These legacies of the slave trade are prominent through the idea of race, as “Atlantic slavery came to be identified wholly with Africa and with blackness” (689) Racism was used in this time period to justify actions, as through racism, “Europeans were better able to tolerate their brutal exploitations of Africans” (690). This racial discrimination became a reoccurring theme that has lasted well into the twenty-first…
He dives deeper than these narratives and enlightens our one sided knowledge with the influence of Africans on the creation of wide networks of coastal commerce, economic influence, as well as the opportunity of freedom and dignified life that seafaring brought. Any African American confined to the plantation world gained advantageous possibilities and opportunities as a maritime sailor. Bolster achieved to uncover the other side of African maritime history, not confined to the Middle Passage, but the noble occupation and central role in creation of black identities that seafaring was. “Black Jacks” sheds light on the multi-faceted nature of a black identity that included the largely unexamined stories of the power of the sea, offering blacks perspective of a vast and interconnected world, and the connectivity instilled in the ability to share news across black communities…
When reading accounts from both sides, you see how truly unfair the business was. Antera Duke’s diary paints an inaccurate portrait of the African slave trade by making it out to be business as usual. Meanwhile, Mahommah Baquaqua’s autobiography shines light on the harsh…
In the text, Davis discusses the integral role that Africans played in Europe’s New World colonies as “the entire New World enterprise [primarily] depended on the enormous and expandable flow of slave labor from Africa”. An enterprise that was initially developed and eventually resulted in the expansion of African slavery in Europe’s New World colonies due to labor shortage of Native Americans and elimination of white slavery. Inevitably leading to the recruitment of African slaves as the primary laborers in the New World. As they were being purchased for low cost through the Atlantic Slave trade as a means to produce goods for the New World that would essentially continue feeding the consumer culture and driving the American economy.…
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance coerced movement of people in history. From the late fifteenth century, the Atlantic Ocean became a commercial highway that integrated the histories of Africa, Europe, and the Americas for the first time. For several centuries slaves were the most important reason for contact between Europeans and Africans. But why were the slaves always African? One possible answer draws on the different values of societies around the Atlantic and, more particularly, the people involved in creating a trans-Atlantic community saw themselves in relation to others – in short, how they defined their identity. In fact, Africans themselves sold slaves to Europeans for use in the Americas. Given the long-lasting historical repercussions of the estimated eleven million African captives forced to cross the Atlantic from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, we know amazingly little about the individual experiences of the horrific Middle Passage. Historian Randy Sparks informative book, Two Princes of Calabar, tells the remarkable true story of two African Princes enslaved at Old Calabar in the Bight of Biafra, taken first to the Caribbean and then shipped to Virginia. They then escaped to England where they sued for their freedom in hope to make it back home. Sparks book gave the public a first-hand look on the atrocities the slave trade brought to the Africans. Sparks not only discusses the maltreatment the slaves received but also mentions how the slave trade provided communities with economic benefits. Two Princes of Calabar addresses issues in Africa today from colonialism to the horrific slave trade with this extraordinary true story of two Princes journey back to freedom.…
African Americans as a whole have been thought of as a secular group, having lost any sembalance of the continent from which they came(__________). However, people of the Trans-Atlantic African Diaspora have had quite a unique experience in the United States. The diverse sub cultures within the larger African American population are indicative of this unique experience. Yet in spite of African American’s unique qualities scholars and critics abound have asserted that African American heritage was obliterated by the chattel slavery system. Although slavery greatly restricted the ability of Africans in America to freely express their cultural traditions, many practices, values and beliefs survived. This fact is extremely apparent when Gullah…
Atlantic perspective: examines the complex interplay of Europe, Africa and colonial America through goods, plants, animals and ideas.…
Slavery had no clearly defined legal definition; it was an ambiguous term for an institution that was not yet fully developed conceptually (“Slavery in Black and White”). The American frontier had an extensive impact on Africa as well as the Africans who were transported to America. The nature of the relationship between blacks and indigenous peoples of North America are an extraordinarily diverse peoples with hundreds of ethnolinguistic groups (Spearman…
Over the course of more than three and a half centuries, the transportation of at least twelve million men, women, and children from their African homelands to the Americas changed forever the face and character of the modern world. The slave trade was brutal and horrific, and the enslavement of Africans was cruel, exploitative, and dehumanizing. Together, they represent one of the longest and most sustained assaults on the very life, integrity, and dignity of human beings in history. In the Americas, the importation and subsequent enslavement of the Africans would be the major factor in the resettlement of the continents following the disastrous decline in their indigenous population. Although victimized and exploited, they created a new, largely African, Creole society and their forced migration resulted in the emergence of the so-called Black Atlantic.…
