الزورغ : حكاية جشع وقتل ألهمت إلغاء العبودية

One of the 100 most important books of 2025 according to the New York Times. A must-read book for the year 2025, according to Time magazine. An essential book to read according to The New Yorker magazine. From the Pulitzer Prize-nominated and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: How Congo Blood Fuels Our Lives. Perfect for fans of “The Bet” by David Grann, and “The Wide Sea” by Hampton Sides. In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from Holland, bound for the Windward and Gould coasts of Africa, where it would pick up its human cargo. The Zorg (Dutch for “care”) was one of thousands of similar ships, but the horrific events that followed its ill-fated voyage were unique. By the end of her journey, Zorg became the first definitive piece of evidence against slavery. When a series of unexpected weather events and navigation errors lead Zorg's ship to run off course and run out of supplies, its captain throws more than a hundred slaves overboard to save the crew and its most valuable slaves. The ship's owners then demanded compensation for their losses from insurance companies, in a first of its kind for slaves who were not killed due to mutiny or natural causes. The insurance companies refused to pay out because of the higher than usual rate of deaths of slaves on board, resulting in a trial that initially ruled in their favor, with the chief judge likening the slaves to horses. Thanks to the anger of one man present in court that day, the trial was restarted. For the first time, concepts such as human rights and morality entered the debate over slavery in a court case that was reduced to a simple but profound question: Were the Africans on board the ship people or goods? What followed was a thrilling legal drama in England's highest court that turned the brutal accounts of slavery into headline news. The Zurg affair transformed the nascent anti-slavery movement from a fringe evangelical issue into one of the most important moral campaigns in history, sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States. Zorg is the amazing, if little-known, true story of the most important ship to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean.