TY - JOUR
T1 - Beyond an Imperial Atlantic
T2 - Trajectories of Africans From Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa in the Early Atlantic World
AU - Green, Toby
PY - 2016/2/27
Y1 - 2016/2/27
N2 - Since Fernand Braudel first offered a new vision of the global interconnections of maritime history through the Mediterranean, historians of Africa and of what is now called Atlantic history have tended to pursue ever divergent paths.1 As Bernard Bailyn has noted, the influence of a common Christian culture and the importance of strategic transatlantic alliances in the Cold War era inspired the study of Atlantic history to turn towards an understanding of the historical depths of inter-imperial Atlantic linkages.2 On the other hand, within the postcolonial context of Africanist historiography, early interest in precolonial African states was rapidly transformed into what Richard Reid has called the presentism of contemporary historical studies of Africa.3 This means that engagement by historians of Africa with the conceptualization of the Atlantic has been slow. This article shows, however, that new approaches to the concept of diaspora enable us to see past the tragedy of violent enslavement and the place of European empires, and to consider key ways in which African peoples forged the connections that helped to make the Atlantic world.
AB - Since Fernand Braudel first offered a new vision of the global interconnections of maritime history through the Mediterranean, historians of Africa and of what is now called Atlantic history have tended to pursue ever divergent paths.1 As Bernard Bailyn has noted, the influence of a common Christian culture and the importance of strategic transatlantic alliances in the Cold War era inspired the study of Atlantic history to turn towards an understanding of the historical depths of inter-imperial Atlantic linkages.2 On the other hand, within the postcolonial context of Africanist historiography, early interest in precolonial African states was rapidly transformed into what Richard Reid has called the presentism of contemporary historical studies of Africa.3 This means that engagement by historians of Africa with the conceptualization of the Atlantic has been slow. This article shows, however, that new approaches to the concept of diaspora enable us to see past the tragedy of violent enslavement and the place of European empires, and to consider key ways in which African peoples forged the connections that helped to make the Atlantic world.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84964776870&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/pastj/gtv040
DO - 10.1093/pastj/gtv040
M3 - Article
SN - 0031-2746
VL - 230
SP - 91
EP - 122
JO - Past and Present
JF - Past and Present
IS - 1
ER -