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A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
by Siddharth Kara
From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement.
In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa's Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning "care") was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that ensued on its doomed journey were unique.
After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves―by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard.
What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England's highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history―sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States
Siddharth Kara utilizes primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg's journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.
"[E]nthralling and elegant...a harrowing glimpse of slavery's horrors and an incisive investigation into one of history's most reviled crimes." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mass murder aboard a slave transport, half-forgotten today but an iconic event...A vivid historical footnote, but also a milestone." —Kirkus Reviews
"Based on extensive primary research, this powerful tale about greed and cruelty highlights the nearly forgotten story that launched a key campaign against enslavement. Readers interested in the study of enslavement and maritime history will seek out this title." —Library Journal
"This remarkable, riveting book about a famous event of nearly two and a half centuries ago finds a raft of new information that generations of historians (myself included) have missed. And the episode involved was not just one more atrocity onboard a slave ship at sea; it was the spark that helped ignite the greatest human rights movement of all time." ―Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost
"A compelling, meticulously researched tale told with compassion and clarity, The Zorg reveals the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and the humanity that led to its demise." ―Hallie Rubenhold, bestselling author of The Five and The Story of a Murder
This information about The Zorg was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Siddharth Kara is an author, researcher, and activist on modern slavery. He is a British Academy Global Professor and an Associate Professor of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at Nottingham University. Kara has authored several books and reports on slavery and child labor, and he won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. He has also taught courses on modern slavery at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University. He divides his time between the U.K. and the U.S.
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