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Central West Africans in Diaspora Linda Marinda Heywood, John Kelly Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiii + 370 pp. $22.99, paper, ISBN 978-0-521-77922-7. Reviewed by Gayle K. Brunelle Published on H-Atlantic (July, 2011) Commissioned by W. Douglas Catterall (Cameron University of Oklahoma) Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton frst ravaged by internal conflicts that the Portuguese conceived of writing Central Africans, Atlantic fomented and exploited wherever possible in or‐ Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, der to further their goal of creating a colony to 1585-1660 as a way to exploit newly available use as a secure base for exporting slaves and ac‐ data from the DuBois Institute and Cambridge cessing African mineral and agricultural wealth, University Press on the trade and transportation was also vibrant and culturally inventive, the of slaves. As they studied these sources, they real‐ very opposite of a “people without history.” ized that the information these databases con‐ African rulers were often at odds with the Por‐ tained provided important support for the theory tuguese, and increasingly so during the course of Ira Berlin developed in the mid-1990s that an “At‐ the seventeenth century as Portuguese rapacity lantic Creole” culture developed in West Central and territorial ambitions became clear, but just as Africa (the Portuguese colony of Angola, the king‐ often were allied with them and willing to sell dom of Kongo and, to a lesser extent, Ndongo, them slaves. At the same time, a Luso-African so‐ Matamba, and Loango).[1] In this region cultural ciety of Portuguese inhabiting Africa, and their of‐ contacts with the Portuguese dating from the mid- ten mulatto descendants further spread Por‐ fifteenth century led to cultural exchange and tuguese influence through their many interac‐ syncretism in which an Africanized form of tions with Africans, including acting as advisors Catholic Christianity became widespread. to African rulers. It was from this Atlantic Creole Africans in this region also became well acquaint‐ society that what Heywood and Thornton, again ed with European culture and technology and following Berlin, call the “Charter Generation” of freely incorporated those aspects of them they slaves exported to the Americas derived. Prior to found useful into their own societies and cultures. the creation of large-scale plantations beginning The result was a hybrid, Creole society that, while in the later seventeenth century, it was this Char‐ H-Net Reviews ter Generation that dominated among the slaves long-standing rivalry between the Kongolese of the New World, and it was their creolized cul‐ rulers and those of Ndongo blossomed with the ture that set the pattern for slave society. This re‐ aid of the Portuguese into a protracted struggle in mained the case until the new generations of the middle decades of the seventeenth century slaves imported for the plantations and drawn that yielded a bonanza of slaves for the Por‐ largely from regions of West Africa outside the tuguese (although the volume of slaves exported, limits of this Atlantic Creole cultural region in rarely in excess of 10,000 per year prior to 1660, Africa overwhelmed the Charter Generation and came nowhere near the numbers that would fow created a new, much less creolized African Ameri‐ across the Atlantic during the Plantation Genera‐ can culture except in those areas of the Americas tion that followed). Hence the frst three chapters where the absence of plantations allowed the cul‐ are devoted to establishing the existence of the At‐ tural patterns the Charter Generation established lantic Creole culture and demonstrate how and to continue to provide the dominant model for why this region became the primary source of African American culture. African slaves in the Atlantic world prior to 1660. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the The second half of the book shifts gears Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 is in a way rather radically, in geographical focus, sources, two books (not surprising given the dual author‐ and societies. Whereas the frst chapters are ship), although the two halves of the book are log‐ drawn from Portuguese sources and examine Por‐ ically connected by the central argument. In the tuguese activities in Africa, the second set of chap‐ first half of the book, the authors use data drawn ters relies on English and Dutch sources and ex‐ primarily from Portuguese sources to delineate amines the foundation of African American com‐ the nature of the Atlantic Creole society in West munities not in Iberian America but rather in the Central Africa and the ways in which the Por‐ Dutch and English Caribbean and North Ameri‐ tuguese used a wide variety of pretexts to make can colonies. The authors implicitly justify this war on the indigenous African polities they could shift in focus and sources by establishing convinc‐ safely define as enemies of themselves and their ingly that the Dutch and English