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THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY
By: Greg Grandin
Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
Metropolitan Books
January 2014
On Sale: January 14, 2014
384 pages
ISBN: 0805094539
EAN: 9780805094534
Kindle: B00EGJ7KX6
Hardcover / e-Book
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Historical | Non-Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Fordlandia, the story of a remarkable slave rebellion that illuminates Americaβs struggle with slavery and freedom during the Age of Revolution and beyond One morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, Captain Amasa Delano, a New England seal hunter, climbed aboard a distressed Spanish ship carrying scores of West Africans he thought were slaves. They werenβt. Having earlier seized control of the vessel and slaughtered most of the crew, they were staging an elaborate ruse, acting as if they were humble servants. When Delano, an idealistic, anti-slavery republican, finally realized the deception, he responded with explosive violence. Drawing on research on four continents, The Empire of Necessity explores the multiple forces that culminated in this extraordinary eventβan event that already inspired Herman Melvilleβs masterpiece Benito Cereno. Now historian Greg Grandin, with the gripping storytelling that was praised in Fordlandia, uses the dramatic happenings of that day to map a new transnational history of slavery in the Americas, capturing the clash of peoples, economies, and faiths that was the New World in the early 1800s.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - January 27, 2014
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