The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture

by Patrick Manning

Overview

Patrick Manning refuses to divide the African diaspora into the experiences of separate regions and nations. Instead, he follows the multiple routes that brought Africans and people of African descent into contact with one another and with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In weaving these stories together, Manning shows how the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean fueled dynamic interactions among black communities and cultures and how these patterns resembled those of a number of connected diasporas concurrently taking shape across the globe.

Manning begins in 1400 and traces five central themes: the connections that enabled Africans to mutually identify and hold together as a global community; discourses on race; changes in economic circumstance; the character of family life; and the evolution of popular culture. His approach reveals links among seemingly disparate worlds. In the mid-nineteenth century, for example, slavery came under attack in North America, South America, southern Africa, West Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and India, with former slaves rising to positions of political prominence. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, the near-elimination of slavery brought new forms of discrimination that removed almost all blacks from government for half a century.

Manning underscores the profound influence that the African diaspora had on world history, demonstrating the inextricable link between black migration and the rise of modernity, especially in regards to the processes of industrialization and urbanization. A remarkably inclusive and far-reaching work, The African Diaspora proves that the advent of modernity cannot be imaginatively or comprehensively engaged without taking the African peoples and the African continent as a whole into account.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231144711
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/05/2010
Series:	Columbia Studies in International and Global History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patrick Manning is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History and Director of the World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh, President of the American Historical Association, and president of the World History Network, a nonprofit corporation fostering research in world history. His books include Slavery and African Life, Migration in World History, and Navigating World History: Historians Create a Global Past.

Table of Contents

List of Maps ix

List of Graphs and Tables xi

List of Illustrations xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxi

1 Diaspora: Struggles and Connections 1

2 Connections to 1600 35

3 Survival, 1600–1800 92

4 Emancipation, 1800–1900 156

5 Citizenship, 1900–1960 209

6 Equality, 1960–2000 283

Epilogue: The Future of the African Diaspora 335

Notes 355

Index 375

What People are Saying About This

Penny von Eschen

A masterful survey that skillfully interweaves multiple themes across six centuries and several continents in crisp and lucid prose. The African Diaspora is a superb book that fills a void in the literature as well as a pressing need in the classroom.

— Penny von Eschen, University of Michigan, editor of Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History

Mamadou Diouf

A major achievement, an excellent book for both graduate and undergraduate students of African and African diaspora studies.

Michael Gomez

The African Diaspora reflects Patrick Manning's many years of scholarly engagement and achievement and succeeds in creating a paradigmatic shift that bridges conceptual distances between Africa and its diaspora, while also demonstrating the substantive quality of that shift. Thoroughly researched and lucidly written, this study is a major contribution to the literature on black experience throughout the world, providing a convincing argument for relocating Africa and its peoples from the periphery to the center of global history.

— Michael Gomez, New York University

Mamadou Diouf

A major achievement, an excellent book for both graduate and undergraduate students of African and African diaspora studies.

— Mamadou Diouf, Columbia University

Marcus Rediker

Only Patrick Manning—a leading scholar in both African and world history—could have written this magnificent book. Anyone who wishes to understand the history of global Africa will be grateful that he did.

— Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

Editorial Reviews

Readers will be impressed by the book's breadth and the arresting parallels it draws between events and dynamics taking place thousands of miles apart.

Foreign Affairs

This is a welcome addition to the field... Highly recommended.

Choice

An immensely important addition to the literature.

Journal of Africa - David E. Skinner

Manning is to be congratulated for yet another capacious, innovative contribution to our understanding of African and world history, as intricately embedded, each in the other, at every level.

New West Indian Guide - Joseph C. Miller

The work is impressive and valuable in its details and broad sweep of argument

American Historical Review - Micol Seigel

An immensely important addition to the literature.

— David E. Skinner

Journal of Africa

The work is impressive and valuable in its details and broad sweep of argument

— Micol Seigel

American Historical Review

A substantial contribution... setting a useful benchmark for the relocation of Africa to the centre of global history.

— Stacey Hynd

History

Manning's study is a superb attempt to bridge the gap between our understanding of the forced deportation of Africans into slavery and the continuing emigration

Journal of African History

The work is impressive and valuable in its details and broad sweep of argument

Micol Seigeln Historical Review

A substantial contribution... setting a useful benchmark for the relocation of Africa to the centre of global history.

History - Stacey Hynd