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Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Studies in Comparative World History)

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Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. Prior to 1680, Africa's economic and military strength enabled African elites to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics that made slaves so necessary to European colonizers. He explains why African slaves were placed in significant roles. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors. This second edition contains a new chapter on eighteenth century developments.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.482604
EAN: 9780521627245
ISBN: 0521627249
Label: Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 378
Publication Date: 1998-04-28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Studio: Cambridge University Press


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830
• Atlantic History: Concept and Contours
• The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History (Studies in Comparative World History)
• The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas
• Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: A valiant effort to see the past in its own terms, not ours
Comment: This is a history of the African role in the making of the modern Atlantic world, from 1400 to 1800. It covers the time when the Atlantic world was first made into one by European long-distance sailors down to the French Revolution. The focus is on Africa itself and on Africans in Latin America; it has little to say about Africans in British America.

This is the first book that I have read on this time period and subject, so I cannot really compare it to other works on the same period. The impression that I got, however, is that Thornton is making a series of relatively controversial historical arguments. The impression that he gives is that much prior scholarship is ideologically motivated, either by a desire to glorify the African past or to see this period in neo-Marxist terms.

Thornton tries very hard to see this period in its own terms, not modern terms. He starts out by giving a lucid explanation of the early European ocean-going exploration of the African coast. He then turns to a description of contemporary West African society and the dynamics of the slave trade. His thesis, for which he argues very strongly, is that the Europeans were supreme in one area only: the ability to conduct trans-Atlantic trade. He argues that the Europeans did not have either the military or the economic power to coerce the Africans on any regular basis.

In his view, the slave trade was driven by different concerns on the African and the American side of the trade. On the African side, slavery was commonplace before the Europeans arrived. African society itself was based on slavery, and the internal slave trade was robust. The Europeans were able to buy slaves, very simply, because there was already an active slave market. The Europeans wanted slaves, because they wanted cheap and docile labor in their American colonies. Remember, this discussion is almost exclusively focused on the Portuguese and the Spanish, with the Dutch and the English very much late arriving bit players in the drama.

Thornton also has a very interesting discussion of the transmission and survival of African culture in the New World. In his view, Africans converted to Christianity in a process of syncretism, in which Christianity spread most easily when it was validated by African religious figures.
Customer Rating:
Summary: enhanced view of the Atlantic slave trade
Comment: This work was a required text for my college class, part of my master's program. The added detail and scope enhances a wider view and fuller analysis of the slave trade in the Atlantic world ushered in but not fully dictated by, the Europeans. The activist role of Africans in that development, and the transposing of African culture to the Americas,in spite of the inhuman nature of the slave economy, is a fresh approach to this period, and bears witness to the heroic humanity and strength of that culture. I highly recommend this work to American colonial historians and those interested in world history in general- a tremendous work!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Serious study
Comment: The major difference between African societies in an ethnic setting (per se) and African communities heavily influenced by European culture and commerce is accurately analyzed. But what myths have to do with the commerce development in young African countries, I would like to ask the author?
Was it necessary to bring the subject of slavery, and in particular the slave trade to make an argumentative point?
I have another concern; it pertains to the status and the fundamental elements of an "African Wealth" vis-à-vis European imperialism.
The author did not elaborate on the subject.
However, I found the comparative study of the African-American culture and the contemporary non-African culture amid white societies quite interesting.
The focus on major differences between the two is well centered.

Customer Rating:
Summary: A bright candle in the dark
Comment: Issues of race have become central to American historiography in the past generation or so, and no modern historian of the American colonial era (or any other era afterwards, for that matter) can justifiably ignore its impact. Yet despite this, it is astonishing how little of the African political, social and cultural origins of New World slave populations is brought to bear on analyses of the Atlantic world. This relatively slim yet dazzlingly efficient book amply redresses this blind spot. In addition, the passivity customarily attributed to Africans is swept aside and replaced with a much more realistic and complex agency asserted on both sides of the Atlantic. It is truly astounding how much Thornton is able to cover in such detail within a mere 334 pages that include a rather general and theoretical introduction to Atlantic historiography with its roots in Fernand Braudel's pioneering "Annaliste" school of regional history, and an initial chapter on the birth of the modern Atlantic world as a whole (albeit with a recurrent focus on Africa's role).

