Word: schama
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution (Ecco; 475 pages), the indispensable Simon Schama (Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution) has taken a much trickier path. By choosing to tell the story of the thousands of escaped slaves who fought beside the British in the hope of securing their freedom, he effectively turns the American Revolution upside down. In Schama's book, it's the Crown that holds out the promise of liberty, the patriots who would take it away. As war approached, the British promised emancipation to any runaways who would join forces with...
...blacks," Schama reminds us, "the news that the British Were Coming was a reason for hope, celebration and action." On the eve of independence, as many as 20% of the rebellious colonies' 2.5 million people were African American. That figure rose to 40% in Virginia, the home of Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who were slave owners all. Then again, so was Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor of Virginia and the man who first made the offer of freedom for military service. Schama's book, nuanced, fair-minded and beautifully written, does not pretend that the British...
...Schama's subtle history is a webwork of characters: early American abolitionists like Washington's aide-de-camp John Laurens, determined slaves like the self-named "British Freedom" and scoundrels too numerous to mention. His heroes include antislavery pamphleteer Granville Sharp, who subsidized a pivotal English court case on behalf of an American slave who escaped from his master while visiting England...
...documentary is inspired by Dead Certainty, a book by noted historian and former Harvard professor Simon Schama, whose section “Death of a Harvard Man” explores the case from the perspectives of multiple characters...
...Schama, who serves as the film’s “presenter,” concocts imaginary scenarios that may or may not have happened in history. These scenes are filmed in black and white, which Stange said lowered production costs and aesthetically reflected the ambivalence surrounding the case...