Theodore Canot (1804-1860) was a French-Italian adventurer and slave trader. His memoirs, notable for their vividness and general accuracy, illustrate the conduct and character of every branch of the slave trade.

Theodore Canot, whose real name was Theophile Conneau, was born at Alessandria, Italy, the second son of an Italian mother and a French father who was a paymaster in Napoleon's army. Theodore went to sea in 1819 as cabin boy on an American ship which took him to Salem, where he learned navigation. After a series of West Indian adventures he joined the slave ship Aerostatica at Havana in 1826 and "plunged accidentally," as he put it, into the slave trade at age 22. Henceforward Canot--ambitious and intelligent, daring and unscrupulous, with "no religion, many vices, and few weaknesses"--became one of the more famous, though not the most successful, slavers of the 19th century.

Canot's story is filled with...