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A review by ethanhedman
The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin
adventurous
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.25
Grandin analyses the slave uprising on the Tryal, and its interception by the Perseverance and its captain, Amasa Delano (relative of FDR). Grandin gives an all-encompassing dissection of empire, slavery, and expansion in the New World, while analyzing the different market, historical, and human forces at work that led to everyone being where they were in 1805 off the coast of Chile. The author infuses Benito Cereno and Moby Dick by Herman Melville as a corollary to how the forces at play on the Tryal interact with the seemingly pre-destined historical course the United States seemed to be on.
Ultimately I believe Grandin sees Delano as a representation of the entrapment of Americans in history. That even when infrequently well-intentioned, people are largely bound to the political, social, and historical forces of their time and place.
"The Duxbury preachers who supported independence told him that one's fate was not predestined, that man had reason and free will, which gave him the power to make of himself what he would. But for the hapless Delano, faith in reason and free will became its own enchantment, blinding him to the ties that bound men together, that set the limits of who succeeded and who failed, and that decided who was free and who wasn't." (258)
"In the United States, a purer ideal of freedom has come to hold sway, at least among some, based on the principles of liberal democracy and laissez-faire economics but also on a more primal animus, an individual supremacy that not only denies the necessities that bind people together but resents any reminder of those necessities." (273)
Ultimately I believe Grandin sees Delano as a representation of the entrapment of Americans in history. That even when infrequently well-intentioned, people are largely bound to the political, social, and historical forces of their time and place.
"The Duxbury preachers who supported independence told him that one's fate was not predestined, that man had reason and free will, which gave him the power to make of himself what he would. But for the hapless Delano, faith in reason and free will became its own enchantment, blinding him to the ties that bound men together, that set the limits of who succeeded and who failed, and that decided who was free and who wasn't." (258)
"In the United States, a purer ideal of freedom has come to hold sway, at least among some, based on the principles of liberal democracy and laissez-faire economics but also on a more primal animus, an individual supremacy that not only denies the necessities that bind people together but resents any reminder of those necessities." (273)