The Slave Ship by Marcus Rediker Page A

University of Pittsburgh, by support from the Center for Latin American Studies, the Center for West European Studies, the University Center for International Studies, the Central Research Development Fund, George Klinzing and Provost’s Office of Research, and Dean N. John Cooper and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
    It was my good fortune to speak about this project before many engaged and responsive audiences. Thanks to the facilitators of the events and those who came and spoke their minds: Eric Cheyfitz, Cornell University; Karen Kupperman, Sinclair Thomson, and Michael Gomez, New York University; Madge Dresser, University of the West of England; Peter Way, Bowling Green State University; Andrew Wells and Ben Maddison, University of Wollongong; Cassandra Pybus, Centre for the Study of Colonialism and Its Aftermath, University of Tasmania; Rick Halpern, University of Toronto; Pearl Robinson, Tufts University; William Keach, Brown University; Simon Lewis, College of Charleston; Modhumita Roy, Marxist Literary Group; Phyllis Hunter, University of North Carolina-Greensboro; Kirk Savage, Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Alejandro de la Fuente, Department of History, University of Pittsburgh. I also benefited from the thoughts and suggestions of colleagues who gathered in Fremantle, Australia, in July 2005 at the conference “Middle Passages: The Oceanic Voyage as Social Process,” organized by Cassandra Pybus, Emma Christopher, and Terri-Ann White.
    As I worked in maritime archives over the last thirty years, it took a long time to see that it might be possible to write a history of the slave ship and longer still to accept its challenge. The idea first came to me in the late 1990s as I visited prisoners on death row in Pennsylvania and worked to abolish capital punishment, a modern system of terror. Thanks to the many people I have met through this long and continuing struggle: our common work is reflected in countless ways, subtle and deep, in these pages. A critical moment in deciding to write the book was a meeting in 2003 with a host of talented scholars in the Sawyer Seminar on “Redress in Social Thought, Law, and Literature,” at the University of California-Irvine. Especially valuable then and since have been communications with Saidiya Hartman, author of the powerful new book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.
    Many of my colleagues and students at the University of Pittsburgh have helped me in countless ways. Joseph Adjaye has long been a vital source of knowledge and wisdom about African history. Stefan Wheelock encouraged me to think about the technology of enslavement, while Jerome Branche helped me to understand the concept “shipmate.” Seymour Drescher and Rebecca Shumway read chapters and gave me the benefit of their expertise. Patrick Manning has been a paragon of scholarly and comradely generosity, encouraging me at the beginning of the project, guiding me through the middle, and helping me in numerous and practical ways at the end. Rob Ruck has shared the ups and downs of this book and much else, not least many a Pitt basketball season. These people and others—Alejandro de la Fuente, Lara Putnam, Bill Chase, Reid Andrews, and the members of the Working-Class History Seminar—have helped to make the history department and the University of Pittsburgh my happy home for many years.
    I have had excellent research assistance along the way. Three of my former undergraduate students, Heather Looney, Ian Hartman, and Matt Maeder, did truly outstanding work, not only gathering primary sources but asking sharp, probing questions about what they found. My graduate students past and present have been a continual source of enthusiasm, assistance, and inspiration: thanks to Isaac Cur-tis, John Donoghue, Niklas Frykman, Gabriele Gottlieb, Forrest Hylton, Maurice Jackson, Eric Kimball, Christopher Magra, Michael McCoy, Craig Marin, Scott Smith, Karsten Voss, and