[Riverman94610]

Wow,I just finished The Slave Ship,A Human History myself and found it very objective except during the last chapter when the author made the reparations pitch.
One of the most touching stories he reveals are the tales of Jamaican blacks who took in and fed the diseased and disabled white sailors who were no longer able to work and were rotting along the docks.

[HoosierHawk]

While I wouldn't question the historic rendering, (and I, like you, thought that the treatment of the white sailors by the Jamaican blacks was very touching and sympathetic), I didn't feel that Rediker was objective at all in his approach to the economics of the slave trade.

If you remember, or look back, he continually blames "capitalism" as the ember that stoked the slave trade until abolition. While that's true to an extent, Rediker, IMHO, placed more emphasis, and blame, on the white merchants, ship captains and crew, rather than Africans who sold their fellow countrymen as human cargo.

Just my thoughts.

Except for the "blame whitey" and "capitalism" slant, it was an excellent read.