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

This book shows that the first generation of Africans taken to English and Dutch colonies before 1660 were captured by pirates from these countries from slave ships coming from Kongo and Angola. This region had embraced Christianity and elements of Western culture, such as names and some material culture, the result of a long period of diplomatic, political, and military interaction with the Portuguese. This background gave them an important role in shaping the way slavery, racism, and African-American culture would develop in English and Dutch colonies throughout the Western Hemisphere.


About the Author
Heywood, Linda M.: - 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.Thornton, John K.: - 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.