This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World.
- This edition includes a new chapter on eighteenth-century developments
- Comprehensive exploration of Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from 1500–1800
- Focuses on cause and consequences of the slave trade, examining in detail factors in Africa, Europe, and the New World
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Reviews & endorsements
'A major contribution … the strongest and most articulate statement that Africa and Africans were not passive agents … provocative and insightful.' Paul E. Lovejoy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

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Product details
- Edition: 2nd Edition
- Date Published: July 1998
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521622172
- length: 380 pages
- dimensions: 229 x 152 x 23 mm
- weight: 0.67kg
- contains: 5 b/w illus. 5 maps
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
Introduction
Part I. Africans in Africa:
1. The birth of the Atlantic world
2. The development of commerce between Europeans and Africans
3. Slavery and African social structure
4. The process of enslavement and the slave trade
Part II. Africans in the New World:
5. Africans in colonial Atlantic societies
6. Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic world: life and labour
7. African cultural groups in the Atlantic world
8. Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world
9. African religions and Christianity in the Atlantic world
10. Resistance, runaways, and rebels
Part III. Africans in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.
Look Inside
Instructors have used or reviewed this title for the following courses
- Africa and the Americas
- Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
- Africa in the Modern World from Slavery to Modern Independence
- African American History to the Twentieth Century
- African-American History to 1865
- Afro-Latin Communities
- Anthropological Approaches to Africa
- Civil Rights History--Graduate Course
- Civilizations of Africa
- Comparative Slavery in the Caribbean
- Cultural and Political Ecology of Afro-Brazil
- Empires and Independence in the Americas
- European Expansion Overseas, 1400-1800
- European Imperialism
- Historical Thought
- History of Slavery in the Western Hemisphere
- History of the British Atlantic World
- History of the Non-Western World
- Imperial Spain and Portugal
- Introduction to African History
- Introduction to African and African Diaspora Studies
- Modern History I
- Slavery in the Atlantic World
- Studies in History: The Atlantic World
- Survery of World Civilization I
- The Atlantic World
- The Historian's Craft (undergraduate seminar)
- West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World
Author
John Thornton, Millersville University, Pennsylvania