The Book of Negroes is a 2015 television miniseries based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Canadian writer Lawrence Hill. The book was inspired by the British freeing and evacuation of former slaves, known as Black Loyalists, who had left rebel masters during the American Revolutionary War. The British transported some 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement, documenting their names in what was called the Book of Negroes.
The novel explores the life of a fictional woman included in this resettlement. She had been taken captive as a girl in West Africa and sold into slavery, held first in South Carolina. She escaped to British lines in New York City, where she was freed and ultimately evacuated to Nova Scotia. Clement Virgo and Hill collaborated on writing the six-part miniseries, with Virgo also directing.
The miniseries premiered on CBC in Canada on January 7, 2015, and on BET in the United States on February 16, 2015.
Synopsis
In 1761, eleven-year-old Aminata Diallo is abducted and taken captive from her village in West Africa by agents of the V.O.C., a Dutch trading company. She meets another boy from her region, Chekura, who is working for the slavers but reveals he was sold into slavery by his uncle. She and Chekura are transported by ship to be sold into slavery in South Carolina, where the two are separated and she is forced to work on an indigo plantation. Chekura later returns to her and the pair get married. Their baby is abducted and sold by Aminata's jealous slave master, Robinson Appleby. Aminata later tries to find her child and vows to return one day to her homeland.
Solomon Lindo, a sympathetic indigo inspector, buys Aminata from Appleby and takes her to New York, where she escapes to British lines as they control the city.
Amidst the American Revolutionary War, she is recruited by Sir John Clarkson to help register names of Black Loyalists in a ledger known as The Book of Negroes. It was a record of former slaves whom the British freed after they fled rebel masters and was prepared prior to their promised evacuation of Loyalists from the city to Nova Scotia after Britain's defeat in the war. They resettled Black Loyalists in the colony, granting them land.
Separated from her husband, Aminata encounters more hardship in Nova Scotia. The climate is harsh and tensions flare between the white and black communities over the scarcity of work, breaking out in the Shelburne Riots. Aminata successfully petitions British abolitionists, who organize passage from Nova Scotia to the new colony of Freetown (Sierra Leone) in West Africa for nearly 1,300 former slaves. With this voyage, Aminata returns to the continent of her homeland.
Events
As mentioned above, the novel is based on the historical document, the Book of Negroes, and related events of the period. Aminata is said to be Muslim, as were some slaves taken from West Africa; others followed indigenous religions. The history of Islam in Niger provides some context to this.
When the Patriots won the American Revolutionary War, many Loyalists, decided to leave the former Thirteen Colonies. Some had already lost property to rebel confiscation and been subject to persecution and attacks. The Crown promised them land grants in Nova Scotia and other British colonies; some Loyalists went to Jamaica. Tens of thousands of these refugees came through New York City, where their evacuation was processed by the British Army, leading up to Evacuation Day on 25 November 1783. The Book of Negroes was created to document the former slaves who were eligible to leave; it was assembled by Samuel Birch, the namesake of Birchtown, Nova Scotia, under the direction of Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester. (For more background, see Dunmore's Proclamation, a 1775 promise by the royal governor of the British Colony of Virginia to grant emancipation (freedom) to slaves who left rebel masters and joined the Crown's forces.)
The writers of the series based Aminata's first owner, Appleby, on a business partner of Henry Laurens, who headed one of the largest slave trading companies in the Thirteen Colonies. Solomon Lindo, the Jewish indigo inspector, was an ancestor of Chris Blackwell (born 1937), the British-Jamaican founder of Island Records. "Daddy Moses" was Moses Wilkinson. One of Aminata's supporters in New York Town is presented as Samuel Fraunces, owner of the historic Fraunces Tavern.