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In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World
 
 
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In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World [Kindle Edition]

Judith Carney (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews) |
Digital List Price: $22.00 What's this?
Print List Price: $18.95
Kindle Price: $12.06 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important contribution to literature on the Columbian Exchange."--Agricultural History Review

"Shadow of Slavery is thorough, cogent, creative in its use of scarce historical materials, and beautifully illustrated with color plates."--Intl Jrnl of African Historical Stds

Review

"An important contribution to literature on the Columbian Exchange."--Agricultural History Review


"Shadow of Slavery is thorough, cogent, creative in its use of scarce historical materials, and beautifully illustrated with color plates."--Intl Jrnl of African Historical Stds
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • File Size: 5408 KB
  • Print Length: 297 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0520257502
  • Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 27, 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B003CFBIV0
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Lending: Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #475,509 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The perception of Africa as a long-starving continent dependent on others to feed its people gets upended in "In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World."

Authors Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff present a scholarly argument that African foods, originally brought aboard ships to keep both crews and slaves fed with familiar foods, came to the Americas and became part of the crops and foods eaten in the West. There are even some folk stories that have been passed down the generations of African women secreting away rice seeds in their children's hair so they would have something to eat once they were separated and that white owners discovered and took control of the seeds.

Even before the growth of the slave trade to the New World, European and Asian explorers and businessmen were finding and trading for African foodstuffs, with rice, millet, yams and plantains becoming popular.

References to foods originating in Africa turn up everywhere, in the memoirs of slave ship captains, Jesuit missionaries, plantation owners, and early visitors to the colonies of the New World. The success and value of the African foods is repeatedly noted in areas where slaves were allowed to grow their own crops for subsistence purposes. In many cases, the early settlers were forced to turn to their slaves' foods when European foodstuffs were not available.

Carney delves into the specific plants and their regions of origin, noting that many New World colonists refer to items from "Guinea," meaning western Africa, or attach the word "Angola" to others.

This is another rock-solid contribution to overlooked American history, one that alters the image of helpless Africans utterly dependent on their masters for survival.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By hmf22
Format:Paperback
The Columbian Exchange has been a hot topic since Alfred Crosby's 1973 monograph of that title, but the conventional wisdom, now featured in many textbooks, is that the Columbian Exchange chiefly involved the transfer of crops from the New World to the Old World and animals and diseases from Old World to New. Africa is usually depicted as a passive beneficiary of New World crops rather than as an active partner in the Columbian Exchange. In this impressive work, Judith Ann Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff detail the many, many plants that traveled from Africa to the Americas, including millet, sorghum, rice, yams, plantains, taro, coffee, cola nuts, sesame, watermelon, okra, and pepper. (There is a complete list on pp. 136-137.) Some of these crops originated in Africa; in other cases, West Africa served as a conduit for species that originated in Asia. Carney and Rosomoff explore how African plants (as well as some animals) got to the New World and how and why they took root after arriving there. In doing so, they provide fascinating sidelights on the Atlantic slave trade, South American maroon communities, and slaveholders' widespread practice of allowing and expecting slaves to grow some or much of their own food. All this in less the 200 pages, with copious illustrations, detailed footnotes, and a bibliography. Highly recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this book and then reread it and I realized this is the only book that talks about us and our biotanical expertise in the New and Old World! I could be wrong! You get a very good idea of how early African Americans ate and how we survived and what we grew in our gardes that will sustain use in hard times. I also have new culinary ideas from the book and realize whky certain foods are more prominent in the different culture of the new world. This book is a must read for any one who wants to garden for health or just do it how it was done!
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Judith Ann Carney
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Popular Highlights

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&quote;
Subsistence illuminates the symbolic meaning of specific foods and foodways in different geographical and social contexts and the power relations that inform it. &quote;
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&quote;
Maize emphasized a person's demotion from human being to commodity, the loss of social status and cultural identity, of being made a kinless and orphaned servant in the Atlantic world. &quote;
Highlighted by 6 Kindle users
&quote;
But subsistence signifies more than the food that fed commerce. It asks us to engage the broader relationship of food to culture, and culture &quote;
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