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

Rating:
Summary: Agency of Africans
Review: John Thornton had already established himself as a major historian of West Africa and its relations with Europe before creating this volume for the Studies in Comparative World History series. In this volume he presents the world in which plantation slavery evolved as the collision of many cultures and forces on both sides of the Atlantic, with contributions for good and ill from Africa, the Americas and from Europe. His presentation of slavery, as taking place not just in the Americas nor in Africa, but in the shared society of the Atlantic region bound together by intercontinental trade, forces the reader to acknowlege the active participation of Africans in creating and shaping trans-Atlantic society and the New World. Far from being passive victims of a technologically superior Europe, Africans appear as equal participants in their economic relations with Europeans, and consciously self interested in their participation in the slave trade. The evolution of plantation slavery into a more malignant social arrangement than earlier forms of slave taking and holding traditions is explored considering the input of both slaveholders and slaves. Even those who are truly victimized by the slave trade have avenues of resistance and accomodation. In short, the Atlantic world, with its economic dependence upon slavery, appears as a complex and interesting place. Thornton's presentation of this world is both scholarly and absorbing. He illuminates his arguments with fascinating accounts of individual experiences that often surprise and never disappoint. A must for any serious study of slavery and the African Diasporah.

Rating:
Summary: A groundbreaking study
Review: John Thornton had already established himself as a major historian of West Africa and its relations with Europe before creating this volume for the Studies in Comparative World History series. In this volume he presents the world in which plantation slavery evolved as the collision of many cultures and forces on both sides of the Atlantic, with contributions for good and ill from Africa, the Americas and from Europe. His presentation of slavery, as taking place not just in the Americas nor in Africa, but in the shared society of the Atlantic region bound together by intercontinental trade, forces the reader to acknowlege the active participation of Africans in creating and shaping trans-Atlantic society and the New World. Far from being passive victims of a technologically superior Europe, Africans appear as equal participants in their economic relations with Europeans, and consciously self interested in their participation in the slave trade. The evolution of plantation slavery into a more malignant social arrangement than earlier forms of slave taking and holding traditions is explored considering the input of both slaveholders and slaves. Even those who are truly victimized by the slave trade have avenues of resistance and accomodation. In short, the Atlantic world, with its economic dependence upon slavery, appears as a complex and interesting place. Thornton's presentation of this world is both scholarly and absorbing. He illuminates his arguments with fascinating accounts of individual experiences that often surprise and never disappoint. A must for any serious study of slavery and the African Diasporah.

Rating:
Summary: Agency of Africans
Review: John Thornton, author of numerous studies centering around Atlantic Africa, presents a history of the slave trade which attempts to focus on (forced) African migration. He tackles approaches taken by scholars such as Mintz and Price to discuss developing New World cultures. Unfortunately, despite his interesting and important ideas and assertions, chapter 7 presents a disturbing view of a homogeneous African culture. One of this book's redeeming features is the agency attributed to African peoples. The (sometimes prevalent) idea that Africans were passive victims in the Atlantic slave trade is overturned.

Rating:
Summary: An execellent Primer
Review: 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.