What do you think?
Rate this book
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 steady 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.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
19 people are currently reading
518 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
August 18, 2019
I enjoyed learning some history. Much of the book is not about the slave ship, but slavery in the broader context. I also did not appreciate the moralizing questions and hypothesizing. First person in a history book is awkward and jarring.
April 23, 2014
I enjoyed reading "The Diligent" more than any other book this semester, which is odd, since it is about the slave trade. You would think that the subject matter would make it an unpleasant experience, and I can totally understand if some people just want to avoid books on this topic.
But I have already read a decent amount on the slave trade, and this is really very well done. Essentially, this is a microhistory. Harms has one great source to use as a jumping off point: the diary of an officer on a French slaving voyage of the early eighteenth century. He can then use that voyage as scaffolding around which to build a history of the “series of intersecting local contexts” that made up the slave trade. As the ship Diligent is docked in France, loading up with goods, Harms can tell the history of the French economy of the period and the ways French people were beginning to construct rationalizations of slavery. Then as the ship nears the African coast he can move on to explanations of the mixed race societies of the Canary and Cape Verde islands, before dealing with the complex relations between European traders and African communities on the mainland. Harms is a historian specializing in Africa, so he brings in a lot of African history. Each stop on the journey involves delving into a new collection of sources, but the book never strays far from its microhistorical center. One problem that often crops up in microhistories is the question of relevancy – does the subject adequately illustrate a larger whole, or is it really more of an outlier? But I think it would be difficult to attack Harms in this way. The voyage of the Diligent was not particularly odd; it can serve to illustrate the trade as well as any other. And it allows the reader to experience the trade in a more immediate and personal way.
And it reads really well. I stopped taking notes after the first couple of chapters and just read the book normally. Harms does a great job trying to get you into the heads of these sailors and the enslaved men and women. What were they thinking? Were the slavers even bothering to justify this to themselves? Did the enslaved people understand where they were going, or why? Did the people living at each stop on the route ever stop and consider their role in the whole process? A lot to ponder in this book.
But I have already read a decent amount on the slave trade, and this is really very well done. Essentially, this is a microhistory. Harms has one great source to use as a jumping off point: the diary of an officer on a French slaving voyage of the early eighteenth century. He can then use that voyage as scaffolding around which to build a history of the “series of intersecting local contexts” that made up the slave trade. As the ship Diligent is docked in France, loading up with goods, Harms can tell the history of the French economy of the period and the ways French people were beginning to construct rationalizations of slavery. Then as the ship nears the African coast he can move on to explanations of the mixed race societies of the Canary and Cape Verde islands, before dealing with the complex relations between European traders and African communities on the mainland. Harms is a historian specializing in Africa, so he brings in a lot of African history. Each stop on the journey involves delving into a new collection of sources, but the book never strays far from its microhistorical center. One problem that often crops up in microhistories is the question of relevancy – does the subject adequately illustrate a larger whole, or is it really more of an outlier? But I think it would be difficult to attack Harms in this way. The voyage of the Diligent was not particularly odd; it can serve to illustrate the trade as well as any other. And it allows the reader to experience the trade in a more immediate and personal way.
And it reads really well. I stopped taking notes after the first couple of chapters and just read the book normally. Harms does a great job trying to get you into the heads of these sailors and the enslaved men and women. What were they thinking? Were the slavers even bothering to justify this to themselves? Did the enslaved people understand where they were going, or why? Did the people living at each stop on the route ever stop and consider their role in the whole process? A lot to ponder in this book.
August 29, 2014
Fascinating history.
June 14, 2020
This book was well-written history describing the slave trade focusing on the actors both European and African that were facilitating the slave trade. As the author acknowledges in the afterword there were no source to describe or contextualize the experience of the enslaved people who brought from West Africa to Martinique. I thought the book was lacking when the author attempted to explain experiences of the enslaved peoples. He was constrained but constantly just asking questions felt seemed to repetitive where there was no sources. On specifically the experience of the enslaved peoples, the banality of the reports about their condition or even some ideal management of slavery brought out true horror.
