The Diligent

"In The Diligent, historian Robert Harms uses an entirely new approach to uncover the complex workings of the slave trade. Drawing upon the recently discovered private journal of First Lieutenant Robert Durand, Harms recreates the macabre journey of a French slave ship and interweaves it with the remarkable dramas of its slave route. The result is an astonishingly detailed look at the voyage of a single slave ship that also sheds new light on the collaborative nature of the slave trade and how it shaped morality, politics and economics on three continents.". "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. Robert Durand was an ambitious 26 year old meticulously studying the workings of a slave ship in the hope of one day becoming a captain. His journal gives a dispassionate account of day to day life on a ship navigating an extraordinary time in history, a time when momentous changes were transforming the Atlantic world. In Europe, the mercantilist economies of the seventeenth century were grudgingly giving way to the pri