The Amistad Rebellion By Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker in The Amistad Rebellion describes the Amistad Africans from when they were kidnapped and placed in the Atlantic Slave Trade to when they obtained their freedom and returned home. The Amistad case occurred during the middle of the Antebellum period when the Atlantic Slave Trade was abolished in several countries, including in America, and several reform and abolition movements, inspired by the Second Great Awakening, were calling for the end of slavery. It was also in the middle of the Market Revolution and the South needed more slaves to expand its agricultural production, so half the nation was against the Amistad Africans. Rediker has both a M.A. and a Ph.D. in history and has won many prizes for his works on eighteenth-century …show more content…
Fuli, before being taken, “had live in Mano with his parents and five brothers” before he began his “monthlong march through Vai country and ended up at Fort Lomboko.” Rediker also describes a girl named Margru. She was around nine years old and her father was the one who sold her into slavery. He was a trader and “pawned Margru … as a surety against commodities he had been advanced” and since he didn’t return, “she was enslaved to satisfy the debt.” The circumstances surrounding each person’s capture was unique. Some of the others were captives of war, or some were similar to Fuli and slavers captured them. Rediker also does a good job of describing the Poro Society, which was central to their society. He says that the Poro Society was to “establish law and maintain social order” and its primary focus was “settling disputes and policing the boundaries of behavior.” The Poro Society even presided over “the rites of passage in which boys became men.” Without the Poro Society, the Amistad Africans wouldn’t have been able to organize themselves. They organized themselves based on their ranks in the Poro Society, and the higher they were in the society, the more they were …show more content…
The most important aspect was that it focused on what was going on around the Amistad Africans and how they reacted to it. I do wish that the book included more of their thoughts, it mainly talked about how the spectators and their teachers saw them react and their thoughts, but it still described the events perfectly. The book helps to further show the deepening conflict between pro-slavery and anti-slavery and shows that the abolitionists had to shy away from the peaceful end of slavery approach and had to justify fighting for your