Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas

Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognizing the persistence of African ethnic identities can reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditoins that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.