When I came across the title The Zorg several months ago, the ship’s name did not ring a bell with me. It was the rest of the book’s title that captured my attention: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery.

Before reading Siddharth Kara’s well-researched work, I thought I knew all I needed to know about slavery – at least the U.S. mode of enslavement. My people were kidnapped from their homeland, forced across the Atlantic Ocean in our own Maafa, treated as chattel, and required to work for free under the most heinous conditions. Except for a few sporadic periods of progress, the trajectory put us on a horrific course, infected and shaped by enslavement. What else did I need to know!

Kara is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Cobalt Red, a New York Times bestseller. I was unfamiliar with his work, but the repeated theme of his respected research was enough of a credential to draw me in.

This was not an easy read for me. One reason for the challenge is that I am a descendant of enslaved people; my DNA carries the intergenerational trauma of slavery and its aftermath. The other reason is my approach to reading as a visual processor. I first read the words on the page before projecting them as images. Kara’s vivid and brutal storytelling hurled me into the dark, putrid hull of the Zorg as an unwilling passenger. I needed to break the reading into two sessions and engage only when I was in a sound psychological state with minimal distractions. Deep breathing between sections also helped as a protective method for my psyche.

The Zorg details the 1781 massacre aboard a slave ship when an inept and greedy crew threw 132 captive Africans overboard to collect an insurance payout. The claim ultimately led to anti-slavery legislation in England, such as The Dolben Act of 1788 and the total abolition of slavery in 1833. England was an undeniably powerful stakeholder in the transatlantic slave trade by the late eighteenth century, representing 40% of the entire European market. The city of Liverpool became an important British hub for slave trafficking, moving more than 80% of the African slaves for the British.

Kara helps us to fully understand the circumstances of The Zorg by putting us in the European industry of slavery. He provides the reader with captivating aerial perspectives and close-up encounters which frame the complex relationships that both fueled and obstructed the infamous slave trade.

After reading The Zorg, I’m embarrassed about my ignorance of the slave trade. I also acknowledge that some aspects of the trade I couldn’t have possibly known without the research of historians like Kara. We’ll probably never know all the gory details about one of the most despicable periods in U.S. history. However, based on lived experiences and historical accounts, we can objectively debunk the racist statements of white politicians who cast slavery in a favorable light, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.

Here are seven facts I did not know, at least not consciously, that I learned from The Zorg:

-The transatlantic slave trade spanned nearly four centuries.

-Investors in the trade were not just royalty but others, from the business elite to the merchant classes, who saw a lucrative return on their dollars.

-Pirates roamed the ocean looking for vulnerable ships to commandeer the human cargo for sale on the open markets.

-The ships were fully staffed beyond a captain and motley crew of sailors; there were also navigators and medical personnel whose presence helped to guarantee a safe passage of healthy slaves at the end of the tortuous journey.

– The American Revolution was a major disruption in the slave trade, particularly for maritime logistics and knowledge of which Caribbean islands were under enemy control.

-The embryonic stages of globalism were exposed, and the international fractures highlighted. It is how the Zorg, a Dutch ship, got targeted and captured by a British privateer; the Netherlands was on the wrong side of England.

-The business of slavery was highly sophisticated and included a labyrinth of laws, trade agreements between countries, a network of ports, insurance markets, and financial systems. Free Africans on the Gold Coast, like the Fante, negotiated a vital and profitable role between African tribes and Europeans during the slave trade.

There have been a few scholarly challenges to Kara’s nonfiction work. The central argument of The Zorg is undeniable: the significance of this particular slave ship in the abolition of slavery in Britain. The book deepened my understanding of the tentacles of an institution built on the backs of Africans and reinforced the legal justification for reparations. Its tentacles are so strong and far-reaching that they have shaped the course of world history and human relationships for years to come.

Note: Author and historian Siddarth Kara will be a guest on Voices from the Battlefield hosted by Jamala Rogers