Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe (review)

Book Reviews147 Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe. By Lamont D. Thomas. Urbana and Chicago: Illinois University Press, 1986. xv, 187 pp. Paul Cuffe was a successful Westport, Massachusetts, ship captain, merchant, antislavery advocate, and supporter of those blacks who moved to the British colony of Sierra Leone. Born to a Wampanoag Indian mother and an African father, Cuffe rose against almost overwhelming odds to become a Friend and a leading merchant in southeastern Massachusetts, conversant with mercantile grandees and antislavery leaders in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and London. An unlikely person to become a Quaker (few blacks or Indians became Friends then), Cuffe became a leader of his monthly meeting, an accepted companion at meals after years of segregation even among Friends, an advocate of assisting blacks who returned to Africa to settle, and a proponent of African trade in other than human beings with Europe and North America. Clearly, a man of Cuffe's distinction has long deserved a full biography. While Lamont Thomas has mined relevant sources admirably and digested much related material, the thrust and design of this book still leaves Cuffe in need of an adequate biography. The book's organization is chronological, useful enough for helping to sketch broad outlines of Cuffe's life but insufficient for analysis of major themes, especially when the narrative is horrendously detailed. It would have been better for Thomas to use topical chapters to clarify major topics like Cuffe's antislavery and Quaker activities. The lack of clear thematic discussion may have led to confused usage. Thomas frequently presents Cuffe as a civilizer on his African missions, and as a pan African, presumably a person supportive of Africans and those descended from Africans. While an appropriate view of late nineteenth and early twentieth century missionaries was to see themselves as civilizers, one would hope that contemporary scholarship could pass beyond the "from Greenland's icy mountains, from Indian's coral strand, where Africa's sunny fountains" version of civilization's arrival among less fortunate peoples. The assertion that Cuffe was both a pan African and a civilizer is incongruous. Despite several sections that confuse more than they enlighten, there are good parts in the book. Notes are appropriately detailed, although citations frequently seem to be misplaced. The index is well prepared. Thomas is courteous in acknowledging assistance at several archives, a practice not observed by some other authors recently. There is useful and detailed information in the book. Colorado State UniversityArthur J. Worrall ...