The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom by Marcus Rediker (review)

498 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY from the immigrant’s viewpoint and analyzes the emergence of new social and economic patterns. In sum, this is a valuable collection of essays and essential reading for specialists and non-specialists interested in immigration in New York. It is very well suited for upper-level undergraduate seminars and graduate courses on immigration studies and on the history of New York City. What Foner combines in this volume is an optimistic, multi-cultural account of immigration in New York city with the study of established discriminatory institutional and daily practices against immigrants, making this diverse collection of essays a unified whole. The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. By Marcus Rediker. New York: Penguin Books, 2013, 320 pages, $17.00 Paper. Reviewed by Luke J. Feder, The College of New Rochelle While researching his acclaimed The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007), historian Marcus Rediker frequently came across African attempts to rebel onboard slave ships. The vast majority of these efforts did not succeed. In The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, he chronicles the origins and aftermath of the 1839 slave insurrection that overcame these bleak odds. This monograph, therefore, serves as a “hopeful counterpoint to a gruesome history” that he wrote about in The Slave Ship (239). For his primary research, Rediker utilizes archival sources, legal documents, artwork, literature, newspapers, and other periodicals. The Amistad Africans were the subjects of roughly 2,500 articles and interviews , which allow historians “to know more about the Amistad Africans than perhaps any other group of once-enslaved rebels on record” (11). His secondary sources cover not just the rebellion, but also the various dimensions to the Africans’ odyssey—from their lives in Africa to their legal struggles in the United States. Rediker recounts events primarily from the Amistad Africans’ perspective and characterizes them as agents of their own freedom. Although the rebellion and its aftermath have already been the subject of historical schol- Book Reviews 499 arship, literature, and even a 1997 Steven Spielberg film, these accounts tend to concentrate on the legal proceedings rather than the rebellion and to privilege the perspectives of elite, white participants, such as politicians, legal professionals, and abolitionists. To write his “history of the Amistad rebellion from below,” Rediker begins by discussing the Africans’ lives in Sierra Leone (10). Most of the Africans were Mende; the remaining were Gbandi, Kono, Temne, and other ethnic groups that held similar cultural traditions and values. He contends that all the males who participated in the rebellion were members of the Poro Society, a secret fraternal order that helped to maintain social stability, determine laws, choose leaders, and make decisions regarding war. Before arriving on La Amistad, the majority of the Africans had experienced together the slave outpost at Lomboko, the cramped slave deck of the Teçora, and the barracoons of Havana, Cuba. After being subjected to meager food and water rations, cruel punishments, and taunting onboard the Amistad, the Africans followed the dictates of the Poro Society and held a palaver, where they decided to revolt against the ship’s crew. During the uprising, the Africans killed the ship’s cook and captain as well as took three prisoners. The U.S. Navy eventually seized the Amistad off the coast of Montauk, Long Island, and brought it to New London, Connecticut, where authorities charged the Africans with piracy and murder. While Rediker is primarily concerned with the African viewpoint, he also studies abolitionists and their contributions to the Africans’ struggle for freedom. Dwight Janes, a grocer, was present when U.S. authorities conducted their initial investigation of the Amistad in New London. He carried out his own inquiry and discovered that the ship’s documents had been falsified. In an 1818 treaty with Great Britain, Spain had agreed to cease the importation of slaves from Africa after 1820. Janes rapidly deduced that the Africans were not Spanish subjects and therefore illegally transported from Africa. He also quickly involved other abolitionists, like Lewis Tappan, Joshua Leavitt, and Roger S. Baldwin, to aid with the Africans’ predicament. After much trial and error, abolitionists enlisted two black sailors, Charles Pratt...