Africa. He talked at the new public library. [ applause ] thank y thank you. This is a wonderful institution and gave me an event to look at this great book. It is a great book. It was a thrill to be asked to do this with greg tonight. He comes at it as a historian and i am a reader of his book and a leader of melville and that is wellfitting we should be meeting into the new york library to talk about the greatest new yorker that ever lived. I dont think anybody stands in his wake. And to talk about the much larger story that he was expanding upon in it. And greg asked me to do the honors of talking for a minute at the outset about playing out the story which i am sure many of you are familiar with and many of you may not have read as recently. I thought i would do that. And i remember seeing a document once about pablo who played bock every day and said i also do that. So it is benedicts on the house. This is the story of a man who fetches up on the ceiling of a long expedition. They are running out of seals to kill. And he is in latin off the coast of chile. He sees this ship in a cove and approaches it. This appears in his memmer. He expands upon it in his own way. The story is he went aboard the ship, saw the ship that looked in trouble and was aware it could be a ship in trouble that was going to ambush them perhaps. We went there thinking they might need help and brought water, pumpkins and a catch of fish. He went on board and thought what he was seeing was a ship which had run into all kind of trouble and where the slaves, it was a slavetrading ship. He didnt realize from the outset was this was a ship where there was a slave rebellion and they had risen up and killed a great deal well the slave trader and demanded to be returns from west africa. They were loading off the ghoco of nigeria. They wanted to go back to africa and ended up in a standoff. When they saw this captain approaching they created a masquerade and pretended, even though the slaves were in control and the white captain was their prisoner. They pretented it was the other way around. They propped up this man and played the slave but controlled the thing. And the whole time the man was on board he imagined being served by such a person and thought this was a fine relationship and look how careful he is. And everything that was with a myth that he slightly picked up he attributed this to the idea maybe this was an ambish and he was a sinister guy. It is only at the late stage of the drama after a long day board. I thought i would read you how he approaches this and describes the ship in massachusetts. The morning was one puculiar to that coast. Everything was mute and calm. Everything gray. The sea, seemed fixed like waves led that are cool and sit in the smelters mold. Flights of trouble foul with flights of trouble gray vapors among which they were mixed and skin over the waters as swallows over meadows before storms. And deeper shadows to come. He made it very easy for english professors in future years. Considering the lawlessness of the spot and the stories of those associated with the seas. The captain might have been uneased had he not been liable and hardly to endulge. Such a trait implies along with a heart and more than quickness of perceptions may be left to the wise to determine. He sets it up very much as a sunny few of humanity that was blinding him to the reality of a slave rebellion and of what is going on. And throughout the book that runs as the theme. I will go now and leap toward the very end where having found out what happened and he is having this exchange where he is with benito and he is saying you saved by life and the captain is saying you saved mine because imagine it went awry and i was more suspicious these slaved would have had my head and killed me. By maintaining the deception you saved my life just by me masking your deception saved mine. They are in the boat and don bonito isnt impressed and he said forget it. The blue sea and sky turned over new leaves because they have no memory because they are not human. But these mild traits to they not come with a humanleak healing to you . With their fastness they walk me to my tomb. You are saved cried the captain. More and more astonished. You are save. What cast such a shadow on you. The negro. And that is an exceptional story. He hands it over to tell the story himself but as if it was legal documents. How did you get into this . This was a real captain and a real story. How did you find this and expand upon it . There really was slave revot and all of the characters are real. They suggested i assi assign an was preparing to teach the class and i was reading around about the novela. It turns out literary scholars know it was based on chapter 18 of the story for quite a while. This isnt a few thing. This is a true story. Which is a fairly poplar sea captain. It wasnt that poplar but it was out there. There was a bunch of, you know, papers out there easily available. And there was just something i think i read it was based on a true story and a footnote in this great book by michael ro n rogan. And it struck me, i think i had to read that footnote a few times. It was like finding ou ouout alien was true. There is evil on board but you dont know where it is. And thanks to the wonders of google book you can download and i did so. It was 500something pages. And chapter 18 is fascinating but the whole thing itself is one misadventures after another. His portrayal is one of the first fully american abroad kind of for bearer of everything in between and after. And it is superficial but in a way that has depth and resinates and says something about the United States and the mumbling in the world. But the actual real story says something even one, i think he captures something profound about the american experience. And his encounter and reaction which we can get to later on in the discussion and i think it is rooted much more in social reasons and economics rather than just the kind of blindness and cheeryness that is associated. The book i wound up writing has two narrative lines. It stages the africans and the other follows them into the South Pacific. Lets talk about