Amistad Mutiny - The Ship And Slavery, The Movie And Plagiarism, Further Readings

africans cuba legal transported

In 1839 a group of Africans were KIDNAPPED from their homeland and transported to Cuba as slaves. While being transported from one port in Cuba to another, the Africans revolted, killed the captain and cook, and steered for the coast of Africa. The ship was eventually boarded by U.S. authorities in U.S. waters, and the Africans were imprisoned. Fierce legal battles ensued regarding entitlement to the Africans and the ship's cargo. In 1997 Steven Spielberg's company, Dream Works, released a movie based upon the uprising. The movie Amistad engendered its own legal furor amid charges that the screenplay plagiarized a 1989 novel.

CROSS-REFERENCES

Abolition; Adams, John Quincy; Copyright; International Law; Kidnapping; Slavery; Story, Joseph; Van Buren, Martin.

Additional Topics

Amistad Mutiny - The Ship And Slavery

In April 1839 a Spanish slaving brig with kidnapped Africans aboard sailed from the West African coast to Havana, Cuba. Jose Ruiz, a Spaniard living in Puerto Principe, Cuba, bought 49 males for $450 each. Another Spanish planter living nearby, Pedro Montes, bought four children, including three girls. In late June 1839 the ship Amistad sailed from Havana to Puerto Principe. On the third night out…

Amistad Mutiny - The Movie And Plagiarism

The plagiarism suit took a strange turn in December 1997 when the New York Times reported that Chase-Riboud had plagiarized several passages of her 1986 book, Valide: A Novel of the Harem, from a nonfiction book published 50 years earlier. Chase-Riboud admitted to the New York Times that she had used material for Valide without attribution. Dream Works also charged that Chase-Riboud had taken pass…

Citing this material

Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.

Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.