were obtaining allies, and to incite internal unrest in those they their slaves partly through licit but mostly could not openly attack, such as their erstwhile through illicit means from the same regions of ally, the kingdom of Kongo. Even as Portuguese Africa as the Portuguese--often by preying upon missionaries worked to evangelize the often re‐ Portuguese shipments of slaves intended for Por‐ ceptive Africans, representatives of the Por‐ tuguese colonies. Thus, most of the slaves carried tuguese crown in Africa realized that they could to the Anglo-Dutch colonies prior to 1660 came never satisfy the demands of the Portuguese from the same Atlantic Creole regions in Africa colonies in the New World for slaves, or of the that supplied the bulk of slaves sent to Spanish Portuguese crown and Portuguese merchants in and Portuguese colonies in the New World. The Africa or Portugal for the profits from slaves, if transition in the book is still jarring, however, as the only sources of these valuable “pieces” the Portuguese Atlantic is abandoned rather (slaves) was peaceful trade. Hence despite the abruptly for that of the Anglo-Dutch. Even as the stated desire of the Portuguese rulers to obtain authors make a strong case for the primacy, dis‐ slaves and evangelize peacefully, their representa‐ tinctive trajectory, and cultural importance of the tives in Africa usually did exactly the opposite, Charter Generation in the English and Dutch and were successful in part due to the political colonies, the question arises as to whether a simi‐ disunity within Africa that allowed them to pit lar case could be made regarding the Iberian Africans against each other. In particular the world or if the histories and historiographies of 2 H-Net Reviews the two regions are too distinct even for such dom and, occasionally, even a measure of pros‐ comparisons to be attempted. perity. The Europeans in turn were both more The issue of whether a Charter Generation of comfortable with these creolized Africans and creolized African slaves more familiar and com‐ more inclined to treat them humanely and to fortable with European culture dominated among manumit them after a term of service which, the early generations of slaves in the New World while always longer than that of indentured ser‐ is important not only in its own right, but also be‐ vants, was not automatically permanent or hered‐ cause it speaks to controversies central to the his‐ itary. This proclivity toward moderation also toriography of the origins and ideological roots of stemmed from the Europeans’ as yet unsettled slavery in the New World and the nature of conceptualization of Africans and of slavery--the African American culture. Scholars have been authors contend that until the end of the seven‐ deeply divided over the issue of whether African teenth century the two were not automatically slavery was rooted primarily in European eco‐ linked in colonists’ minds. Thus, they imply, with‐ nomic considerations or European racism, and out definitively stating it to be the case, that redef‐ whether Europeans always regarded Africans as inition of Africans as always slaves, and of slavery fit only to be slaves, and African slavery as always as always African, hereditary, and permanent, hereditary, permanent, and legally different from was a direct result of a new, plantation regime other forms of servitude to which Europeans that required a new, harsher kind of slavery and a could be reduced, such as serfdom or indentured new type of slave, less familiar, and thus more servitude. The authors argue that it was only in easily reduced to chattel. The Plantation Genera‐ the later seventeenth century that the most nega‐ tion, drawn mostly from outside the sphere of the tive views of Africans and the harshest interpreta‐ Portuguese Atlantic Creole world, mostly non- tions of African slave status came to dominate in Christian, and largely unfamiliar with European the minds of English and Dutch colonists. By the culture, met that need. As a consequence, in re‐ same token they assert that it was no accident gions where plantations dominated and where that the transition from much more nuanced and the Plantation Generation’s demographic domi‐ positive views of Africans and less severe terms of nance was greatest, their culture mostly over‐ slavery to the darker views and harsher regime whelmed the culture of the Charter Generation, coincided closely with the transition in many whose more fortunate members seem to have ob‐ colonies from the Charter Generation to the Plan‐ tained their freedom and melded into the ranks of tation Generation. They demonstrate that Euro‐ free blacks or even white society. The less fortu‐ pean views of Africans in the sixteenth and seven‐ nate descendants of the Charter Generation re‐ teenth centuries were drawn largely from eyewit‐ mained slaves and melded into the African Ameri‐ ness accounts of Europeans in Africa that, while can society and culture the Plantation Generation often critical of some aspects of African societies created.
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