Aside from this initial placesetting, the book is divided into two parts--"Africans in Africa", and "Africans in the New World". In the first section, Thornton skillfully explores the impact of European-dominated Atlantic trade on west African societies and economies, deftly dissolving common myths as well as disassembling the more carefully constructed theories and assertions of several generations of earnest historians. For instance, Thornton solidly establishes that west African societies were not dependent on European textiles, iron or firearms, that the slave trade existed almost entirely at the behest of local elites, and that simple formulae of "guns for slaves" or economic imperialism do not adequately describe or explain what was going on. He also delineates the fundamental differences in what constituted "wealth" in Africa (people) and Europe (land, and later, capital), and one is struck at how these complementary conceptions so smoothly dovetailed to give birth to one of the most heinous and durable streams of atrocities humanity has ever generated. Those eager to assign culpability to one or another long-dead group will be frustrated, however--Thornton refrains from projecting our current attitudes, struggles and judgements onto their worlds, as any good historian should, even as he unflinchingly reconstructs the horrors endured by those who embarked on the "Middle Passage". This excellent study is neither apology nor indictment, neither accusation nor excuse.

The second part focuses on the New World, surveying the lives of Africans--free, slave and maroon--in areas ranging from Brazil and Colombia, to the Caribbean and North America. Unfortunately, this section is fashioned as a refutation of scholars who assert, for a variety of reasons, that Africans were unable to successfully transfer, preserve and adapt African culture to the New World. For those (like me) who are already inclined to believe that Africans could and indeed did manage to do just that, many of Thornton's conclusions will be an unnecessary preaching to the choir. However, the theme nonetheless provides a decent scaffolding on which to present Thornton's wealth of knowledge concerning west African cultural groups, African military practices, the social evolution of slave communities and runaway societies, and, in particular, African religion and religious syntheses. In addition, he masterfully reconstructs the details of creolization, and delivers tantalizing glimpses into the complex interactions between Africans and Native American societies alongside their deeper and richer exchanges with Europeans.

At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say that when I was finished with this book, I was amazed at how much I had learned--I rarely find this much crystal clear information, insight and analysis in books three times its size.

Customer Rating:
Summary: An execellent Primer
Comment: This work serves as an excellent prelude to Hugh Thomas' SLAVE TRADE: The Atlantic Slave Trade from 1440..., Ira Berlin's MANY THOUSANDS GONE, and Price, et al.'s MAROON SOCIETIES since it touches on many issues developed in those works. In addition, it looks at how African culture influenced and encouraged the slave trade.

Starting with a consideration of African concepts of property (i.e., only personalty and chattel could be considered property by individuals since all realty was under collective ownership and could only temporarily be alienated), Thornton builds on how chattel property, notably slaves, were the basis for individual wealth in West Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans. Next, he considers how this caused the numerous wars and raids that continued to take place throughout West Africa.

He also looks at whether (and to what extent) supposed European superiority encouraged the slave trade - or at least made it a more violent and dehumanizing practice. Europeans governments were kept out of Africa and had to largely rely on factors or intermediaries for trade - with the exception of the Luso-Africans in Angola. Europeans traders had to submit tariffs and bribes to the local rulers and nobility, as well as meet the rulers' quotas at inflated prices.

As to economic pressure for trade, Thornton notes that there were no essential goods which the West sold to these leaders that could not have been otherwise attained in Africa. In addition, iron and horses could be bought from the Arabs and were also produced and bred in West Africa. The sale of Arms, especially, the early matchlocks (harquebuses), but including the later flintlocks provided little or no trade benefits because not only were they not decisive in African conflicts but various European nations were willing to sell weapons if one nation attempted to use the non-sale of weapons as a leverage to force a local government to unwillingly trade in slaves.

Turning to slaves exported to the West, he points out that not only did the fact that many of them were formerly military prisoners mean that they were excellent soldiers for various militias, but that they were also potential leaders of maroon colonies quite capable of being a real military threat to local slave-owners. In addition, many skills acquired from local African activities, such as rice and indigo production, led to their usefulness and importance in work on plantations - and, therefore, to the eventual development of artisan workers and the slave economies of various American (and African island) economies.

Again, an excellent primer for the study of African involvement in the slave trade and the development of the Americas.

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