Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660

Linda M. Heywood, John K. Thornton

Cambridge University Press, Sep 10, 2007 - History - 370 pages

This book establishes Central Africa as the origin of most Africans brought to English and Dutch American colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and South America before 1660. It reveals that Central Africans were frequently possessors of an Atlantic Creole culture and places the movement of slaves and creation of the colonies within an Atlantic historical framework.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• 1 Privateering Colonial Expansion and the African Presence in Early AngloDutch Settlements: 5
• 2 The Portuguese Kongo and Ndongo and the Origins of Atlantic Creole Culture to 1607: 49
• 3 Wars Civil Unrest and the Dynamics of Enslavement in West Central Africa 16071660: 109
• Patterns of Transformation and Adaptations 16071660: 169
• Atlantic Creoles in the Early AngloDutch Colonies: 236
• Atlantic Creoles and the Defining of Status: 294
• Names of Africans Appearing in Early Colonial Records: 333
• Index: 361

About the author

Linda M. Heywood is Professor of African American Studies and History at Boston University. She is also W. E. B. DuBois Fellow at Harvard University and formerly a Whiting Fellow at Columbia University as well as Professor of History at Howard University and Cleveland State University. She is the author of Contested Power in Angola (1999) and editor of Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (2001). Professor Heywood has published in the Journal of African History, Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Southern African Studies and Slavery and Abolition.

John K. Thornton is Professor of African American Studies and History at Boston University. He is also W. E. B. DuBois Fellow at Harvard University and formerly Carter Woodson Fellow at the University of Virginia, as well as Professor of History at Millersville University and Allegheny College. He is a former Lecturer at the University of Zambia. He is author of The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (1983), African and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd edition (1998), The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (1998), and Warfare in Atlantic Africa (1999). He has published in, among other journals, The Journal of African History, History in Africa, Cahiers d'etudes africaines, William and Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review, The Americas and the International Journal of African Historical Studies.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660
• Authors: Linda M. Heywood, John K. Thornton
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007
• ISBN: 0521770653, 9780521770651
• Length: 370 pages
• Subjects: History / Africa / General; History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / General; History / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775)