Summary Of The Amistad Rebellion

Although the United States Congress outlawed the Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808, in 1839, African captives took over a slave ship, The Amistad, landing in the United States when they attempted to sail back to Africa. Based off of this incident, the book The Amistad Rebellion shows how the slave trade was still prevalent in 1839 and continuing to separate men, women, and children from each other and their homeland. Written from the viewpoint of the acclaimed Marcus Rediker who has a PHD in history and has written several other books on Atlantic social and maritime history, The Amistad Rebellion is written to show not only a group of African Americans struggle on board a slave boat, but the fight for the greater cause of freedom in a slavery dominated country. This book not only narrates a single event in history, but also shows how the fight against enslavement continued in each Africans heart. The Amistad was part of a greater …show more content…
Kinna was said to be “puffed up” and Cinque was “demanding and difficult” while they were still in a country where slavery flourished. Although giving testimony to the real human characteristics of these captives is important to show the captives as they truly are, it is a little hard to follow what was meant when the Africans became hard to work with. In other parts of the book they are described as “good and noble” which is contradictory to their actions later on. While it is important to be given the actual facts of the events surrounding the Amistad Rebellion, the true characteristics of the Africans could be confusing at times when attempting to separate the beliefs that all of the captives were good so as to influence the public to empathize with them, or see them for the real people with real problems they actually