A review by psychohobbit
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin

4.0

This is a very interesting study of an 1804 slave uprising on a ship. The uniqueness is that this ship encountered another ship, and the slaves were able to control the captain and pose as if they were still slaves to fool the other ship's captain (they had a head start as he was a fairly oblivious fellow and as a man of his times couldn't imagine such a thing)during a day visit on the taken ship. Herman Melville took the original event and turned it into a novella although altered for his own literary purposes. The author has stretched this event into a very readable, although horrific, examination of an age of individual freedom intertwined with exploiting others, either through slavery or enforced labor very similar to slavery, to achieve that freedom. No details are spared to show the brutality of slavery nor should they be. This book is every bit as brutal depicting seal hunting. Understanding the background is important to understanding the story. I found the author insightful and quickly understood the rather odd title of this book and the duality of freedom and slavery during this post-revolutionary (American and French). I rated this at 4 stars instead of 5 as at times, as mentioned before, the book seems 'stretched' by filler material such as Darwin's observations when traveling decades later. This bit of rambling as well as some others kind of led me off the basic track involving the central course of events.