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

John Thornton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0521627249 | ISBN-13: 978-0521627245 | Edition: 2

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...ambitious and far-reaching reinterpretation....This very significant, far-reaching, impressive work is essential reading for American historians." The Journal of American History

Book Description

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 which 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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (April 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521627249
• ISBN-13: 978-0521627245
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #149,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bright candle in the dark, August 30, 2005

By 

Bill Perez (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

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.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A groundbreaking study, July 6, 2000

By 

Dan King - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

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.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An execellent Primer, August 24, 2002

By 

events3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Studies in Comparative World History) (Paperback)

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.