Table of Contents

1. Privateering, colonial expansion and the African presence in Early Anglo-Dutch Settlements; 2. The Portuguese, Kongo and Ndongo and the origins of Atlantic Creole culture to 1607; 3. Wars, civil unrest and the dynamics of enslavement in West Central Africa, 1607–60; 4. Atlantic Creole culture: patterns of transformation and adaptations, 1607–60; 5. Shifting status and the foundation of African-American communities: Atlantic Creoles in the early Anglo-Dutch colonies; 6. Becoming slaves: Atlantic Creoles and the defining of status.

Promotional Information

This book establishes Central Africa as the origin of most Africans brought to English and Dutch American colonies before 1660.

About the Author

Linda M. Heywood is Professor of African American Studies and History at Boston University. She is also W.E.B. DuBois Fellow at Harvard University and formerly a Whiting Fellow at Columbia University as well as Profssor of History at Howard University and Cleveland State University. She is the author of Contested Power in Angola (1999) and editor of Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (2001). Professor Heywood has published in the Journal of African History, Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies, and Slavery and Abolition. John K. Thornton is Professor of African American Studies and History at Boston University. He is also W.E.B. DuBois Fellow at Harvard University and formerly Carter Woodson Fellow at the University of Virginia, as well as Professor of History at Millersville University and Allegheny College. He is a former Lecturer at the University of Zambia. He is author of The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (1983), African and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (2nd edition, 1998), The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (1998), and Warfare in Atlantic Africa (1999). He has published in, among other journals, The Journal of African History, History in Africa, Cahiers d'etudes africaines, William and Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review, The Americas, and the International Journal of African Historical Studies.

Reviews

"A good addition to the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade." -Choice

"Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 is a compelling and well-researched account of the earliest days of Atlantic slavery that will reward students and academics, especially those who reject the notion that we cannot untangle the ultimate origins and cultural antecedents of the first African slaves." -John Roby, African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter

"This extremely important and informative book should put to rest any conceivable effort to minimize the brutally destructive impact of the Atlantic slave trade upon Africa and Africans or to blame the victims." -Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"...important contribution...to the history of Atlantic slavery." -Gayle K. Brunelle, H-Atlantic