Complicity Book Review

Complicity Book Review

The book Complicity by Anne Farrow, Jenifer Frank, and Joel Lang describes how the north helped to create as well as strengthen and prolong slavery. The book tells the story of the north as well as the abolitionist movement’s role during this particular time (Farrow, Lang & Frank, 2007). Complicity gives an account of the Triangle Trade of molasses as well as rum and slaves that linked the north and the West Indies as well as Africa. This particular book gives eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery from the Mason-Dixon line, and this includes Nathaniel Gordon of Main, who was the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States. Farrow, Lang, and Frank begin their excavation of the past with an acknowledgment of its impact on the present.

It illustrates the clear connection between the southern cotton industry as well as the northern shipbuilding and manufacturing industry, as well as the economic aspects of slavery. Complicity manifested the compromises struck in the south as well as the northern enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 (Farrow, Lang & Frank, 2007). The safety of black people in the north could not be guaranteed, and at the same time, it reveals different factions in the north that condemned slavery. Complicity calls attention to slavery as the north, and the south continued their complicated relationship, especially concerning white supremacy in the nineteenth as well as the 20^th century.

One can tell that the authors are shocked by the fact that slavery existed in Connecticut, and this piece examines and exposes the occurrence of slavery in the northern part of America. Through the viewpoint of the authors, one can see their repulsion of slavery and their feelings concerning it. The second part of the book deals with the international slave trade and the role of New England and New York (Farrow, Lang & Frank,2007). One realizes that in the years before the Civil War, New York City had close ties to the south as well as to the illegal international slave trade. One of the most enlightening chapters of the book covers the topic of kidnapping and selling of free blacks. The author wants the public to understand that the north had a significant role to play in the slave trade as well, and this book reveals the central role that slavery has to the history of America.

The book further reveals how slavery took a central aspect of the network of interdependent economic systems throughout the country and especially considering the belief that it was acceptable to have human beings as property in early America. One realizes that the north was in the perfect position to deal with resistance and violence (Farrow, Lang & Frank, 2007). Furthermore, it is clear that the relationship of the region with slavery was a distant one, and this distance allowed the north to minimize and even deny its position in the slave trade industry. Complicity aims to reveal how the north promoted, prolonged, and profited from slavery, and it tells the story of the north since everyone knows about the south, and therefore shows the other side to the coin.

The book is based on secondary and primary sources, and it has ten chapters that are presented chronologically.It discusses how seventeenth-century settlers prospered through trading with Caribbean slave troops. These chapters reveal various aspects such as the nineteenth-century role of New York as a port of departure for the trans-Atlantic trade dealers (Farrow, Lang & Frank, 2007). They also capture the kidnapping of black northerners in southern slavery and the northern opposition to abolitionism. Complicity’s findings surprise historians, and this book has managed to gather beneficial attributes. The book gives a clear depiction of the architectural tastes of the northerners in the revolutionary era in South Carolina as well as the marketing strategies used by slave owners.

The book also gives insights concerning northern race relations as well as the ideas that show how slavery developed in America. The book also brings the publics’ attention to northern slavery and racism, and at the time, the authors make claims that are dubious and hyperbolic (Farrow, Lang & Frank, 2007)…Complicity is a novel that makes questionable arguments and at the same time, sidesteps essential issues. Complicity does not examine why Northerners abolished slavery in their region and why it votes for antislavery political parties. This book looks to cover various individuals and institutions in the northern states and primarily in New England and New York.

Through this, one can see how the authors examine the West Indies provisioning and slave trade in the eighteenth century. One major issue is that the authors ignored chronology in organizing Complicity, and this is disconcerting. However, one can realize that this is an investigative report from an unexamined twenty-first-century perspective, and this gives a conventional historical monograph (Farrow, Lang & Frank,2007). It is commendable how the book reflects on an impressive amount of research and tells important stories that the reader has to consider. The book gives an excellent example of what nonacademic history can do, and a majority of the historians already know most of what the book covers. However, the investigative aspect of the book is noteworthy. The book is a refreshing read and gives a new perspective of the slave trade in the historical discourse of American society.