Rough Crossings
  • Published: 15 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099536079
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 560
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

Rough Crossings

Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Aug 2011
Paperback
15 Jun 2009
Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

The astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves in the American War of Independence

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence. With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end. Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the 'Moses' of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, where they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.
  • Published: 15 June 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099536079
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 560
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, The American Future, The Face of Britain and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492).

His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented more than fifty films for the BBC on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics, and The Story of the Jews and is co-presenter of a new landmark series on the history of world art, Civilisations.

portrait photo of Simon Schama

Also by Simon Schama

Art
Belonging
A History of Britain - Volume 1
The Power of Art
Scribble, Scribble, Scribble
The American Future
The Face of Britain
See all

Praise for Rough Crossings

This brilliant book by the leading historian of our times about a subject of great significance will delight professional historians and entrance the reading public. Rough Crossings succeeds in all respects. It is a 'tour de force' and a landmark in historical scholarship

Times Higher Education Supplement

Schama's gift for plunging us into the very centre of the action, whether in Charleston, London or on the African coast, makes reading an exhilarating experience

Daily Telegraph

Brilliant and deeply moving

Observer

Schama has a remarkable ability to stare into the anonymous faces in the crowd and to pluck them from historical obscurity. Rough Crossings gives voice to people who have, until now, remained mere names on duty lists

James Walvin

One only has to dip into Rough Crossings to appreciate the command of detail that lies behind his apparently effortless ability to come up with the right quotation or description

Times Literary Supplement