Africa's Discovery of Europe 1450-1850

by Northrup, David

• ISBN13: 9780195140842
• ISBN10: 0195140842
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

What did Africans think of the first Europeans they saw? Why did some Africans seek political and religious alliances with Europeans? How successful were African traders in acquiring what they wanted from Europeans in the new Atlantic trade? Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850 providessurprising answers to these and many other questions. This groundbreaking book on African-European interactions is the first to look broadly at the subject from an African perspective rather than from a European one. David Northrup explores the African side of this cultural collision as it unfolded in Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic world between1450 and 1850. Featuring extensive use of life stories and quotations from Africans, the text is organized thematically with chapters devoted to first impressions, religion and politics, commerce and culture, imported goods and technology, the Middle Passage, and Africans in Europe. Northrupexamines Africans' intellectual, commercial, cultural, and sexual relations with Europeans and describes how the patterns of behavior that emerged from these encounters shaped precolonial Africa. The book concludes with an examination of the roles of race, class, and culture in early modern times,and suggests which themes in Africa's continuing discovery of Europe after 1850 were similar to earlier patterns, and why some themes were different. Africa's Discovery of Europe: 1450-1850 is ideal for undergraduate courses on modern African, Atlantic, and world history and is also engaging for general readers.

Table of Contents

Preface

First Sights - Lasting Impressions

Elite Africans in Europe to 1650

Enslaved Africans in Europe to 1650

Discovering Europeans in Africa

Southeast Africa, 1589-1635

Kongo Cosmology

Politics and Religion

Meanings of Religious Conversion

Benin and Warri

The Kingdom of Kongo

Swahili and Mutapa

Ethiopia

Conclusions

Commerce and Culture

African Trading Strategies

The Eighteenth Century

Language, Trade, and Culture

Sexual Encounters

Conclusion

Material Goods and Technology

Evaluating Inland Trade

Textiles and Metals

Tobacco and Distilled Spirits

Guns and Politics

Economic and Social Consequences

Passages in Slavery

Capture in Africa

The Middle Passage

New Identities

Creolization

Africanization

Conclusion

Africans in Europe, 1650-1850

African Delegates and Students

Servants of High and Low in Continental Europe

Anglo-Africans

Scholars and Churchmen

Concluding Observations

Epilogue

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