Tricky Business 
Megan Vaughan
- The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade by Robert Harms
On 1 June 1731, the Billy brothers, Guillaume and François, waved goodbye to their ship, the Diligent, as it set sail from Brittany. It was weighed down with Indian cloth, cowry shells from the Maldives, white linen from Hamburg, guns, ammunition and smoking pipes from Holland, kegs of brandy from the Loire Valley, and with the all-important supplies for the crew: firewood and flour, dry biscuits, fava beans, hams, salt beef, cheese, white wine and water. There was one other item to be loaded: 150 slave irons with their locks and keys, manufactured by the Taquet brothers in Nantes. Each iron could restrain two slaves. The Diligent was setting off on its first slave-trading voyage.
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Megan Vaughan teaches at Cambridge. Psychiatry and Empire was published last year.
Other articles by this contributor:
‘I am my own foundation’ · Fanon and Third Worldism
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