain Pierre Mary was declared to be dishonourable for breaching them, not for engaging in his late line of business.

And what about the slaves, the "captives" as Harms calls them? They were branded with the mark of their new owners at Jakin, kept in irons and constantly under guard, confined in cramped and unhygienic quarters - although only nine of them (a low 4 per cent) died aboard ship - and they were washed and shaved and given better food than usual a few days before being offered for sale. Beyond that nothing is known.

The names of none of them were ever recorded. They lost all marks of personal identity, although descendants of some of the Diligent captives may still live in Martinique. Yet their presence suffuses these pages. By setting their story within the confines of a business history and by eschewing flights of indignation, Harms makes it more rather than less poignant.

It is sad - but also salutary - to be reminded yet again of the banality of evil, a phrase coined to characterise that even more intensely conducted enormity of our own times, the Holocaust.

* Hugh Laracy teaches history at the University of Auckland.

Basic Books $49.95