that. The story is an amazing story and greg has reconstructed it with this exact shipment of slaves but giving you a sense of the immensity of the trade and making sure you understand how much this age of freedom was the age of slavery and how much everything was linked to this. Epidemology is in there and culture is in there and everything is in there in terms of how the world is reacting to the slaves. But the slaves on a british ship that are picked up by a pirate or privateer on a contract to offload them in south america and this was a standard procedure. I dont speak french, but believe it not, he had one arm. I never realized i wanted to start a book with a onearmed pirate until i actually did. He, yeah he was a part of the french revolution and was a sea fair of jack vene and in the case of latin america they were actually the merchant capital. They seized British Goods because the french were in an n ongoing war and had relationships with south america merchants and brought the goods into the area and the most profitable cargo seized off the british ships were slaves. And one group that wound up on the trial the trial is the name of the actual boat. They were bringing them from chilly chile to lima. Talk about, somewhere, but not as much as what we should, the slave trade in the United States and how that worked a little bit. But to the extent it was a huge part of the latin america area and the southern hems sphere is something you are expanding on here. It was as big of a deal there economically in terms of trade and what the slaves were able to do. One of the events that were opening up to the extend of slavery and people in the United States and students of u. S. H history treat slavery as their own thing. But this was linked to the expansion of the free trade and the ocean revolution in the caribbean and south america and that was the last stage after the cotton gin and the move into the Mississippi Valley and after the war of 1812 it explodes in the United States. One of the things this story does is it gives you a sense of the spatial growth but a chronlogical sense as well. They left new england in 1803 on the sealing expedition and slavery is dying out in new england and assumed to be dying out in the south. It is in full swing in south america. 1804 was the height of what the spanards called free trade in blacks. More slaves came in in 1804 than any year previously. How many . Many came in as contraband. That is the thing. They cant get off the ship and have to march to the Pacific Coast and that is an odyssey because these are not setup deals. In other words, it isnt clear for many captains what is going to happen with the cargo when they arrive. Right. That was the cruelty of it. The conversion of con ttraba was there. And even though some were allowed to be sold but the rest he wanted out of there so there remember schemes to convert them to commodities. What they are doing is sailing into the future. He encounters in the South Pacific this race, terror and violence that will later explode in the United States. And that is the kind of it is almost circular and then melv melville reads the story when slavery does explode and there is an interesting circle there. It is like a glimpse of the future coming from the past. What was the feeling this was all about . Melville doesnt get his due but he was the great business of the wells. What is the the others . Well, he was from a good yeman fam ohio and he was an ancestor from Delano Roosevelt and came from a family of fi fisherman and was born the last year of the frenchindian war that set the stage for u. S. Independence. The American Revolution c catpolted him into World History. From the American Revolution he ran away in he went from one ad venture to another. He can never redeem the promise that the revolution suggested. And he did for a little bit. In this first voyage in the 1790s, this was the first with hum human combust even more than wailing. They are taking tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of skins. Blubber also . Just skins. Trading them in china for spices and tea and porcelain and bringing them back. Delano in the First Expedition took hundreds of thousands of skins and was enormiously successful and seemed like for a while he had matters to establish himself. And his is way down south . The islands off chile. And by the second expedition in 1803, the seals are disappearing. What is happening is the Chinese Market is being flooded and the prices are falling. The seals are roting and the skins are rotting in the docks. And the price is plummeting. And that is leading to him accelerating the killing on the islands. So you have oversupply and extinction going on hand and hand. And during the boom, there is a Cooperation Among the sealers and money to be made and sealing itself is about an all or nothing system of labor relation as you can imagine. And once the seals start disappearing, the conflicts start emergenemergencing. Delano by the time he crosses path with the trial, his own crew is mutiny. The seals are gone now and his men are jumping ship. This is how many years . 1803 and back in 1807 with the trial in 1805. His crew jumps ship in tazmania and he takes on a bunch of escape convicts. And they start using him as he is going back to chile. There is no money to be made. How do they know that while at see . They are going from island to island and there is no seals left to kill. He crosses path with the trial and week talk about the deception and his blindness, but once you realize he is the victim of a con and this manipuilation he rallys the men and that brings them together. Ahab is this kind of avatar or embodies a concern kind of power that held up as a precursor of a totalitarian because he is able to through his creating an emotional bond with the men and they participate in the madness, i think delano represents a modern form of power and control over labor in the context of Natural Resource and this interception with race and territory. I provide them and there is a social undering them. And you can see the intersection of slavery and environmentalist. Iowa a section where you, throughout the book, greg has