Patrick Manning refuses to divide the African diaspora into the
experiences of separate regions and nations. Instead, he follows the
multiple routes that brought Africans and people of African descent into
contact with one another and with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In
weaving these stories together, Manning shows how the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean fueled
dynamic interactions among black communities and cultures and how these
patterns resembled those of a number of connected diasporas concurrently
taking shape across the globe.
Manning begins in 1400 and traces five central themes: the connections
that enabled Africans to mutually identify and hold together as a global
community; discourses on race; changes in economic circumstance; the
character of family life; and the evolution of popular culture. His
approach reveals links among seemingly disparate worlds. In the
mid-nineteenth century, for example, slavery came under attack in North
America, South America, southern Africa, West Africa, the Ottoman
Empire, and India, with former slaves rising to positions of political
prominence. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, the
near-elimination of slavery brought new forms of discrimination that
removed almost all blacks from government for half a century.
Manning underscores the profound influence that the African diaspora had
on world history, demonstrating the inextricable link between black
migration and the rise of modernity, especially in regards to the
processes of industrialization and urbanization. A remarkably inclusive
and far-reaching work, The African Diaspora proves that the advent of
modernity cannot be imaginatively or comprehensively engaged without
taking the African peoples and the African continent as a whole into
account.
