The Empire of Necessity

The Empire of Necessity (2014) by American writer and professor Greg Grandin provides a historical analysis of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, paying particular attention to the shifts in power, including successful revolts, which emerged out of the physically and emotionally precarious conditions on slave ships. Throughout the book, Grandin contends that the popular name for this horrific period in the history of human exploitation, the Age of Liberty, obfuscates that it was also the age of massive enslavement. Americans and Europeans alike exploited the bodies of non-white people throughout and beyond the Age of Liberty, which stretched from the American Revolution through the revolutions in South America, France, and Haiti. The book has been acclaimed for exposing the paradoxes of ascribing names to moments of history, showing how they more often result from abuses of power than attempts to accurately represent what happened.

Grandin begins the book by looking back at the voyage of the Perseverance, an American ship that sailed near Chile in February 1805. Sailors on board the Perseverance saw a strange vessel on the horizon that lacked a flag and had its sails drawn in. The captain, Amasa Delano, decided to see if the ship, the Tryal, needed help. As he approached the Tryal, he found a number of African slaves alongside a group of sailors from Spain. The Tryal’s captain seemed deeply troubled and paranoid, refusing to speak to Delano without a manservant nearby. As he grew more worried, Delano returned to his ship. As he climbed down to his rowboat, the captain leaped from the Tryal, colliding with the rowboat. Delano realized that the captain was actually a captive, the Tryal’s slaves having revolted successfully nearly two months earlier. Grandin contends that Delano’s nine-hour-long visit to the Tryal was a deeply significant event in the history of slavery, since it consisted of a convincing, organized performance of the master-slave relationship conducted by slaves who were written off as illiterate in the social vocabularies of their oppressors.

Grandin also provides background on the voyages of the Perseverance and Tryal, and the plight of the seventy-two slaves aboard the latter ship. Delano’s ship had reached the coast of Chile during an expedition to poach seals. The Tryal was on its way from Chile to another destination to engage in the slave trade. The slaves’ journey started on the coast of West Africa, where they were forced to board in chains. Their initial ship disembarked in Buenos Aires, where many of the slaves were sold. After Buenos Aires, they were forced to walk over the Andes Mountains, laboring in their chains, to Chile. Grandin vividly describes the harsh environmental conditions that plagued this journey. The time of the trek over the Andes coincided with Ramadan, and many of the slaves were Muslim. They started their revolt on the Day of Power, the holiest Muslim holiday. Grandin explains that Christianity and Islam often worked hand in hand with each other, facilitated by the movement of slaves, as waves of religious evangelism passed over Africa and the Americas.



The Empire of Necessity is a compelling reading of evidence about a particularly interesting voyage, made during an especially unconscionable moment in Western history. Grandin’s analysis disqualifies any notion that slaves were too uneducated or passive in temperament to understand or organize against their subjugation. It shows, instead, that Western hegemony still works today to undermine and minimize the real narratives of slaves.