Rough Crossing
🛑 ALL INFORMATION CLICK HERE 👈🏻👈🏻👈🏻
Rough Crossing
All Titles TV Episodes Celebs Companies Keywords Advanced Search
Fully supported English (United States) Partially supported Français (Canada) Français (France) Deutsch (Deutschland) हिंदी (भारत) Italiano (Italia) Português (Brasil) Español (España) Español (México)
Maybe I didn't catch the "totally awesome" episodes of Rough Crossing, 'cause I don't think the show is all that great. It's OK for what it is, a cable access show in the form of a soap opera, but that's not saying much. I am surprised that the show was on for so long, though (but I guess cable access shows don't have to worry about ratings). From what I could tell when I watched it drunk in college, the show utilized the "talents" of a number of stars from Lane County community access. All in all: Hit or miss show for fans of cable access shows attempting to replicate "real" shows. The acting and writing is pretty mind-numbing, however.
Suggest an edit or add missing content
We Love These Hollywood Power Couples
Eva McKormick : [as she pulls a bottle of wine out of the fridge] Who does that Kyle Black think he is? Coming into my own home, calling me an alcoholic... I am NOT an alcoholic?
All Titles TV Episodes Celebs Companies Keywords Advanced Search
Fully supported English (United States) Partially supported Français (Canada) Français (France) Deutsch (Deutschland) हिंदी (भारत) Italiano (Italia) Português (Brasil) Español (España) Español (México)
Simon Schama's Rough Crossings movie was released Jan 20, 2009 by the Warner Home Video studio. One of American history's most unknown chapters is told in this BBC documentary: the stories o... Read all Simon Schama's Rough Crossings movie was released Jan 20, 2009 by the Warner Home Video studio. One of American history's most unknown chapters is told in this BBC documentary: the stories of slaves who fled to the British side during the American Revolution. Simon Schama's Rough... Read all Simon Schama's Rough Crossings movie was released Jan 20, 2009 by the Warner Home Video studio. One of American history's most unknown chapters is told in this BBC documentary: the stories of slaves who fled to the British side during the American Revolution. Simon Schama's Rough Crossings movie Historian Simon Schama hosts this intriguing program that follows the ody... Read all
Suggest an edit or add missing content
We Love These Hollywood Power Couples
Deliver to
Russian Federation
Don't Change
Change Address
Books
›
History
›
Americas
This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.
Share
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Learn more
Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution Paperback – Illustrated, May 1, 2007
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
4.4 out of 5 stars
56 ratings
Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. Try again.
Publisher
:
Ecco; Reprint edition (May 1, 2007) Language
:
English Paperback
:
478 pages ISBN-10
:
0060539178 ISBN-13
:
978-0060539177 Item Weight
:
1.26 pounds Dimensions
:
6 x 1.28 x 9 inches
4.4 out of 5 stars
56 ratings
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Top reviews
Most recent
Top reviews
For far too long the African-American experience has not been fully or accurately captured in American history books. At the time of the American Revolution, 20% of the 2.5 million people in the colonies were black. In the plantation provinces, such as Virginia, that proportion could be as high as 40%. Of the roughly 500,000 slaves in America in 1776, author Simon Schama estimates that somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 left the plantations during the war. It’s a staggering figure and a sadly ignored aspect of the well-documented Revolutionary period. The first thing any prospective reader should know is that “Rough Crossings” doesn’t tell the full story of blacks and the American Revolution or what happened to those 100,000 souls who fled the plantations. Rather, it tells just one side story, but a fascinating one: how over 1,000 impoverished ex-slaves living in Nova Scotia after the war emigrated to an experimental new British-backed colony in Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa in the 1790s. Thus, “Rough Crossings” is more the story of the foundation of Freetown, Sierra Leone than it is the story of the African-American experience during the Revolution. Schama breaks “Rough Crossings” into two equal parts, the first of which lacks a clear narrative structure. It is the backstory to the Nova Scotia exodus (and frankly I’m not sure it was necessary). Titled “Greeny,” it is dedicated to Granville Sharp, the founding father of the British abolitionist movement, a man Schama calls “an eccentric but famously resolute warrior on behalf of slaves in England” and in fervent opposition to what he called “The Accursed Thing.” Sharp made his reputation by defending slaves in British courtrooms – and was surprisingly successful at it. Most famously, in 1772, Sharp defended James Somerset, an erstwhile slave who was kidnapped and bundled off in chains to be