Description
Book SynopsisLike snapshots of everyday life in the past, the compelling biographies in this book document the making of the Black Atlantic world since the sixteenth century from the point of view of those who were part of it. Centering on the diaspora caused by the forced migration of Africans to Europe and across the Atlantic to the Americas, the chapters explore the slave trade, enslavement, resistance, adaptation, cultural transformations, and the quest for citizenship rights. The variety of experiences, constraints and choices depicted in the book and their changes across time and space defy the idea of a unified black experience. At the same time, it is clear that in the twentieth century, black identity unified people of African descent who, along with other minority groups, struggled against colonialism and racism and presented alternatives to a version of modernity that excluded and alienated them. Drawing on a rich array of little-known documents, the contributors reconstruct the lives an
Trade ReviewThis wonderful addition to the growing scholarship attempts, quite successfully, to add a human face to the black Atlantic. A topical bibliography and a filmography provide instructors and students alike a guide for further research. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
This is the richest and most scholarly collection of individual narratives shaped by the African diaspora since Philip Curtin's Africa Remembered of more than forty years ago. These thirteen biographies span four centuries and offer a compellingly diverse range of the black Atlantic experience. Essential reading for all historians of the Atlantic World. -- David Eltis, Emory University
Indispensable for anyone interested in Black Atlantic history. Through well-researched and well-written biographies, the authors move beyond Eurocentric approaches to the past by showing the central role of Africans and their Afro-American descendants in the making of the early modern and modern Atlantic World. -- Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: People in the Making of the Black Atlantic Chapter 1: Alonso de Illescas (1530s–1580s): African, Ladino, and Maroon Leader in Colonial Ecuador Chapter 2: Gregoria López (1680s): A Mexican Mulata Defends Her Honor Chapter 3: Philip Quaque (1741–1816): African Anglican Missionary on the Gold Coast Chapter 4: Harry Washington (1760s–1790s): A Founding Father's Slave Chapter 5: Rufino José Maria (1820s–1850s): A Muslim in the Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Slave Trade Circuit Chapter 6: Buenaventura Lucumí (1820s–1872): African Slave, Head of a Household, and Lottery Winner in Cuba Chapter 7: Blaise Diagne (1872–1934): Senegal's Deputy to the French National Assembly Chapter 8: Phyllis Ann Edmeade (1920s): Caribbean Migrant Worker Deported from the United States Chapter 9: C. L. R. James (1901–1989): The Black Jacobin Chapter 10: Robert Robinson (1930s): Celebrity Worker in the USSR Chapter 11: Vicente Ferreira Pastinha (1889–1981): The "Angolan" Tradition of Capoeira Chapter 12: Malcolm X (1925–1965): A Pan-African Revolutionary Chapter 13: Romare Bearden (1911-1988): Artist, Intellectual, Activist Suggested Readings by Topic Selected Filmography on the Black Atlantic
