{"product_id":"undercurrents-of-power-9780812249897","title":"Undercurrents of Power","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong before the rise of New World slavery, West Africans were adept swimmers, divers, canoe makers, and canoeists. They lived along riverbanks, near lakes, or close to the ocean. In those waterways, they became proficient in diverse maritime skills, while incorporating water and aquatics into spiritual understandings of the world. Transported to the Americas, slaves carried with them these West African skills and cultural values. Indeed, according to Kevin Dawson''s examination of water culture in the African diaspora, the aquatic abilities of people of African descent often surpassed those of Europeans and their descendants from the age of discovery until well into the nineteenth century.\u003cbr\u003eAs Dawson argues, histories of slavery have largely chronicled the fields of the New World, whether tobacco, sugar, indigo, rice, or cotton. However, most plantations were located near waterways to facilitate the transportation of goods to market, and large numbers of agricultural slaves had \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Kevin Dawson's masterly synthesis goes beyond filling a gap in maritime history: it reconfirms and expands a discourse on maritime traditions of Africans at home and abroad, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.\" * \u003ci\u003eThe International Journal of Maritime History\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"This is an important book in a number of ways. It displays the ways many enslaved Africans used the knowledge they brought with them to expand the space available to them. It gives us a picture of how aspects of slavery in one of the most coercive slave societies ever created were negotiated. It is also a contribution to aquatic history and culture informed by Kevin Dawson's passion for and understanding of aquatic life. In making his arguments, Dawson uses a wide range of sources and uses them well. Most important, he gives us a picture of those enslaved as agents, who used their knowledge and their skills to push the boundaries of their enslavement.\" * \u003ci\u003eEarly American Literature\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"Kevin Dawson's \u003ci\u003eUndercurrents of Power\u003c\/i\u003e is important. More than perhaps any study in recent memory, it brings the existence, value, and meaning of water in the African diaspora to the forefront of Atlantic cultural, social, and economic development. In a broad,sweeping narrative, Dawson covers remarkable ground, crisscrossing the Atlantic as he draws together hundreds of examples of how water defined the pre-slavery lives of Africans forced into the Atlantic slave trade and how it helped diverse peoples and cultures identify themselves, individually and collectively, in the whirlwind and trauma of enslavement. The work explores the complexities of honor, warfare, social status, youth, sex, technology, and leisure and how each interacted with, and indeed structured itself around, water and aquatic spaces.\" * \u003ci\u003eThe Journal of Southern History\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"Stunning . . . \u003ci\u003eUndercurrents of Power\u003c\/i\u003e brings to light the various aquatic traditions of Africans and Diasporans working, cultivating, and negotiating the riparian, oceanic, lake, and swamp biomes both in the context of Africa and in the environments they encountered throughout the Atlantic and into the Americas . . . In the process of opening various kinds of waterscapes to historical analysis, Dawson fundamentally reimagines the cultural dynamics shaping the Americas.\" * \u003ci\u003eBlack Perspectives\u003c\/i\u003e *\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eUndercurrents of Power\u003c\/i\u003e is a significant intervention into the fields of Early Vast America, African Diaspora, African American, and Caribbean histories. By focusing on African aquatic cultural and material contributions, Dawson rescues African maritime narratives in the early Atlantic World, which have been grossly ignored or silenced. It is a must-read for scholars and graduate students in these respective fields. The prose is captivating and clear.\" * Journal of Early American History *\u003cbr\u003e\"Kevin Dawson offers the remarkable untold history of the significance of aquatic culture in the African diaspora. \u003ci\u003eUndercurrents of Power\u003c\/i\u003e opens up a new and exciting aspect of slaves' experience, providing a crucially important piece of the history of slave life and labor in the Americas.\" * James Sidbury, Rice University *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: Waterscapes of the African Diaspora\u003cbr\u003e PART I. SWIMMING CULTURE\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Atlantic African Aquatic Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Comparison\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. Cultural Meanings of Recreational Swimming and Surfing\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. Aquatic Sports and Performance Rituals: Gender, Bravery, and Honor\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. History from Below: Enslaved Underwater Divers\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5. Undercurrents of Power: Challenging Racial Hierarchies from Below\u003cbr\u003e PART II. CANOE CULTURE\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6. African Canoe-Makers: Constructing Floating Cultures\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7. Mountains Divide and Rivers Unite: Atlantic African Canoemen\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 8. Maritime Continuities: African Canoes on New World Waters\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 9. The Floating Economies of Slaves and Slaveholders\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 10. Sacred Vessels, Sacred Waters: The Cultural Meanings of Dugout Canoes\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 11. A World Afloat: Mobile Slave Communities\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 12. The Watermen's Song: Canoemen's Aural Waterscapes\u003cbr\u003e Conclusion. A Sea Change in Atlantic History\u003cbr\u003e Epilogue\u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49405735207255,"sku":"9780812249897","price":73.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780812249897.jpg?v=1730493433","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/undercurrents-of-power-9780812249897","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}