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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 re-creates the macabre journey of a French slave ship and interweaves it with the remarkable dramas of its route. The result is an astonishingly detailed look at the voyage of a single slave ship that sheds new light on 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. 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 stead 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.