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

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 in their formative period before 1660. It reveals that Central Africans were frequently possessors of an Atlantic Creole culture that included adaptation of Christianity and elements of European language, especially names and material culture. It places the movement of slaves and creation of the colonies within an Atlantic historical framework, including showing interactions among Africa, Europe, and all of the Americas. It explores the development of attitudes toward race, slavery, and freedom as they developed in the colonies of England and the Netherlands, and it revises earlier discussions on these issues. The book suggests ways in which this generation of Africans helped lay the foundations for subsequent development of African-American culture in all the colonies of these countries.

1. Privateering, colonial expansion and the African presence in Early Anglo-Dutch Settlements; 2. The Portuguese, Kongo and Ndongo and the origins of Atlantic Creole culture to 1607; 3. Wars, civil unrest and the dynamics of enslavement in West Central Africa, 1607–60; 4. Atlantic Creole culture: patterns of transformation and adaptations, 1607–60; 5. Shifting status and the foundation of African-American communities: Atlantic Creoles in the early Anglo-Dutch colonies; 6. Becoming slaves: Atlantic Creoles and the defining of status.

This 2007 book establishes Central Africa as the origin of most Africans brought to English and Dutch colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and South America before 1660. It reveals that Central Africans were frequently possessors of an Atlantic Creole culture, places the movement of slaves and creation of the colonies.

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.