Strange New Land
African Americans 1617-1776
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- $37.99
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- $37.99
Publisher Description
For Africans who survived the trans-Atlantic journey and were forced to disembark at one of the many ports along the coast of Britain's North American colonies, what lay before them was indeed a strange new land. Although forms of bondage had existed in West and Central Africa long before the trans Atlantic slave trade began, human beings were rarely the main commodity at the marketplace. Here in the modern world, the enslaved African was inspected, assessed, auctioned, bought, sold, bartered, and treated in any manner the owner saw fit.
Slaves did not always cooperate. They fought and ran away, or made the business of commercial farming more difficult by not working efficiently. In spite of their condition and despite different ethnic backgrounds and languages, enslaved Africans forged a strong sense of community. The Africans learned the English language and made it their own. They learned Christianity and transformed it. Others held fast to Islam or combined their own spiritual beliefs with the faith of their masters. And all around them they heard talk of liberty and freedom, of the rights of man. Not surprisingly, many enslaved Africans embraced the idea of liberty as a fundamental right, and some even petitioned colonial administrators, insisting on that right. But the majority simply stole themselves and headed to Northern cities where slavery was less visible and where they might blend in more easily.
Strange New Land explores the history of slavery and the struggle for freedom before the United States became a nation. Beginning with the colonization of North America, it documents the transformation of slavery from a brutal form of indentured servitude to a full-blown system of racial domination. More importantly, it surveys black social and cultural life, illustrating just how such a diverse group of people from the shores and hinterlands of West and Central Africa became a community in North America that survives and flourishes today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long before there was a United States, Africans were present in what would become American history. In very condensed form, Duke University historian Wood follows Africans, from those who traveled with the early Spanish explorers to those who fought in the early years of the American Revolution. He illuminates how differences among the colonies, between North and South America, and among European powers affected the Africans' experience, including their differing relations with the Native American population and the diversity of the Africans themselves. With deft strokes, Wood provides a political milieu and a broad international context, such as the effects of the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the Paris Treaty of 1762. As succinctly, he provides a vivid sense of African daily life the acquisition of new languages, hairstyling, food, music, religion and the effect that had on America. There are no new revelations on the order of Wood's Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion, but Wood here offers a splendid synthesis of recent research for a lay reader's edification and , despite often horrific events, pleasure; the scholarly foundation upon which the book rests is hidden under its simple, straightforward and graceful style. This is an amazing "little" book, a really masterful distillation.
