1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780838503321

Autore

Knight Frederick C

Titolo

Working the diaspora [[electronic resource] ] : the impact of African labor on the Anglo-American world, 1650-1850 / / Frederick C. Knight

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : New York University Press, 2010

ISBN

0-8147-4834-1

0-8147-4912-7

1-4416-3663-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (242 p.)

Collana

Culture, Labor, History ; ; 8

Disciplina

331.11/7340970903

Soggetti

Slave labor - America - History

Agricultural laborers - America - History

Africans - America - History

Black people - America - History

Agriculture - America - History

African diaspora

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Material Life in West and West Central Africa, 1650−1800 -- 2 Seeds of Change -- 3 Cultivating Knowledge -- 4 In an Ocean of Blue -- 5 Slave Artisans -- 6 Natural Worship -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author

Sommario/riassunto

From the sixteenth to early-nineteenth century, four times more Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. While this forced migration stripped slaves of their liberty, it failed to destroy many of their cultural practices, which came with Africans to the New World. In Working the Diaspora, Frederick Knight examines work cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, from West and West Central Africa to British North America and the Caribbean.Knight demonstrates that the knowledge that Africans carried across the Atlantic shaped Anglo-American agricultural development and made particularly important contributions to cotton, indigo, tobacco, and staple food cultivation. The book also compellingly argues that the work



experience of slaves shaped their views of the natural world. Broad in scope, clearly written, and at the center of current scholarly debates, Working the Diaspora challenges readers to alter their conceptual frameworks about Africans by looking at them as workers who, through the course of the Atlantic slave trade and plantation labor, shaped the development of the Americas in significant ways.