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hawkwing_lbThe plan goes ever forward.
Achievements:
One chapter Greek; familiarisation process with 1st and 2nd declensions and present active indicative Latin. Six chapters of Colin Wells' The Roman Empire - done with that now. More organisation work on duellist.
I went out for a walk this evening. My thighs are holding a grudge against me for yesterday, and oh joy! tomorrow we repeat the experiment.
The rain, however, had cleared, although a couple of the streams that come out along the shore were swollen from run-off. The beach smelled like water and seaweed, fresh, and on the way back I met the most gorgeously bouncy friendly six-month-old Siberian husky, pulling her person along by the lead. I have puppy envy.
Books 2008: 98-99, non-fiction
98. Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (London, 2007)
Rediker is an impressive social historian of the maritime world, with at least one landmark work - possibly more, depending on your criteria - under his belt already. The Slave Ship is at least equal to Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in its scholarship, range, and clarity. In terms of accessibility, it has a slight edge.
Rediker discusses the history of the slave trade over the course of the 18th century, until the official abolition of the trade by Britain in 1809. His interest is in history 'from below', as he puts it: specifically in the experience of African captives, and the seamen who were at the same time both the victims and active participants in the Africa trade and its violence.
Examination of that violence, and its various stages, forms the central part of the book. The violence experienced by African captives on their way to the coast; the violence experienced by sailors who died in their thousands in the 'Guinea trade', both from disease and the violence performed upon them by their captains; the ship itself, the 'floating dungeon', and the use of torture and terror in the transformation of African captives to black slaves; resistance, insurrection, and the formation of new kinship ties among the Africans, including a handful of occasions on which insurrection was successful and the former captives brought the ship ashore and escaped.
The final chapter concerns the famous diagram of the slave ship Brooks and its relation to the abolition movement. This chapter I found, arguably, the most fascinating of all, because of the case which Rediker makes that even in the argument for abolition, the abolitionists focused not on the experiences of the slaves who survived the Middle Passage, but on those of the sailors.
It's a very interesting book, if, understandably, somewhat horrifying. Two figures especially stand out as people of interest on whom I would do further reading if I had the time: Olaudah Equiano, also known in his own time as Gustavus Vassa, an African kidnapped as a boy and enslaved who became a sailor, acquired his freedom, and wrote an autobiographical account, and the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who collected first-hand testimony about the slave trade from sailors in Bristol and Liverpool in the face of threats to his life.
Anyway. Quite fascinating.
99. Colin Wells, The Roman Empire (London, 1984).
Where Rediker is engaged in 'history from below', Wells is writing history in a more traditional vein. In an overview of the history of the Roman empire from Augustus to Alexander Severus and aimed at the non-specialist reader, it's hard to see how he could do much different, but the ratio of historical narrative to analysis is strongly biased towards the narrative.
Good points: it's accessible, straightforward, and clear, probably an excellent introduction to the subject. Bad points: it crams an awful lot of material into a very compact space, and thus as one might expect, suffers the limitations of its length in some oversimplification and the material it has to leave out.
Personal twitch: Wells quotes non-period-source, non-modern-historian authors whenever he feels they have something interesting to say. A couple of incidents of this, fine. But ten, twelve, more? This gets annoying, especially when one gets the feeling he's quoting Shakespeare for the sake of quoting Shakespeare (to take one example), not for any relevance to the subject at hand.
But that aside? Perfectly readable, useful little book.
Achievements:
One chapter Greek; familiarisation process with 1st and 2nd declensions and present active indicative Latin. Six chapters of Colin Wells' The Roman Empire - done with that now. More organisation work on duellist.
I went out for a walk this evening. My thighs are holding a grudge against me for yesterday, and oh joy! tomorrow we repeat the experiment.
The rain, however, had cleared, although a couple of the streams that come out along the shore were swollen from run-off. The beach smelled like water and seaweed, fresh, and on the way back I met the most gorgeously bouncy friendly six-month-old Siberian husky, pulling her person along by the lead. I have puppy envy.
Books 2008: 98-99, non-fiction
98. Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (London, 2007)
Rediker is an impressive social historian of the maritime world, with at least one landmark work - possibly more, depending on your criteria - under his belt already. The Slave Ship is at least equal to Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in its scholarship, range, and clarity. In terms of accessibility, it has a slight edge.
Rediker discusses the history of the slave trade over the course of the 18th century, until the official abolition of the trade by Britain in 1809. His interest is in history 'from below', as he puts it: specifically in the experience of African captives, and the seamen who were at the same time both the victims and active participants in the Africa trade and its violence.
Examination of that violence, and its various stages, forms the central part of the book. The violence experienced by African captives on their way to the coast; the violence experienced by sailors who died in their thousands in the 'Guinea trade', both from disease and the violence performed upon them by their captains; the ship itself, the 'floating dungeon', and the use of torture and terror in the transformation of African captives to black slaves; resistance, insurrection, and the formation of new kinship ties among the Africans, including a handful of occasions on which insurrection was successful and the former captives brought the ship ashore and escaped.
The final chapter concerns the famous diagram of the slave ship Brooks and its relation to the abolition movement. This chapter I found, arguably, the most fascinating of all, because of the case which Rediker makes that even in the argument for abolition, the abolitionists focused not on the experiences of the slaves who survived the Middle Passage, but on those of the sailors.
It's a very interesting book, if, understandably, somewhat horrifying. Two figures especially stand out as people of interest on whom I would do further reading if I had the time: Olaudah Equiano, also known in his own time as Gustavus Vassa, an African kidnapped as a boy and enslaved who became a sailor, acquired his freedom, and wrote an autobiographical account, and the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who collected first-hand testimony about the slave trade from sailors in Bristol and Liverpool in the face of threats to his life.
Anyway. Quite fascinating.
99. Colin Wells, The Roman Empire (London, 1984).
Where Rediker is engaged in 'history from below', Wells is writing history in a more traditional vein. In an overview of the history of the Roman empire from Augustus to Alexander Severus and aimed at the non-specialist reader, it's hard to see how he could do much different, but the ratio of historical narrative to analysis is strongly biased towards the narrative.
Good points: it's accessible, straightforward, and clear, probably an excellent introduction to the subject. Bad points: it crams an awful lot of material into a very compact space, and thus as one might expect, suffers the limitations of its length in some oversimplification and the material it has to leave out.
Personal twitch: Wells quotes non-period-source, non-modern-historian authors whenever he feels they have something interesting to say. A couple of incidents of this, fine. But ten, twelve, more? This gets annoying, especially when one gets the feeling he's quoting Shakespeare for the sake of quoting Shakespeare (to take one example), not for any relevance to the subject at hand.
But that aside? Perfectly readable, useful little book.