these sections called interlu s interludes, which are wonderful meditations on the various aspects of the material and on melville. It where you do the comparisons and really looking at them as you say the character today, or the way we think of him and what we use to explain Global Warming and president bush that cause destruction. But you say that is not true. Those are the men that never defend and as moby dicks essay those that carry in the day in and day out. Melville sets him up as an american who isnt reading the comp complexity of the drama he is in. But you are saying he represents and melville sets him up for a fool in that passage from the first page. Not a stupid fool. But a fooled person. And not much establishment. But someone that believes in the rights of property and he encounters the french revolution in the indian ocean and he has a clear understanding that inconstitutionalism important. Something that went with the territory. That happened a lot. Often with the same demand, take us back to africa. This fascinating diagnosis by these medical experts who were brought in to analyze why the slaves were so unhappy but dont talk to them. Some revolts on ships were quite common. At think that there were a few surveys the accounted 600. I think thats just a fact check. Every some of the african super bowl of this deception have been involved in two other slave ship results before they even get you can survive one of these. Right. The incentive to keep the crossing a live. But my point was that none of them are documented. So it was quite common. I think what was remarkable about this one is i mean, these west african 73 i mean, probably a yearandahalf or deal before they even got to the South Pacific. Then they seized the ship. Their up and down the coast of chile and peru for 53 days. They survive at least one or will store. Two women die of dehydration. A skeleton crew. Having hung the skeleton of a ships captain. But think about that context. I mean, that dehydrated and starving and dying, literally dying. And they come up with this they manage to summon the reserve, the resources in order to perform, to shed the trappings of freedom which had proved to be fragile and assume the role of slavery in order to fool someone for nine hours. Your nose why or what attracted into the story, but i think one of the things certainly has to be the way it these west africans were able to use the things that there were said not to have possessed, a cunning and reason and any kind of internal control, all of the things that usually are associated with freeman in order to prove the line. Humble and simpleminded. Whats fascinating is you compare to Harriet Beecher stowes uncle toms cabin. Her case for abolition and emancipationist by presenting africanamerican slaves as simpleminded, as being somehow more to work christians in their transparency and motives. Right. Perception. The write the story in which cunning and deceitful and they respond to the brutality that is inflicted on them with equal brutality and violence. Its a fascinating story. Of losses last line. Some months after. Us somewhat admiring description of the fact that he never says a word. He never talks about anything, we will respond to any aspect. The tale of the annual. The body was burned to ashes. For many days the head of fixed on the polls. So not really being subtle here. The slave bodies. Hal was not to all the drolen the normal side, but how was that read at the time . It wasnt. They see it by undersold moby dick. It was published about four years after moby dick. Moby dick was a commercial and critical failure. This was the moment theyre really identify m is emotionally and physically exhausted. A little bit. And he published it in a journal , a publication here in new york. Came out in three segments, october, november, December December 1855. There were notices of it in the times. Cut quickly into obscurity like much of his other writing until the 1920s. And when you went about reconstructing is, he said you came across this mind blowing footnote. You went all over vermont his debut were finding what i find culminating is held intensive documented all this is. All the captains were riding correspondents about surviving the terrible conditions, but recalculations and turnings lives in the commodities, protecting them and trading them off. All of that is on paper and preserved. How were you able to reconstruct this exact shipment on this unbelievable odyssey across the ocean and then up over the mountain . Doing this kind of archival research, when youre trying to reconstruct an event that provides some kind of structure and organizing structure. If one were to go out and write a history of slavery and freedom in the americans, but if one is trying to follow the itinerary, this protocol, in some ways a Hidden History of capitalism, documenting transactions and sales. That was helpful. And the court case itself, it was because so now though, though one way this comes back to the question about sources and research, the one major change is that he has someone tried comfort. In reality he spends about eight months trying to get half of the work of the surviving slaves in order to maintain loyalty and his crew. And they have this falling out. He is basically pursued trying to get the money. So all of this, those court cases are documented. That legal proceeding dealing with spanish authorities. Theres a lot of people related to that. I was only able to kind of document one group. They the west africans on the trial who stayed in this deception, they dont become a consignment as such until they are sold to this provincial aristocrat who gets in the slavery in order to stem his position. Thats when they become the west africans. Prior to that they come in in many different ways. I was only able to identify one stream. The privateer. Quite amazing that that has survived. And again, it was 1804. Probably more than half of the enslaved people that came in were contraband and undocumented. And so you have all of this documentation. I mean, what do you really make in the end of the original story chasing them down like that, is it as much of a microcosmic