Robert Harms, Professor of African Studies and History, will present a lecture entitled “Worlds of the Slave Trade: The Voyage of the Diligent, 1731-1732,” on January 20 at 7:30 P.M. at Luce Hall Auditorium. Reception to follow.
In 1731 the Diligent left the French port of Vannes on a 15-month Slaving voyage to West Africa and the Caribbean. It was an evil odyssey that would pack 256 captive Africans into the 69-foot ship to be transported to lives of forced labor on the sugar plantations of Martinique. Ten of them would die in transit.
The voyage took place at a time when the Atlantic world was in turmoil. In Europe, the mercantilist economies of the seventeenth century were giving way to the private enterprise capitalism of the eighteenth century. In West Africa, the trading states of the Guinea Coast were being overrun by militarized empires that were financed by profits from the slave trade.
In the midst of all this, First Lieutenant Robert Durand, 26 years old, kept a detailed journal of the events that surrounded him and illustrated it with some 80 drawings. But Durand was by no means an innocent observer. He personally directed the purchase of slaves on the West African coast and he even purchased five captives for himself. Before the voyage was over, both the King of France and the African King of Dahomey would be drawn in to its activities.
This slide-illustrated lecture uses documents, drawings, and maps of the period to explore the ideas, practices, and personalities that animated the slave trade and shaped the emerging Atlantic world.