returned to slavery in Jamaica. Sharp sought to use the case to establish that “no man can be a slave, being once in England, the very air he breathed made him a free man [and] that he has a right to be governed by the laws of the land” on exactly the same basis as any other man. The final verdict, however, was much less limited in nature. The Lord Chief Justice Mansfield had indeed set Somerset free, but had gone to great lengths to not make a general ruling on the legality of slavery in England. Specifically, he ruled that Common Law did not recognize a master’s right to transport his slave against his will out of England to a place where he might be sold. However, the widely held impression of the Somerset verdict was much wider; both sides believed the verdict made slavery illegal in England, and that rumor quickly made its way to the enslaved masses in America. “It had made the idea of British freedom a germ of hope,” Schama writes. “There was hardly a black, free or slave, in North America who did not know those two words: Granville Sharp.” Thus, when revolution came, America’s enslaved population saw England as the true land of freedom and escaped to the British lines whenever they could. Soon, tens of thousands of slaves across the colonies were risking life and limb to join the British. “Despite all the physical and material ordeals, brutal disappointments and betrayals endured by the blacks,” Schama writes, “the stark fact that the British were their enemies’ enemies made them keep coming to the royal standard.” In 1783, the British capitulated; they abandoned a community of some 750,000 loyalists, including 100,000 in New York alone, in what Schama calls “the greatest cost-cutting exercise in British history.” The primary destination for many of these refugees was Nova Scotia. Around 15% of the incoming loyalists were black, about 5,000 in total; only perhaps half were free. Nova Scotia was no promised land by any stretch for the black emigrant population. It was known for “its martinets, its bitter, hostile white disbanded soldiery, its sanctimonious churchmen, its procrastinating clerks and its partial magistrates.” Sharp’s advocacy for ex-slaves extended beyond the courtroom to his seemingly quixotic Province of Freedom, a resettlement colony at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. The first attempt at colonization was to resettle London’s indigent black street population, an effort that ended in disaster. Sharp and his key collaborator, Thomas Clarkson, however, were not ready to give up on the project. They looked to the ex-slave population barely clinging to existence in Nova Scotia as a potentially better candidate for resettlement. Part Two, “John,” focuses on Thomas Clarkson’s idealistic younger, naval officer brother who led the effort to recruit and transplant willing, impoverished blacks from Nova Scotia and then served as the first governor of the newly minted Freetown in Sierra Leone. Part Two possesses the narrative arc that Part One lacks. Also, it’s a story that’s well told in a 2007 BBC docudrama hosted by Schama that’s available for free on YouTube. In Schama’s learned estimation John Clarkson is a hero: earnest, noble and fair. From beginning to end, he treated the destitute emigrants with dignity, respect, Christian charity and, above all, fairness. He promised the desperate ex-slaves a better life in their native Africa, a new community where they could start their lives over, playing a leadership role ffor the first time. It began with a perilous journey from Halifax to Sierra Leone, a righteous armada of 15 vessels carrying 1,200 ex-slaves to Freetown in 1792. Schama stresses that Clarkson wanted the return journey to Africa to be as comfortable as possible, as unlike the horrid middle passage as he was able to create. “What John Clarkson had designed,” Schama writes, “was an inter-racial, floating Christian republic: bound for freedom, glory and merited blessings of God.” Two other characters play a pivotal role in Schama’s narrative in Part Two: ex-slaves Thomas Peters and the Baptist minister David George. The BBC docudrama pays particularly close attention to the rivalry that developed between Clarkson, the formal leader of the expedition, and Peters, the de facto indigenous leader, which was only settled by the untimely death of the latter. The settlers eked out a tenuous existence from the forbidding terrain. Disease became rampant. Hundreds died. Yet, under Clarkson’s unwavering and competent leadership they persisted. He was the lone white official worth his salt, according to Schama, the rest being indolent, mildly racist drunkards. Nevertheless, Clarkson would be removed from governorship by the leadership of the Sierra Leone Company back in London. It was feared that he had “gone native” and lacked the ability to effectively manage the native population and promote the interests of the company. The idea of a free, black democratic community quickly fell apart. In closing, “Rough Crossings” provides an inspiring read of a forgotten page in history, if not necessarily American history per se.
