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The Empire of Necessity: Freedom, Slavery ...
The following book review appeared in Washington Post Book Review 2/2/2014
The Empire of Necessity: Freedom, Slavery and Deception by Greg Grandin
"In February 1805 in the South Pacific, a New England sea captain named Amasa Delano spotted a battered cargo ship wallowing badly. Leaving his own ship to investigate, Delano boarded the strange vessel, the aptly named Tryal. He found a terse Spanish captain, Benito Cerreno, with a skeleton crew of demoralized sailors and a surprisingly impertinent cargo of African slaves. Later in the day, Cerreno suddenly jumped overboard to seek haven on Delano’s ship, the Perseverance. The beleaguered Spaniard revealed that for six weeks he had been held hostage on his ship by rebel slaves, who had killed their former owner and most of the crew. Led by Babo and his son Mori, the rebels had demanded that Cerreno and the remaining sailors pilot their vessel back to West Africa. Instead, he had deceived them by sailing around the Pacific in hopes of encountering another ship that might rescue him and restore the rebels to slavery....."