Empire of Necessity: Historian Greg Grandin on Slavery, Freedom and Deception in the New World
GUESTS
Greg Grandin, teaches Latin American history at New York University. His bookFordlandia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He is the author of Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism. His most recent work is titled The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World.
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In his new book, "The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World," acclaimed historian Greg Grandin examines how the transnational slave trade transformed the world, causing mass economic, social and political upheaval in ways that continue to reverberate today. Grandin tells the true story of a slave insurrection aboard a ship named the Tryal in 1805, in which West African men and women rose up and seized the vessel. The uprising inspired Herman Melville to write his novella "Benito Cereno" that drew on the memoirs of Captain Delano, a distant relative of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, Grandin has used the dramatic incident to show how slavery was the "flywheel" that drove the global development of everything from trade and insurance to technology, religion and medicine for nearly four centuries. A professor of Latin American history at New York University, Grandin’s last book, "Fordlandia," was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re going to spend the rest of the hour discussing a remarkable new book that shows how the transnational slave trade transformed the world, causing mass economic, social and political upheaval in ways that continue to reverberate today. The book is written by the acclaimed historian Greg Grandin, and it’s called The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World. It tells the true story of a slave insurrection aboard a ship named the Tryal in 1805 in which West African men and women rose up and seized the vessel.
AMY GOODMAN: The uprising inspired Herman Melville to write his novella Benito Cereno, that drew on the memoirs of Captain Delano, a distant relative of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In his new book, Greg Grandin has used the dramatic incident to show how slavery was the flywheel that drove the global development of everything from trade and insurance to technology, religion and medicine for nearly 400 years.
Well, for more, we go right to Greg Grandin. He teaches Latin American history at New York University. His book Fordlandia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history. He’s also the author ofEmpire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism.
Greg Grandin, welcome to Democracy Now! So tell us this story.
GREG GRANDIN: Well, the book begins with this story of Amasa Delano, who was a distant relative of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from a less successful branch of the Delano family, Duxbury, Massachusetts. And he was in the South Pacific. He was hunting seals. And he came upon a distressed Spanish slave ship that was in trouble. The sails were tattered. It was pulling a long trail of garland of seagrass. It was in bad shape. And he boarded the ship.
And events conspired that he was alone on the ship with who he thought was the captain, Benito Cereno, and about 70 West African men and women and only a handful of Spanish sailors. And he spent all day alone on board, observing the ship, thinking it was in distress, but a normally functioning slave ship. He was told that the ship had run into a storm, and then fevers hit, and that’s why there weren’t many Spaniards around. And through it all, he kept on noticing the strange relationship between the Spanish captain and a West African who was introduced as Cereno’s body servant, personal slave, who wouldn’t leave the two captains alone to talk, even though Amasa Delano kept asking, "Can we step aside to talk?" And he tended to him faithfully. He wiped spittle from his mouth, as he was in a bad state, the Spanish captain of the ship.
And Amasa Delano, who was an experienced mariner—this was the third trip around the world—couldn’t see that the West Africans were in charge, that they—that over 50 days earlier, they had risen up, seized the ship, killed most of the Spaniards, including the slaver, who was taking them to Lima, Peru—remember, this is in the South Pacific, not the Atlantic, the other side of the Americas—and sailed, and demanded to be returned to West Africa. And Benito Cereno, the Spanish captain, stalled, sailed up and down, trying to buy time, not wanting to round the cape and into the Atlantic. And that’s when they came across Amasa Delano’s ship.
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