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Black and white - and red all over

Books and arts



 Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves    broken promises.
 and the American Revolution. By Simon4     The story of the freed American
 Schama. slaves is not quite unknown, but
  neither is it well known. British history
 Black and white - has rarely dwelt on the loss of its
 and red all over colonies across the Atlantic (preferring
  to celebrate victories), and until
 Britain’s best-known historian recently has been happy to draw a veil
 examines a turning point in the over the horrors of slavery (“ghastly
 history of slavery – and the fight for business – the less said about it the
 American independence better”). But this terrific story
  straddles some very large
1     NATIONS need luck in their contemporary concerns: the roots of
 historians, as with everything else, and transatlantic racism, and the ugly
 in Simon Schama, Britain – not to wrench that inspired the special
 mention America, where he lives and relationship between Britain and
 works – has hit the jackpot. It must America.
 have been tempting to follow his5     At the height of the conflict,
 panoramic “A History of Britain”, the Britain guaranteed freedom to any
 three volumes of which dominated the slave who fought for the king against
 bestseller lists in 2000 and beyond, George Washington’s slave-owning
 and made him into Britain’s national rebels. And in 1772, in London, Lord
 storyteller, with more from the Mansfield, nudged by the advocacy of
 lucrative mainstream. The book trade Granville Sharp, an abolitionist, judged
 would surely have opened up acres of that Africans could not be transported
 space for Mr Schama on Victoria, on against their will. It sounded good.
 Churchill, on Lincoln. Thousands of slaves, lacking a better
2     But he has done no such thing. On offer, joined the king’s cause.
 the contrary, Mr Schama has deployed6     It goes without saying that
 his celebrity in the service of an Britain’s pledge was issued with only
 episode which did not even rate a token expectation that it would need to
 footnote in his earlier work – the noble be honoured – victory would surely
 but half-baked attempt to plant a render it irrelevant. But military
 colony of freed American slaves in incompetence and American resolve
 Sierra Leone at the end of the turned it into a disquieting political
 American war of independence in 1776. reality. After much smudging, a liberal
 Anyone who felt that his “A History of haven was marked out in Sierra Leone.
 Britain” skipped a little lightly over the African-Americans began to go
 empire’s adventures overseas (leaving “home”.
 some ugly national skeletons unrattled7     It was [id:71988] from the start; what
 in the process) [id:71983] . Like a stealthy began as a rescue mission was later
 chef, Mr Schama was pocketing truffles seen as a “racist deportation”. As
 for his own later use. revolutionary echoes from France
3     He was also returning to the form made London’s potentates tremble,
 of vibrant and cosmopolitan narrative cargoes of ex-slaves were dumped on a
 which entitled him to write “A History malarial strip of impossible land. Some
 of Britain” in the first place. His first were seized as slaves again; others, in
 book, “The Embarrassment of Riches” an even more horrid reverse, became
 (1987), was a meticulous and witty slavers themselves. It was the only
 account of Holland’s artistic golden business they knew.
 age in the 17th century; “Citizens”, his8     With dash and cunning,
 next work, was a storming narration of Mr Schama follows his leading
 the French revolution, a bloodbath characters into the shadow that falls
 which generations of abstract across his story. “Histories never
 ideologues had managed to drain of conclude,” he writes. “They just
 blood. Now, once again, his articulate pause.” If it is true that history is not
 intelligence plays elegantly over a saga the past – merely what we have now
 full of grim twists. There are heroes instead of the past – then we must tip
 and cowards, fools, chancers and our caps to Mr Schama for reminding
 baffled victims. The doomed migration us of the grotesque events whose scars
 from Nova Scotia to Africa is gripping still sting today.
 and vivid. It stinks of putrid flesh and 
 maggots, tar and rope, chains and The Economist, 2005