Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800

Description

This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Contents Preface to the second edition Abbreviations Maps Source notes for Maps 1-3 Introduction Part I Africans in Africa 1 The birth of an Atlantic world The shape of the Atlantic zone Origins of Atlantic navigation European motives: long-range geopolitical and economic goals European motives: the prevalence of short-range goals The African wing of expansion Oceanic navigation and political domination 2 The development of commerce between Europeans and Africans Industry and terms of trade The market and the state in Atlantic commerce Monopoly and competition in Atlantic trade African states and commerce 3 Slavery and African social structure 4 The process of enslavement and the slave trade Warfare and slavery African warfare and European military technology The rapid growth of slave exports and innovations in military technology and warfare Part II Africans in the New World 5 Africans in colonial Atlantic societies Africans and Native Americans in the Iberian colonies African slaves in uninhabited or unconquerable areas 6 Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic world: life and labor The Middle Passage: a common experience Slave life in the Atlantic world: labor on rural estates The special case of slaves in urban areas and domestic slaves 7 African cultural groups in the Atlantic world Cultures and cultural interactions in Africa African cultural groups and the slave trade 8 Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world Culture change in the Atlantic world: dynamics of culture Culture change in the Atlantic world: language Culture change in the Atlantic world: social structure Culture change in the Atlantic world: aesthetics 9 African religions and Christianity in the Atlantic world The basis for religious knowledge Continuous revelation and the conversion of Africans African Christianity in the New World 10 Resistance, runaways, and rebels Day-ta-day resistance and petit marrannage Grand marronnage Escape from slavery: the dynamics of grand marronnage Runaway communities: African background and the politicsof independence Plots and rebellion: overthrowing the slave owners 11 Africans in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world War, politics, and protest: enslavement in eighteenth-century Africa Africans in the American world Index