reversing sail a history of the african diaspora

Clair Drake, who likewise embraced the idea that ancient Egyptian and Nubian societies were related to those toiling in American sugar cane and cotton fields. Reversing Sail offers a succinct introduction to the study of the African Diaspora, including the historiographical debates that dominate this volatile field, for undergraduates and graduate students, as well as professional historians who need a quick reference or source for that title whose author escapes one's memory. In so doing, they anticipated the subsequent writings of scholars like W. These early thinkers, uninformed about the greatness of West and West Central African civilizations, invariably cited those of ancient Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia as exemplars of black accomplishment and creativity. In this view, there was nothing inevitable about black suffering and subjugation. Study of the African diaspora is now a dynamic field in the development of newmethods and approaches to African history. This 2005 book examines the global unfolding of the African Diaspora, the migrations and dispersals of the people of Africa, from antiquity to the modern period.

Rather than conforming to divine decree or reflecting the natural order of things, the enslavement of black people, when placed in the context of thousands of years of history in Africa itself, was but an aberration.

When circumstances all around suggested otherwise, they found evidence of the potential and ability of black people in the achievements of antiquity. Facing the withering effects of slavery, black thinkers as early as David Walker and Frederick Douglass were careful to mention the glories of the African past.

Long before the rise of professional historians, black men and women had reached a similar conclusion. Scholars of American history have long understood that discussions of the African American experience must begin with a consideration of people and cultures and developments in Africa itself, before the rise of American slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, to debilitate the notion that black folk, prior to their experiences in the Americas, had no history worthy of the name.

Reversing sail a history of the african diaspora