Phillips’s book The Atlantic Sound is related to the history of slavery and its impact on contemporary socio-cultural environment. It is a travel book but it is not only confined to non fictional narrative of travelled places. The book is a mixture of geographical portraits, historical events, interviews, letters, newspaper articles, speeches, poems and so on. Phillips decides to visit the three points of triangular trade that linked America, Africa and Europe. He juxtaposes the stories of past with his own present experiences.…
Once the African landed in the Americas and endured the humiliation of being sold like livestock the African now had the challenge of acculturation. Africans enslaved in the Americas had to make adjustments, learning their captors' language, adopting much of their culture, and accepting their religious beliefs. The acculturation period of the African varied with time, place and numerous other factors (Blassingame, 1979) But even with the challenge of acculturation Africans living on the plantation found creative ways to resist and in doing so began to subtly Africanize the South.…
In Exchanging Our Country Marks, Michael Gomez brings together various strands of the historical record in a stunning fusion that points the way to a definitive history of American Slavery. In this fusion of history, anthropology, and sociology, Gomez has made expert use of primary sources, including newspapers ads for runaway slaves in colonial America. Slave runaway accounts from newspapers are combined with personal diaries, church records, and former slave narratives to provide a firsthand account of the African and African-American experiences during the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. With this mastery of sources, Gomez challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about slavery-- for example, that "the new condition of slavery superseded all others" (48)-- and he advances intriguing new speculations about the development of a collective African-American identity. In Gomez's words: "It is a study of their efforts to move from ethnicity to race as a basis for such an identity, a movement best understood when the impact of both internal and external forces upon social relations within this community is examined"(4).…
This book not only goes into details about the labor that the slaves partook in on a daily basis that kept America up and running, but also about the cultural aspect of bring slaves into the country. Bringing African’s over to America brought a whole new culture to America. Although white men enslaved African’s they continued to embrace their culture. They brought a new religion, language, music, and several skills that have uniquely blended the American culture that it is today.…
One does not have to be a linguist to note that the African’s native dialects display a verbal level akin to any white infant. Very seldom will one hear anything resembling words in their speech; it is easy to see that their communication consists chiefly of primitive noises such as clicks and relies largely on savage body language. In extreme cases, the negroid`s attempt at speech may even bear resemblance to that of the Paul. But the crudeness of native African society is well known and I find giving it a lot of time to be redundant. Thus this paper will rather focus on the analysis of the attempts made in recent centuries to assimilate the negroid into the civilized way of life offered in North America.…
Kamau Brathwaite, a historian and poet was greatly inspired by a seminar held by Robert Adams in 1957, where he described ‘Creole culture’. Unlike Adams however, Brathwaitesaw Creole cultures as a process of culture change, rather than just a description of a Creole society. Brathwaite believed that creolization occurs at 2 levels: “ac-culturation, which is the yoking (by force and example, deriving from power/prestige) of one culture to another (in this case the enslaved/African to the European); and inter/culturation, which is an unplanned, unstructured but osmotic relationship proceeding from this yoke.” The result of this process, which is creolization, Brathwaitestates, will become the ‘tentative cultural norm of the society.’ The term creolization cannot be fully understood without taking into account its historical background and geographical context. In these terms, creolization must be seen not simply as a synonym for hybridity but as a phenomenon that is indispensable to understanding the New World experience. Creolization within the Caribbean can be said to have emerged from or catalyzed through colonization, the slave trade and migration, all of which caused individuals from a variety of ethnic, cultural and geographical backgrounds to integrate within one society. This by extension caused the formation of a new culture within the Caribbean to facilitate the coming together of these people. It must be noted however, that the concept of creolization is not limited to the Caribbean only and is a process that is evident usually after decolonization and nation building, which leads one to think that there is a link between them. Globalization Despite the variety of cultures that were brought to the Caribbean, and their differences, there are many positives that emerged from what Brathwaite terms ‘creolization’. The Caribbean composes mostly of small islands and a few larger countries such as Belize and Venezuela. Due to their individual size and economic…