Book on Seafaring Bermuda Slaves Wins Award

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The first ever social and cultural account of 18th century Bermuda – and the first book to explore the unique ties between black and white Bermudian mariners whose seafaring exploits aboard the island’s cedar sloops opened a new chapter in Atlantic maritime history – has won a top academic prize in the US.

University of Rochester historian Michael Jarvis has won the 2010 James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History for his book “The Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783″. The honour is given to a single recipient each year by the American Historical Association, the country’s premier scholarly organisation for historians.

The Rawley Prize recognises a work of outstanding scholarship and literary merit that explores aspects of the Atlantic world before the 20th century. It will be presented to Mr. Jarvis in January during the association’s annual meeting in Boston.

Writing for the selection committee, Mia Bay, a professor of history at Rutgers University, called the work “Atlantic history at its best.” She lauded the study for bringing to light “the far-flung worlds of Bermuda’s free and enslaved seafaring men and their families,” and for “illuminating the many, and at times unexpected, ties of empire.”

Published this past April by the University of North Carolina Press, “In the Eye of All Trade” was greeted by scholars as “inspired” and a “signal achievement.” The study, wrote Georgetown University historian Alison Games, “will make it impossible for historians to ignore the island any longer.”

The book explores the social and economic history of 18th-century Bermuda through the eyes of the island’s seafarers. Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops and follows white and enslaved sailors throughout the British North American and Caribbean colonies. He shows how these sailors and slaves shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, harvested timber, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband.

In the process, Mr. Jarvis details the unique character of maritime slavery, revealing dimensions of slaves’ living and working conditions beyond the plantation. He also documents how Bermuda’s small family-owned ships helped to link together the economies of the British colonies in “significant but underappreciated” ways and how those vibrant trade relationships were disrupted by the American Revolution and ultimately ended with the creation of an independent United States.

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