Origins of the Black Atlantic [Paperback]

Between 1492 and 1820, about two-thirds of the people who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas were Africans. With the exception of the Spanish, all the European empires settled more Africans in the New World than they did Europeans. The vast majority of these enslaved men and women worked on plantations, and their labor was the foundation for the expansion of the Atlantic economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Until relatively recently, comparatively little attention was paid to the perspectives, daily experiences, hopes, and especially the political ideas of the enslaved who played such a central role in the making of the Atlantic world. Over the past decades, however, huge strides have been made in the study of the history of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world. This collection brings together some of the key contributions to this growing body of scholarship, showing a range of methodological approaches, that can be used to understand and reconstruct the lives of these enslaved people.

Contents

Series Editors Preface

Preface

Introduction

Part I: People and Ideas in Circulation

David Barry Gaspar, A Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion in the West Indies in the 1730s

Richard Sheridan, The Jamaican Slave Insurrection Scare of 1776 and the American Revolution,

Neville A.T. Hall, Maritime Maroons: Grand Marronage from the Danish West Indies,

Julius Scott, The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution

Part II: Atlantic Generations

Richard Gray, The Papacy and the Atlantic Slave Trade: Louren?o da Silva, The Capuchins, and the Decisions of the Holy Office,

Ira Berlin, From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-AmerilÓÏ