Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora

by Michael A. Gomez

• ISBN13: 9780521806626
• ISBN10: 0521806623
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines the global unfolding of the African Diaspora, the migrations and dispersals of the people of Africa, from antiquity to the modern period. Their exploits, challenges, and struggles are discussed over a wide expanse of time in ways that link as well as differentiate past and present circumstances. The experiences of Africans in the Old World, in the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds, is followed by their movement into the New, where their experience in lands claimed by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English colonial powers is analyzed from enslavement through to the Cold War. While appropriate mention is made of persons of renown, particular attention is paid to the everyday lives of working class people and their cultural efflorescence. The book also attempts to explain contemporary plights and struggles through the lens of history.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Maps	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(6)
PART I ``Old'' World Dimensions
Antiquity	7	(11)
Egypt	8	(2)
Egypt and the South	10	(1)
Nubian Ascendancy	11	(1)
Africans in the Graeco-Roman World	12	(4)
Suggestions for Further Reading	16	(2)
Africans and the Bible	18	(11)
Egypt and Nubia in the Bible	18	(2)
Africans and Origins	20	(3)
The Queen of Sheba	23	(2)
Beta Israel	25	(1)
The ``Ethiopian'' Eunuch and the Call to Christianity	26	(1)
Suggestions for Further Reading	27	(2)
Africans and the Islamic World	29	(30)
Golden Lands	31	(3)
Pilgrims and Scholars	34	(1)
The Enslaved	35	(5)
Iberia	40	(4)
India	44	(1)
The Image of the African in the Islamic World	45	(5)
Slavery's Aftermath	50	(2)
Suggestions for Further Reading	52	(7)
PART II ``New'' World Realities
Transatlantic Moment	59	(23)
Reconquista	59	(3)
Scope of the Trade	62	(3)
African Provenance	65	(6)
Belly of the Whale	71	(8)
Suggestions for Further Reading	79	(3)
Enslavement	82	(27)
Aspects of American Enslavement	83	(23)
Suggestions for Further Reading	106	(3)
Asserting the Right to Be	109	(53)
Armed Revolt and Autonomous Space	110	(10)
Everyday--Every Way Resistance	120	(11)
Facing the Enemy	131	(10)
Slavery's End?	141	(8)
Games People Play	149	(3)
Freedom's Tease	152	(4)
Another Way	156	(3)
Suggestions for Further Reading	159	(3)
Reconnecting	162	(31)
Boats and Trains	163	(5)
Organizing Black Labor	168	(2)
Faiths New and Renewed	170	(5)
Conceptualizing the Solutions	175	(8)
Efflorescence	183	(7)
Suggestions for Further Reading	190	(3)
Movement People	193	(26)
Freedom and Fire	194	(5)
Developments in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe	199	(4)
Cultural Innovations	203	(13)
Suggestions for Further Reading	216	(3)
Epilogue	219	(2)
Index	221