Captain Canot: Twenty Years of an African Slaver - Long Road Classics Collection - Complete Text

by Theodore Canot

An authentic, dramatic, shocking, and adventure-packed biography of an Italian-born slave trader who plied the Africa to Cuba slave trade from 1820 to 1840.
This book has immense value not only for its vivid descriptions of the inhumanity of the slave trade, but also for its detailed explanations of how the African slave trade worked in Africa.
Specifically, this work reveals that slavery was a long-standing African tradition practiced long before the Europeans arrived, and that it was Africans and Muslim-slave traders in particular who provided all the slaves eventually transported to the New World.
It is clear from all the “transactions” and “shipments” which Canot describes, that without the active assistance of Africans and Muslim slave traders, there would never have been a Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade—and that these two groups bear equal, if not greater blame for the crime of slavery.

Excerpt...
Soldiers’ wives are seldom rich, and my mother was no exception to the rule. She was left in very moderate circumstances, with six children to support; but the widow of an old campaigner, who had partaken the sufferings of many a long and dreary march with her husband, was neither disheartened by the calamity, nor at a loss for thrifty expedients to educate her younger offspring. Accordingly, I was kept at school, studying geography, arithmetic, history and the languages, until near twelve years old, when it was thought time for me to choose a profession. At school, and in my leisure hours, I had always been a greedy devourer of books of travel, or historical narratives full of stirring incidents, so that when I avowed my preference for a sea-faring life, no one was surprised. Indeed, my fancy was rather applauded, as two of my mother’s brothers had served in the Neapolitan navy, under Murat. Proper inquiries were quickly made at Leghorn; and, in a few weeks, I found myself on the mole of that noble seaport, comfortably equipped, with a liberal outfit, ready to embark, as an apprentice, upon the American ship Galatea, of Boston

476 pages, Paperback

Published June 26, 2022

About the author

1804-1860