The slave trade is one of the best known yet least understood processes in history. The popular image of traders and slave ships going to Africa and rounding up slaves as if they were cattle is not only historically inaccurate, it also disguises the fact that the slave trade was a highly organized Atlantic-wide system that required close collaboration at the highest levels of government in Europe, Africa, and the New World. Using the private journal of First Lieutenant Robert Durand, supplemented with archival research, Robert Harms recreates the voyage of the French slave ship The Diligent.