Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora

by Edited by Linda M. Heywood

• ISBN13: 9780521002783
• ISBN10: 0521002788
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-19
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Sets out a new paradigm that increases our understanding of African culture and the forces that led to its transformation during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and beyond, putting long over-due emphasis on the importance of Central African culture to the cultures of the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Focusing on the Kongo/Angola culture zone, the book illustrates how African peoples re-shaped their cultural institutions, beliefs and practices as they interacted with Portuguese slave traders up to 1800, then follows Central Africans through all the regions where they were taken as slaves and recaptives. Here, for the first time in one volume, leading scholars of Africa, Brazil, Latin America and the Caribbean have collaborated to analyze the culture history of Africa and its diaspora. This interdisciplinary approach across geographic areas is sure to set a precedent for other scholars of Africa and its diaspora.

Author Biography

Linda M. Heywood is an Associate Professor of African History and the History of the African Diaspora at Howard University in Washington, DC

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	vii
Foreword	xi
Jan Vansina
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction	1	(20)
Linda M. Heywood
PART ONE CENTRAL AFRICA: SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND THE SLAVE TRADE
Central African During the Era of the Slave Trade,c. 1490s-1850s	21	(50)
Joseph C. Miller
Religious and Ceremonial Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500-1700	71	(20)
John K. Thornton
Portuguese into African: The Eighteenth-Century Central African Background to Atlantic Creole Cultures	91	(26)
Linda M. Heywood
PART TWO CENTRAL AFRICANS IN BRAZIL
Central Africans in Central Brazil, 1780-1835	117	(36)
Mary C. Karasch
Who Is the King of Congo? A New Look at African and Afro-Brazilian Kings in Brazil	153	(30)
Elizabeth W. Kiddy
The Great Porpoise-Skull Strike: Central African Water Spirits and Slave Identity in Early-Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro	183	(28)
Robert W. Slenes
PART THREE CENTRAL AFRICANS IN HAITI AND SPANISH AMERICA
Twins, Simbi Spirits, and Lwas in Kongo and Haiti	211	(16)
Wyatt MacGaffey
The Central African Presence in Spanish Maroon Communities	227	(16)
Jane Landers
Central African Popular Christianity and the Making of Haitian Vodou Religion	243	(22)
Hein Vanhee
Kongolese Catholic Influences on Haitian Popular Catholicism: A Sociohistorical Exploration	265	(24)
Terry Rey
PART FOUR CENTRAL AFRICANS IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
``Walk in the Feenda'': West-Central Africans and the Forest in the South Carolina--Georgia Lowcountry	289	(30)
Ras Michael Brown
Liberated Central Africans in Nineteenth-Century Guyana	319	(34)
Monica Schuler
Combat and the Crossing of the Kalunga	353	(18)
T. J. Desch-Obi
Index	371