Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution [Hardcover]

Simon Schama is historical royalty. With a lucrative and encompassing deal with the BBC, the ability to cover vast tracts of narrative history and an undoubted command of English he has worked on some of the most interesting projects in documentary history. But this has come at a cost.

Schama's critics have lambasted his descent into popular history, especially his work on the History of Britain. This book can be seen as an academic riposte to those critics. It is in the traditional vein of Schama - sharp, inquiring and totally different to anything he has published before. The ability of the man to write on the golden age of the Dutch Republic, a history of Britain, the French Revolution and art in Western Europe demonstrates the plurality and depth of his interests.

This new work is an altogether bolder departure. It covers a grey and controversial period of history around the American war of independence. In dealing with two countries that have still not resolved their ingrained race relation problems, and confronting the issue of slavery, Schama makes a bold and brave attempt to understand the roots of problems, and uncovers the startling role played by the black slaves in the War of Independence.

While the Founding Fathers were proclaiming the inherent liberty of the freeborn man from the bondage of English tyranny, many themselves were the owners of slaves. The hypocrisy was all too evident for some of the more thoughtful, such as Franklin's proclaimed abhorrence for the practice. But others so no such contradiction in not extending the principles to black people, reserving such universal freedoms for the whites of the continent.

Sensing the potential for creating and utilizing a decisive fifth column, the British promised the blacks liberty. It would be all to easy to slip into a tract trumpeting vaunted English liberty over the hypocritical American 'freedoms', and Schama avoids this trap. All the while it is an interesting irony that many of the black slaves saw George III as protector and savior, rather than the monstrous tyrant of the Declaration of Independence. And they voted with their feet, their labours and tragically their lives as they volunteered for the British forces.

What unfolds is a gripping, personal history of the people involved. This extends to the patriots, both slavers and those believing in a more catholic version of rights, the English chattering classes whose judicial system was floundering in an attempt to reconcile the mercantile, slaving interests with inherent concepts of preciously held liberty. Most importantly it covers the documented histories of the slaves themselves. Many would meet untimely ends. But many would be evacuated, to new, difficult but free lives in Canada, in Britain and ultimately back across the Atlantic to Africa.

In short Schama has taken a vexatious and controversial issue, and wrestled with it to produce a lucid, well documented, tragic, inspiring and timely reminder of a period that has been shrouded in propaganda and hubris. Given the tremblings of anger following Hurricane Katrina, and vicious race attacks in the UK it is also a more profound study of a concept that still dogs and mars our supposedly more enlightened society. It is a joy to read, a colourful tour de force of lucid, researched and academic history.

Well deserving of 5 stars, and acceding to my list of best narrative histories.

There appears to be two kinds of political history: that which is hidden from us completely by the special interests, and that which can be dug up and exposed when it is "safe". Rough Crossings by Simon Shama is of the latter, and will stir up a storm of indignation when it is published in the USA in 2006.

Starting even before the Revolutionary War, so-called American Patriots and the "founding fathers" exhibited the same kind of special interest/self interest that schoolchildren today are taught is beneath public service. Patrick (Give me liberty or give me death!) Henry could not for the life of him understand why he should free his own slaves. Thomas Jefferson's first declaration of independence in 1775 cited the British government's rumored incitement of Negroes to rise up for their freedom as one of the prime movers of the colonies to break free of the tyranny of England.

He was proven right in that tens of thousands of slaves ran away to fight on the British side, against the colonists. The "Patriots" killed every runaway they could find before they got to the English ships. (The same was to occur in 1812, when the British and the Americans clashed again)

The British, who of course taught the Americans everything they knew about slavery in the first place, had only recently begun to abhor it. Using the courts, English activists were able to obtain the freedom of people who were being captured in England to be shipped off to sugar plantations. The British public, caught up in this humanitarian, headline-making campaign, was offended by the tyranny of the Americans, just as the Americans were offended by the tyranny of the British in things like taxation. The result was armed conflict.

Word of successes in English courts gave hope to the American slaves, and the southern slaveholders clearly only joined the revolution to protect slavery, as they would again in the Civil War 90 years later. Meanwhile, Jefferson had a change of heart and included much more humanitarian wording in the next draft of the declaration of independence. It was edited out to avoid offending the new southern allies the Patriots had acquired.

During the war, Patriot General Sumter took to awarding slaves to soldiers for voluntary service, and sometimes also in lieu of pay. No sooner had the war ended, than black soldiers were rounded up and sent back to their owners, or auctioned off. It was actually a top priority of the Americans. Henry Laurens, a man who skimmed 10% on slave sales in the colonies, managed to insert a clause in the peace treaty that Negroes and other American property would not be carried away in the British withdrawal. the Land of Liberty made no pretence of equality.

There follows great diversions - to new settlements in Sierra Leone and in Nova Scotia, with possibly the most important development of North America's first black political leader, Thomas Peters, fifty years before Frederick Douglass. Peters worked tirelessly on both sides of the Atlantic to obtain the rights promised by the Crown.

