The Price They Paid: Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War

A prizewinning historian uncovers one of the earliest instances of reparations in America, paid to slaveholders rather than former slaves. Jeff Forret's book, The Price They Paid, shows how the British Crown made reparations payments to a U.S. government that represented slaveholder interests. The book highlights the need for a fuller understanding of how the debts of slavery have been paid and to whom.

Format: Hardback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 02 January 2025
Publisher: The New Press

A prizewinning historian, Jeff Forret, has uncovered one of the earliest instances of reparations in America, which is ironic because it was paid to slaveholders rather than former slaves. In 1831, the American ship Comet, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, which was then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ships' owners, set the rescued captives free. American slave owners and the companies who insured the liberated human cargo would spend years lobbying for reparations from Great Britain, not for the emancipated slaves, of course, but for the masters deprived of their human property. In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize–winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the Comet incident—as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade—resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests. Through a story that has never been fully explored, The Price They Paid shows how, unlike their former owners and insurers, neither the survivors of the Comet and other vessels nor their descendants have ever received reparations for the price they paid in their lives, labor, and suffering during slavery. Any accounting of reparations today requires a fuller understanding of how the debts of slavery have been paid, and to whom. The Price They Paid is a groundbreaking work that sheds light on a little-known aspect of American history and offers valuable insights into the ongoing struggle for racial justice and equality.

Weight: 684g
Dimension: 159 x 244 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781620978863