ROUGH CROSSINGS is an important, informative, and well written book which all Americans (in particular) should read. Schama covers British America from a decade or two before the American Revolution, through the legislated end of slavery in Britain in the first decade or two of the 19th century, focusing on the lives of Blacks, mostly slaves, living in Colonial America (and elsewhere). In my opinion, most Americans have a very hazy understanding of the true conditions, attitudes, and practices of Colonial Americans in this period (I know I was greatly enlightened). We Americans learn to laud the rightfully famous phrase, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights' from the Declaration of Independence, and we somehow imagine and rationalize that our revered patriot forefathers would have done away with slavery if only the conventions of the time weren't so embedded and inflexible. We are taught that the patriot forefathers understood the contradiction between the banner of their words and the tragedy of their actions, but social realities of the time just wouldn't allow an end to slavery -- we are taught that they looked thoughtfully into the (near?) future when, indeed, in the modern words of ML King, our nation would finally live up to the meaning of its creed. Schama points out that, instead, the historical reality was that the American gentry and middle class landowners mostly felt they were justified in owning slaves, that if they were strong enough to impose bondage on Black Africans, it must be sanctioned by natural order, and that their entrepreneurial cleverness of gaining free labor from human chattel was just smart business. In Colonial American society of this period there were, of course, individuals of strident abolitionist sentiment, but for the most part, the kindest justification Colonial American slaveholders offered was a claim that forced agricultural labor from captured African Blacks freed them from the constant dangers of their jungle homeland. My American History classes did not include in-depth coverage that, leading into and during the American Revolution, the British forces offered freedom to Black slaves who could cross into their lines and contribute to their counterinsurgency efforts against the American revolutionaries. Neither did I learn that our American revolutionary leaders (including all the famous ones we think we know so well) did consider adopting an identical program to build troop and support forces from Black slaves -- but the concept was trounced by American slaveholder objections that such policies would be robbery of their assets and unjust destruction of their money making operations. ROUGH CROSSINGS shows in-depth and meticulous research (with sourced footnotes, of course). Schama's brilliance lies in, as a result of what must be exhaustive research, his ability to present the minutia of real lives. His method of telling history weaves high level events and concepts with the realities of people who lived everyday lives -- both famous and heretofore unknown. Personally, I was most impressed with and grateful to learn about the lives and actions of Granville Sharp and John Clarkson -- perhaps the most prominent two of dozens of other dedicated abolitionists profiled in ROUGH CROSSINGS, who worked to end slavery and to protect the freedom of Blacks who had escaped bondage. Upon completing the book I was left forlorn, realizing that today, among our politicians and leaders, we have so few who possess but a fraction of the compelling moral leadership of these historical figures. ROUGH CROSSINGS offers much more -- there is in this historical period much difficulty, disappointment, and tragedy among ardent moral efforts. There are some important historical victories, too. Schama presents a detailed exposition of cinematic artistry. Occasionally one must allow him some patience to develop and describe diverse narrative arcs -- but he never fails to gather loose strings together in meaningful points and observations. One's understanding of American and British history of the revolutionary period cannot be considered complete without reading this most enjoyable book.
Clearly an important if devastating book, as it illuminates what was missing in my high-school-level American history education. I must admit I was disappointed when I realized that the footnotes were not hot linked, as it is very unlikely that I will get any use out of them otherwise. Prepare to be fascinated by this revisionist history of our "noble" American Revolution.
Having studied aspects of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade at University it is a subject that has continued to interest me. Schama is a writer I enjoy reading across a range of subjects. He does not disappoint here. Well written, fastidiously researched, this book is one the deserves an in depth read. It covers areas that are generally only touched on in passing, or completely ignored by other histories of the era.
I absolutely love this book. It reads like a novel. Schama is a wonderful author. This is the third book of his that I have read, and I have bought 3 or 4 copies of it to give to friends and a couple of libraries. A very intense historical book. I could hardly put it down. I read the book in under a week, and it is over 500 pages long. Spell-binding. A must-read.
Informative and absorbing. Written in Schama’s inimitable style.
Schama once again makes history come alive in this vivid telling of the trials, tribulations and ultimate triumphs of American slaves who bolted for freedom, joined the British side in the Revolutionary War.
Excellent stories that made the headlines of slavery much more personal and real. Continues to add to the painful history of racism in our country.
Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations
Conditions of Use Privacy Notice Interest-Based Ads © 1996-2022, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required . Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader .
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
“The most dramatic account so far of the extraordinary expeience of slaves in and
Sucking Young Boy Dick
Devil May Cry Cosplay
Cop Girl Porn