In the early 1800s, failing to get an acutal law abolishing slavery through the House of Commons, MPs apparently agreed with testimony such as the Lord Mayor of London's, who claimed ending slavery would end the market for rotten codfish. This was apparently a delicacy shipped to the Caribbean, to be forced down the throats of slaves, who were force fed with iron bits and clamps holding their mouths open.

The struggle has obviously continued - to this day - but the book is a well documented adventure of it in the present tense, complete with Perfect Storms that make Hurricane Katrina look like a spring shower, and brutality only non-fiction could get away with.

Simon Schama's Rough Crossings tells the story of the American revolution, the resettlement of slaves and others loyal to the British after the war. It covers a period from the 1770's up to the the turn of the century with a final part, up to the mid nineteenth century, that explores the beginnings and endings of history. The narrative roams three continents with a cast of characters that includes the bad and the good.

As a black man, I came to this book to learn about the experience of the slaves from yet another perspective. However, the book is so well written, the story told with such great style that I was quickly shifted from my narrow perspective and was drawn fully into the complexities of the revolution and its making.

The germ of the making of the revolution is clearly revealed by Schama. The scheming, the wheeler dealings and deceit are all there. An early passage in the book states: "In the experience of both David George and Boston King (the best sources we have for the experience of blacks in the Revolutionary War), the British could appear as both benefactors and theives, hard-hearted and kind-hearted; yet there was never any question about the ultimate allegiance of these two."

But Rough Crossings is more than a histoy of the American revolution; Britian's response and the experience of slaves, it is also a political and geographical history. In other works, it is also about the formation of 'states'. Schama's outline of the makings of settlements in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone is quite revealing of the politics of betrayal and brutishness that ensued. He clearly shows us life from the seedy to the pretentiousness of high civility. Pretentiousness to high civility that could never be obtained because these new societies carried within them the seeds from another place and time. In the early formation of these new colonies what begun to blossom again was racism. For example, in Nova Scotia, to keep the settlement of Shelburne free of the "frolicks" of negros the whites decided to create a settlement for the blacks - namely Birchtown. Here in lies the making of racial apartheid.

What also comes across clearly in this book is a history of greed and profitering at the expense of the slaves. One of the recurring themes was that the whole enterprise of the war and slavery was driven by profits. The drive for profits at the expense of human beings is painfully outlined in the story of captain Luke Collingwood. Rather than lose money by captured Africans dying during the passage from Africa to the Caribbean, during one passage Collingwood prepared and executed a plan to defruad his insures by casting live Africans into the sea.

Part two of this great history focuses on the efforts of John Clarkson to resettle "ex-slaves" and loyalist in Sierra Leone. In restrained almost understated language, Schama outlines how the hardships, the betrayals, the effects of indentured bonds and debts were experienced by "ex-slaves". It is a story of great human suffering, endurance and determination.

It is not just the content that makes the book highly readable. After all, the story has been told before in various guises. What also sustains the reading of this story is the way it is told. In part, Schama's style is rhetorical. This had the effect of sweeping me along with his narrative and persuading me into believing the content. Here is an example of Schama at the peak of rhetorical flourish as he describes how against poor conditions and experiences slaves were still prepared to join the British army: "For all the chaos and brutality; for all the untended sickness and the abandonment of the sick; for all the slaves forced on to public works, some of them even sent back to masters; for all the chronic uncertainty about their eventual fate; ... whereever the British army went, in big battalions or small, in North Carolina and then in Virginia, slaves still continue to pour into their camps by the score, then in hundreds and finally thousands."

Schama is detailed and scholarly whilst at the same time remaining sufficiently populist to allow his book to appeal to a broad readship. His command of the language is so great, his narrative flows so fluently that at times I had to read out aloud if only to hear an imagined voice and savour the text. Furthermore, Schama's descriptive passages are quite simply brilliant and dazzling. Take the long opening paragraph of part one. Here a vivid picture of aspects of life in London is presented. The reader can almost see the hustle and bustle of high and low life. As we read we can easily emerse ourselves into London life.

The truth is the apex to which the writer; whether historian, novelist or philosopher, must aim. In reading Rough Crossings, one is left with the clear impression that the truth is exactly what Schama achieves. He leaves no stone unturned, he shows us great acts of human kindness and the despicable, depravity of human behaviour. One example of the wide spectrum of human behaviour can be found in the story of Jonathan Stong, a London slave beaten almost beyond recognition by his master David Lisle, but rescued and rehabilitated by William Sharp. I was simply moved not just by the story but just as important Schama's ability to convey the pathos involved.

I think the best way to summarise Schama's achievement is to pay him a tribute. One senses that Schama's handling of his material and subject is second to none. He manages to achieve what I would think most historians aim at, that is the right balance between the narration of the story, description of scenes and events, and analysis of the underlying causes. This is a magnificent piece of history, please read it.