Posts com a Tag ‘Inhuman Traffick: The International Struggle against the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Graphic History (T)’

Liz Clarke Foto: NewHouseSports /

Fueled by the success of Trevor Getz’s award-winning Abina and the Important Men, Oxford University Press has signaled its commitment to the genre of “graphic history” by publishing six works in the series bearing that name. In Inhuman Traffick, the eminent French revolutionary and Atlantic historian, Rafe Blaufarb, teamed with the talented illustrator, Liz Clarke, to produce a remarkable example of how graphic history can engage students by combining the undeniable power of images as a form of storytelling with traditional components of a valuable pedagogical tool.

Inhuman Traffick revolves around the Neirsée incident in 1828-29, a complex tale hitherto unknown before Blaufarb’s skillful archival research. A slaving vessel of indeterminate nationality, the Neirsée was captured off the African coast as part of the British Navy’s suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. After retaking the ship, slavers sailed it to the Caribbean islands where they released Europeans at British Dominica and sold African passengers into slavery at French Guadeloupe. Because the latter group included not only the 280 survivors among the 309 original slaves but also several African Krumen (Royal Navy personnel) and Sierra Leoneans (British subjects), authorities in the UK demanded from French officials the freedom of its British African subjects. In return, the French objected to both British violation of French territory on Guadeloupe and the original confiscation of the Neirsée, which (falsely) flew under the French flag and was theoretically off limits to searches by British warships. Thus, the Neirsée incident precipitated a diplomatic imbroglio in 1829. Leia Mais