Using newly discovered evidence, Marcus Rediker reframes the story of the Amistad rebellion (1839) to show how a small group of courageous men fought and won an epic battle against Spanish and American slaveholders and their governments. He reaches back to Africa to find the rebels’ roots, narrates their cataclysmic transatlantic journey, and unfolds a prison story of great drama and emotion. Featuring vividly drawn portraits of the Africans, their captors, and their abolitionist allies, he shows how the rebels captured the popular imagination and helped to inspire and build a movement within a grand global struggle between slavery and freedom. As a handful of self-emancipated Africans steered their own course to freedom, they opened a way for millions to follow.