The Price They Paid cover art

The Price They Paid

Slavery, Shipwrecks, and Reparations Before the Civil War

Preview

Free with 30-day trial
Prime logo New to Audible Prime Member exclusive:
2 credits with free trial
1 credit a month to use on any title to download and keep
Listen to anything from the Plus Catalogue—thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and audiobooks
Download titles to your library and listen offline
₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

The Price They Paid

Written by: Jeff Forret
Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
Free with 30-day trial

₹199 per month after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for ₹1,641.00

Buy Now for ₹1,641.00

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A prizewinning historian uncovers the first instances of reparations in America—ironically, though perhaps not surprisingly, paid to slaveholders, not 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, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau, over the outraged objections of the ship’s 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 represents a major step forward in that effort.

©2024 Jeff Forret (P)2024 Dreamscape Media
Black & African American Wars & Conflicts

Critic Reviews

“A spectacular achievement of historical research. Forret shows for the first time just how far the American government went to secure reparations.” —Robert Elder‚ author of Calhoun: American Heretic

What listeners say about The Price They Paid

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.