In this sweeping, foundational work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
David Hackett Fischer draws on extensive research to show how enslaved
Africans and their descendants enlarged American ideas of freedom in
varying ways in different regions of the early United States.
African Founders explores the little-known history of how enslaved
people from different regions of Africa interacted with colonists of
European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United
States. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel
techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical
principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how
much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early
years, producing a new, distinctly American culture.
Drawing on decades of research, some of it in western Africa, Fischer
recreates the diverse regional life that shaped the early American
republic. He shows that there were varieties of slavery in America and
varieties of new American culture, from Puritan New England to Dutch New
York, Quaker Pennsylvania, cavalier Virginia, coastal Carolina, and
Louisiana and Texas.
This landmark work of history will transform our understanding of
America's origins.
