Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800

This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World.

(Cambridge)

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'A major contribution ... the strongest and most articulate statement that Africa and Africans were not passive agents ... provocative and insightful.' Paul E. Lovejoy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

(Cambridge)

Preface to the second edition; Preface to the first edition; Introduction; Part I. Africans in Africa: 1. The birth of the Atlantic world; 2. The development of commerce between Europeans and Africans; 3. Slavery and African social structure; 4. The process of enslavement and the slave trade; Part II. Africans in the New World: 5. Africans in colonial Atlantic societies; 6. Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic world: life and labour; 7. African cultural groups in the Atlantic world; 8. Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world; 9. African religions and Christianity in the Atlantic world; 10. Resistance, runaways, and rebels; Part III. Africans in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.

(Cambridge)