Christopher McKee

Book Review: Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early PhiladelphiaNewmanSimon P., Embodied History: The Lives of the Poor in Early Philadelphia.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press [www.upenn.edu/pennpress], 2003. xi + 211 pp., illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. US

Most scholars have agreed that slave ship captains preferred swift schooners with smaller cargo capacity to larger and slower brigs and brigantines. This may have been true, but data gathered for this book show no indication that larger vessels declined in importance for the overall period of the illegal slave trade. The book also provides information more or less indirectly about sailing routes and duration of the slaving expeditions. Dorsey demonstrates how important co-operation with Denmark, the Netherlands, and France was in deceiving the British when acquiring slaves. Many interesting examples are given to illuminate the complicated manoeuvres with suspicious ports of call, false ships documents, sudden change of flags, and so on. The British did their best to seize the slave ships and reveal the forgeries, but it was indeed a difficult task to prove what was wrong and who was to blame. Danes, Dutchmen, and French were willing to help and they were good partners to the Puerto Ricans as they had colonies both on the African coast and in the Caribbean. For instance, it was rather easy for the Danes to buy slaves on the Gold Coast and ship them across the Atlantic, either directly to Puerto Rico or more often via the Danish commercial centre in St. Thomas which was essential to Puerto Rico in this respect, especially in the 1820s, in spite of the fact that such traffic under the Danish flag had been prohibited since 1803. Dorsey underlines and describes the inter-Caribbean clandestine trade activities rather convincingly, even though there are a few inaccuracies in his data with regard to the Danish West Indies. He also provides brief information about where in Africa the enslaved persons came, namely the Upper Guinea Coast where the Danish, Dutch, and French forts were situated. All in all, the book offers a convincing picture of clandestine slave commerce in the Age of Abolition. The illegal slave trade to Puerto Rico was not comprehensive, but it is demonstrated that it had important implications for the socio-cultural history of the Puerto Rican island community and other societies in the West Indies as well as in Africa. An important lesson to learn from this well-researched and well-written book is that the interpretation of the slave trade has to be carried out in an international framework in order to make sense.