Rough Crossings

BBC, Steve Condie, Simon Schama (presenter)

You need to have the Flash Player installed and a browser with JavaScript support.
Title: Rough Crossings
Producer: BBC, Steve Condie, Simon Schama (presenter)
Category: History
Views: 1065
Added: Nov 25th 2010
Lights off

Rate video

Rating: 5.0 out of 1 vote
Report broken documentary

Description

Simon Schama tells the fascinating story of the African-American slaves who chose to fight for Britain – and their freedom – in the American Revolutionary War.

With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war’s end.

Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the ‘Moses’ of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, where they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence.

Tags

Rough Crossings, BBC, Steve Condie, Simon Schama, africa, america, revolution, freedom, britain, nova, scotia, crown, abolitionist, john clarkson, granville sharp, moses, slave, american war, independence, documentary, free, watch, online, film, top, movie