The author is a strong, economic historian and this book is about how black people came to subjugated in a racial caste system to facilitate European cloth, gunpowder, and fine goods to Africa in exchange for Europeans to receive cotton and sugar. As the author states the slave trade were for the purpose of the European elite to consume sugar. Once again the horror is laid out in the banal economic reality that was at play in 18th century commerce.
The author is a strong, economic historian and this book is about how black people came to subjugated in a racial caste system to facilitate European cloth, gunpowder, and fine goods to Africa in exchange for Europeans to receive cotton and sugar. As the author states the slave trade were for the purpose of the European elite to consume sugar. Once again the horror is laid out in the banal economic reality that was at play in 18th century commerce.
January 30, 2025
A magnificent work of historical nonfiction - Harms’ use of microhistories to knit a tapestry of life under the French slave trade is fascinating and incredibly effective at immersing the reader in the characters’ minds. His sources are sweeping and the time and effort he and his assistants put into the narrative is no joke! Though he deals with a fraught history, he deftly navigates the nuances around the slave trade, and his frustration at not finding more answers about the 242 captives sold is palpable and understandable. Despite this, I learned so much about the African kingdoms Durand and other French slavers visited, as well has how Africa was regarded by Europeans (the answer might surprise you). Overall, he does a fantastic job balancing historicity with narrative engrossment to prove just how instrumental the slave trade was to France; it is telling that this Africanist received a prize for best French history.
May 17, 2025
Harms book is an interesting and well written work that does a deep dive into each stop of the slave ship Diligent's voyage in 1731-32. Harms provides a great deal of background to locations, figures, and institutions that shows how interconnected and locally driven the slave trade was at each branch of its reach despite its trans-Atlantic scope. It also provides a glimpse into the mindset of how so many people went about participating in such an awful business. I sometimes skimmed a page here and there if the details got a bit dry, but Harms' book flows pretty well and is entertaining throughout. My copy did have some spelling and grammatical errors in it, for whatever reason. Overall, though, good book.
July 2, 2023
Eye-opening and easily readable account of the slave trade in the early 1700s by Harvard history professor and Tabor College alum Robert Harms, based on the recently discovered journal of the first lieutenant of "The Diligent," a French slave-trading vessel. Interesting that the first French slaves were sent to a Catholic mission in the Caribbean to man the church's sugar plantation. Equally interesting - the pivotal role of black Africans in facilitating and maintaining the slave trade of fellow black Africans.
Well worth reading for anyone with an interest in European/American slave trade.
Well worth reading for anyone with an interest in European/American slave trade.
August 13, 2025
An excellent book that goes well beyond just the story of the Diligent. The author weaves in other stories and general information throughout to fill in gaps and provide additional content. Well written and edited, and written in an easy to read style. Really nothing bad to say about the book. Pick it up and read it if you are halfway interested in the topic.
November 29, 2025
This is an excellent book on the transatlantic slave trade (my area of research as a professional historian). The book follows the course of an individual ship - as many books on the slave trade do - exploring the worlds of the slave trade as it moves along. I assigned the book in a course I taught on the slave trade and it worked well, even if some found it a little long.
September 26, 2019
An absolutely fascinating and devastating look at the slave trade. He did a good job bringing the horrors of the practice to light. It was depressing (but not surprising) to see how easily humans can reduce other humans to mere commodities.
February 11, 2020
Excellent overview on the intersecting worlds of the Atlantic slave trade. Harms is especially strong on the European (French) and West African sides... less so once the Diligent gets to the Caribbean. Missed opportunity, though, to highlight the lives of the enslaved.
January 26, 2020
A very fine historical study that uses the voyages of a single ship to explore the complex world of the slave trade in the 1730s. But overly written at times.
March 9, 2023
Read for my history seminar. I would definitely say this is a micro history approach to the French slave trade and an excellent read to better understand this awful historical event.
December 31, 2011
Excellent account of the Atlantic slave trade, told not so much as a dry factual history but through the journey of the Diligent, an actual ship sent out on one occasion as a slave ship. Thanks to the DILIGENCE (hahahaha PUN) of first lieutenant Robert Durand, who kept meticulous journals both as part of his job and for his own purposes, Robert W. Harms was able to piece together a narrative of the ship's journey, interspersed with information available from other histories at the time (i.e. merchants in Vannes and Nantes, life in African coastal towns and villages in the 18th century, rivalries between Guinea kings, the actual crossing of the Atlantic, trading on Martinique...). It's the interesting yet tragic story of such a disgusting part of western history, though Harms, for the most part, tells it like it is, with only a few apologetic interjections (i.e. cheesy sentences like "this is how it was for the Europeans but sadly we will never know how it was through the eyes of the African captives"). Most interesting was the stronghold the African kings had over the Europeans...many times we hear of the hegemonic Europeans who stormed the coast and forced captives onto their ships, but in reality these men were completely reliant on and respectful of the kings who were really the ones in charge of kidnapping and trading captives into slavery on their own terms. The complicated relationships and negotiations between Europeans and Africans make up a good chunk of the section about the Diligent's time in Whydah and Jakin, which is definitely one of the best-described aspects of the ship's journey. I definitely recommend this to anyone interested in this period who wants a more nuanced look at the trade compared to the typical texts.
Read
April 3, 2013In this largely narrative history, Harms uses a ship diary to recreate the slave-trading voyage of the Diligent from France to West Africa to the French Caribbean. Harms contends that "there was no overarching 'global' context to the voyage, only a series of intersecting local contexts," and so the reader is treated to a series of microhistories of each place and the events that created the current circumstances in the various "worlds" in which the Diligent. Though at the time he was reacting against world-systems theory, Harms is also arguing the the "Atlantic world" is only comprehensible as a geographical category of inquiry if one recognizes that, unlike the imperial structures of the early modern period, the Atlantic world was made up entirely of a periphery. There was no metropolitan center and therefore to speak of the Atlantic world as a single entity misses its key feature.
I am highly sympathetic to thinking about the Atlantic world in this way as, too often, the Atlantic as a geographical category of inquiry seems to simply be either forced or laid over more disparate histories, leaving its use as an analytical or even geographical category in doubt for some of the work that claims to be Atlantic in scope. Nevertheless, saying this story has no "overarching global context" somehow "feels" wrong. Also, Harms's focus on localities is slightly ironic in that early modern historians have sought to complicate the "narrow" national narratives of societies along the Atlantic basin through a shift to the broader geographical category of an "Atlantic world," but Harms is seeking to further complicate the Atlantic perspective by returning to an even more narrow geographical focus on localities.
I am highly sympathetic to thinking about the Atlantic world in this way as, too often, the Atlantic as a geographical category of inquiry seems to simply be either forced or laid over more disparate histories, leaving its use as an analytical or even geographical category in doubt for some of the work that claims to be Atlantic in scope. Nevertheless, saying this story has no "overarching global context" somehow "feels" wrong. Also, Harms's focus on localities is slightly ironic in that early modern historians have sought to complicate the "narrow" national narratives of societies along the Atlantic basin through a shift to the broader geographical category of an "Atlantic world," but Harms is seeking to further complicate the Atlantic perspective by returning to an even more narrow geographical focus on localities.
March 8, 2022
The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade provides an interesting take on a very serious topic. Oftentimes when reading I would have to step back and clear my head as the casual and efficient way the crew and people refer to slaves can be very damaging to how I look at history. It sadly becomes easy to be desensitized from what the book is talking about.
In his introduction, Harms talks about how he was the one to propose purchasing the original diary of the French slave trader, which some grain of salt to the things he proposes throughout the book, or if Harms's explanations grew to be too flowy or crossed into conjecture. However, this rarely happened throughout the book and most of the ideas provide a broad thought-provoking insight into the slave trade during and around the time of the Diligent's voyage.
Furthermore, the book expands not only on the voyage of the Diligent, but the background of the regions in which it travels to - how the kingdoms there came to be, how European traders and states interacted with the people along the Gold and Slave Coasts. It goes into depth on how creeping affects of mass removal of population from Africa had begun to deeply affect society, economy, and governments within Africa. Harms is also able to portray the ethical conflicts that occured in the Christian sailors' minds as they made the crossing, although surprisingly due to reasons not even relating to the slaves.
