Transatlantic Slave Trade: Bloomsbury Academic Collections – Serie

A Slave’s Place, A Master’s World, based on original field research, evaluates the transition from slave to free labour in rural Brazil, highlighting the ways in which slaves, free farmers, freedmen and planters shaped the labour markets of an agrarian economy. Documentation from two areas in the Rio de Janeiro hinterland provides the foundation for comparisons between slavery in Vassouras, a highland town where coffee was produced for the export market, and Rio Bonito, a lowland town where coffee and foodstuffs were marketed regionally. The book examines the settlement processes in both towns, the marginalization of indigenous tribes, the onset of slave labour, and the de facto and de jure claims to land, as planters, small producers and slaves forged the bases of rural society. A feature of the book is the detailed study of the link with the African past during the transition process, when African languages, customs and religion, and social and work-related networks were increasingly juxtaposed with ‘master class’ practices on the fazendas.

In this study, Victor Anderson traces instances of "ontological blackness" in African American theological, religious and cultural thought, arguing that African American critical thought has been trapped in a racial rhetoric that it did not create and which cannot serve it well. Drawing together 18th- and 19th-century accomodationism and its assimilationist heirs with the movements of Black Power and Afrocentrism, Anderson shows that all exhibit a similar structure of racial identity. He suggests that it is time to move beyond the confines of "the cult of black heroic genius" to what Bell Hooks has termed "postmodern blackness": a racial discourse that leaves room to negotiate African American identities along lines of class, gender, sexuality, and age as well as race.

West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade surveys archaeological data from Senegal to the Cameroon. It focuses on the past 500 years, a period that witnessed dramatic transformations in African political and social systems, as well as the consequences of European expansion, the advent of the Atlantic slave trade, and the expansion of Islamic polities in the West African Sahel. The geographical and topical scope of this volume draws together archaeological syntheses of various parts of West Africa and is an important resource for West Africanists and all researchers interested in the indigenous response to European expansion, as well as for those examining African continuities in the Americas.

Slavery Obscured aims to assess how the slave trade affected the social life and cultural outlook of the citizens of a major English city, and contends that its impact was more profound than has previously been acknowledged. Based on original research in archives in Britain and America, this title builds on scholarship in the economic history of the slave trade to ask questions about the way slave-derived wealth underpinned the city of Bristol’s urban development and its growing gentility. How much did Bristol’s Georgian renaissance owe to such wealth? Who were the major players and beneficiaries of the African and West Indian trades? How, in an ever-changing historical environment, were enslaved Africans represented in the city’s press, theatre and political discourse? What do previously unexplored religious, legal and private records tell us about the black presence in Bristol or about the attitudes of white seamen, colonists and merchants towards slavery and race? What role did white women and artisans play in Bristol’s anti-slavery movement? Combining a historical and anthropological approach, Slavery Obscured, seeks to shed new light on the contradictory and complex history of an English slaving port and to prompt new ways of looking at British national identity, race and history.

The Black Handbook is the authoritative guide to the people, history and politics of Africa and the African Diaspora up until the end of the 20th century. Who were Black Moses, the Black Seminoles, the Black shots and the Black Pimpernel? Which Pope gave the King of Portugal permission to invade, conquer and submit to perpetual slavery the people of Africa? What was the African Blood Brotherhood? Why was a Jamaican the last man to be beheaded in Britain? Who were the Talented Tenth? Why did Egypt invade Ethiopia in 1875? Who was the first black American woman to become a millionaire? Who were the Mangrove Nine?Spanning three continents, The Black Handbook describes and analyses, in an accessible way, the essential events, ideas and personalities of the African world.