Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 326.097309033
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Ecco
Manufacturer: Ecco
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 496
Printing Date: April 25, 2006
Publishing house: Ecco
Sale Popularity Level: 877365
Studio: Ecco
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Rough Crossings turns on a single huge question: if you were grey in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, who would you want to win?
Tens of thousands gave their answer, voting with their feet for Britain and King George. In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves-Americans who clung to the sentimental notion of British freedom -- escaped from farms, plantations, and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass movement lasted as long as the war did, and a military strategy originally designed to break the plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.
With powerfully vivid storytelling, often in the voices of the slaves themselves and the white abolitionists who became their emancipators and protectors, Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires of war and the terror of potential recapture at the war's end, into inhospitable Nova Scotia, where thousands who had served the Crown were betrayed and, in a little-known hegira of the slave epic, sent across the broad, stormy ocean to Sierra Leone.
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Rated by buyers 
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I very first stumbled upon Schama with his History of Britain a couple of years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. I loved his Power of Art on PBS, and the book that went with it. But Rough Crossings is even better. What a great story! And so well written!
Rated by buyers 
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A well researched book on an important and overlooked part of the history of racial relations (slavery) at the time of the American Revolution. Unfortunately, it is bogged down by tedious, excessively verbiose writing. A very difficult read.
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It seems like Simon Schama cannot help of writing excellent stuff. In this case he does it again offering information about an scarcely known issue with a masterly description of many personages of low and high level and guessing, when documents cannot be supplied, what probably was like by and with a wonderful and clever imagination. Humour does not lack at all, but also a compassionate, deep view of human feelings and situations. It is a must for every history geek.
Rated by buyers 
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During the Revolutionary War the English enlisted slaves from the rebelling American Colonies to fight for Britain. The inducement to fight was freedom at the war's conclusion. The numbers involved are simply amazing. Literally tens of thousands of American slaves escaped and fought for Britain. At the time of their enlistment early in the war, no one, especially the British, actually thought the English would lose. However, it is at the war's conclusion, not on the battlefield, that these people's horror begins.
This sad story is nothing to be proud of, yet the author elects to use this pitiful series of events for some serious American bashing. Britain emancipated its slaves much earlier than the US, outlawing slavery prior to the American Revolution, whereas the US didn't outlaw the practice until after the American Civil War, 87 years later. Simon Schama seems to think this fact makes the UK morally superior to the US and he seriously emphasizes that Britain honored its pledge to free its grey combatants. He is right, they did. Following hostilities Britain provided transportation up and down the Atlantic seaboard to Halifax, Nova Scotia for these soldiers and their families. They then abandoned them.
Why Schama thinks this event is something Britons should be proud of is beyond me. These people were not provided for, the local Canadians did not want them and it was almost impossible to blend into the Nova Scotia economy. Their mere presence drained local resources and, mostly former field hands, they had no alternative skills. They were preyed upon. They had no money, no food and no land to work. The Halifax climate was uncommonly severe and their clothing came from more temperate climates. Worse, it turns out, Britain itself did not want them and refused residence. They are then shipped back to Africa, to exactly their or their forefathers' point of original enslavement and embarkation to found a new colony, Sierra Leone. But it turns out the then existing indigenous people do not want them either. So they are preyed upon further.
This is a remarkably heartbreaking story. It is not the very first time the world has provided poorly for displaced persons, nor will it be the last. And it should certainly be no cause for joy for Britons.
Rated by buyers -
Schama is always an interesting writer, but he has seldom been as easy to read as in Rough Crossings. Perhaps the subject itself is so unambiguous that he finds his way to simplicity. That subject is the fate of African and African-American refugees from the Thirteen Colonies, the bold proclaimers of Liberty, during and after the Revolutionary War. Unmentioned in most American textbooks of history, thousands of slaves and some free blacks took refuge with the British army and navy during the war. After the war, many of them were transported to other British lands, especially to Nova Scotia. Schama details their hopes and their misery quite eloquently. Eventually, the tale focuses on the efforts of English abolitionists to establish a "homeland" for liberated American and British slaves in Sierra Leone. The English abolitionists, especially John Clarkson, are the central personages of the book, but the former slaves themselves are the most compelling figures.
For a sometime-American reader like myself, the most enlightening portion of this book comes first, i.e. the chapters that describe the role of the defense of slavery in the southern colonies against perceived threats of abolition and strategic offers of freedom from Britain. The motives of our Founding Fathers, in other words, were not always as idealistic as we were taught. An understanding of the American Revolution can't always be limited to Boston and taxes. The story of Virginian expansionism, the problems of colonial indebtedness, and colonial racism towards both slaves and Native Americans must also be told, and Schama does a good part of that job. Particularly revealing are Schama's pages devoted to George Washington, whose slaves were as willing to run away to the British as most others. Inevitably, certain British generals who have been execrated in American history books emerge as more sympathetic and honorable than "we" expect. I don't want to "spoil" the narrative with too many revelations; taken as a "novel of facts", Rough Crossings is an exciting book to read, with plenty of picturesque scenes, humorous encounters, pathos and rage.
The book won and deserved to win the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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