[TBC]
In his introduction, Harms talks about how he was the one to propose purchasing the original diary of the French slave trader, which some grain of salt to the things he proposes throughout the book, or if Harms's explanations grew to be too flowy or crossed into conjecture. However, this rarely happened throughout the book and most of the ideas provide a broad thought-provoking insight into the slave trade during and around the time of the Diligent's voyage.
Furthermore, the book expands not only on the voyage of the Diligent, but the background of the regions in which it travels to - how the kingdoms there came to be, how European traders and states interacted with the people along the Gold and Slave Coasts. It goes into depth on how creeping affects of mass removal of population from Africa had begun to deeply affect society, economy, and governments within Africa. Harms is also able to portray the ethical conflicts that occured in the Christian sailors' minds as they made the crossing, although surprisingly due to reasons not even relating to the slaves.
[TBC]
July 16, 2015
The Diligent is a micro-history of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, seen through the eyes of First Lieutenant Robert Durand on his voyage aboard a slave ship from Europe to West Africa to the Caribbean and back. Relying on Durand’s journal as the essential primary source for this book, and by providing additional context at each stage of the slave ship’s journey, Harms is able to demonstrate the international nature of the slave trade from a local perspective. What is also noteworthy about Harms’ book is that it illustrates how slavery in the eighteenth century Atlantic world was an established, common, and accepted part of society; Africans sold other Africans to European traders, freed slaves in the Caribbean went on to own slaves themselves, slave sales were a business and slaves were treated like commodities in every sense of the term, and for some involved in the trade, morality was never a consideration. For a granular narrative of the slave trade that exposes the reader to the sights, sounds, smells, and grotesque horrors of the slave trade, The Diligent is an excellent resource.
January 21, 2012
I had to read this book for a graduate course about precolonial Africa. I began to read it, thinking it was going to be another boring slow book. It wasn't that at all. It was rich, interesting, exciting, sad, and happy all at once. I probably forgot some emotion in that list.
One of the saddest parts was seeing how slaving was done. I wasn't ignorant before reading this book, but, as I will speak to later, it was brought to life somehow. The branding of humans like cattle, bad treatment, little food. Africans and whites worked together to pull this off. There is enough blame to go around.
Another thing this book did for me was that it sparked my imagination. I could see it come to life. This is the mark of a great, not good author. My memory fails me now. One of the most fitting moments happened at the end of the book where the owners of the ship came back to Brittany and, if memory serves, were egged and maligned. It wasn't because of the slave trading they did. I believe it had to do with the venture not being profitable. I think I will read it again.
One of the saddest parts was seeing how slaving was done. I wasn't ignorant before reading this book, but, as I will speak to later, it was brought to life somehow. The branding of humans like cattle, bad treatment, little food. Africans and whites worked together to pull this off. There is enough blame to go around.
Another thing this book did for me was that it sparked my imagination. I could see it come to life. This is the mark of a great, not good author. My memory fails me now. One of the most fitting moments happened at the end of the book where the owners of the ship came back to Brittany and, if memory serves, were egged and maligned. It wasn't because of the slave trading they did. I believe it had to do with the venture not being profitable. I think I will read it again.
October 7, 2013
This is the story of a slave ship which sailed from the Brittany coast (Vannes) in 1729 or so. The tale is reconstructed from one of the officers' journals and other documentary evidence from the period. Harms includes a fair amount of digressive lessons in the minute historical realities of islands and ports along the Diligent's path: you know, the wars fought, local politics, grain shipped, etc. Still, this book was a good opening into the very extensive history of the African slave trade.
i-quit
April 12, 2011http://www.arlindo-correia.com/080403...
Read up to Ch.5
Read up to Ch.5
March 28, 2011
Very wordy. It was so detailed that I really got bored with it.
October 28, 2012
lots of tangents but interesting
Read
September 28, 2015An expanded travel log based off the journal of Robert Durand, first mate of the french slaver Diligent in 1731.
February 3, 2008
A historical novel about the slave trade. The nitty grade of the business. Chillingly fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews