Paul Ellsworth Lovejoy

• York University

Este artigo trata da polêmica sobre os significados do nome do autor de The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (Londres, 1789). A polêmica reside nas formas como Equiano ou Vassa, em parte se relacionava com o seu local de nascimento. A escolha do nome que ele cotidianamente usava provoca questões s...

Regionalizing pre-colonial Africa aids in the collection and interpretation of primary sources as data for further analysis. This article includes a map with six broad regions and 34 sub-regions, which form a controlled vocabulary within which researchers may geographically organize and classify disparate pieces of information related to Africa’s p...

Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, The Atlantic Slave Trade from West Central Africa, 1780–1867. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (hb £75 – 978 1 107 17626 3). 2017, xv + 231 pp. - Volume 89 Issue 2 - Paul E. Lovejoy

In recent years, an increasing number of online archival databases of primary sources related to the history of the African diaspora and slavery have become freely and readily accessible for scholarly and public consumption. This proliferation of digital projects and databases presents a number of challenges related to aggregating data geographical...

Muhammad Ali Sa’id, que tomó el nombre de Nicholas Said después de haber sido bautizado, procedía del estado musulmán de Borno en la década de 1850. Seguirá un periplo que le llevará a través del Sahara hasta La Meca, Istambul y San Petersburgo. Posteriormente viajó como criado por Europa occidental, el Caribe y Norteamérica. Su trayectoria desde q...

The concept “second slavery” as applied to the resurgence of slavery as a factor of production in the Americas in the nineteenth century emphasizes radical changes in the economies of the Atlantic world. The expansion of slavery in the southern United States, Cuba and Brazil occurred in the context of the emergence of an independent Haiti, where sl...

African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade. Ed. by Bellagamba Alice, Greene Sandra E., [and] Klein Martin A.. With the ass. of Carolyn Brown. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.]2013 xxii, 563 pp. Ill. Maps. £65.00. - Volume 60 Issue 1 - Paul Lovejoy

One of the intriguing questions concerning the trans-Atlantic slave trade was why the West African interior did not supply more slaves to the slave trade than it did when, theoretically, the region had the capacity to fulfil the entire new world demand for enslaved labour. There have been numerous explanations put forth to explain this paradox. Usi...

Este artigo trata das relações entre movimentos sociais e políticos ocorridos na África Ocidental em fins do século XVIII e início do século XIX, em especial o jihad sudanês, e os processos de transformação global do Ocidente nesse mesmo período. Abre-se um diálogo com os trabalhos de Erick Hobsbawm e Eugene Genovese, analisando criticamente suas a...

L'auteur vérifie la validité du concept de "port commercial" de Karl Polanyi. L'histoire de deux centres commerciaux ouest-africains du XIXe siècle, Salaga et Kano, lui fournit les données empiriques. Deux premières sections analysent successivement les relations entre le pouvoir politique et les communautés commerçantes à Salaga et à Kano. Contrai...

A reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to pover...

I am delighted to participate in this panel discussion, which is designed to call attention to the chronological scope of the Journal of Africana Religions. As a New Testament critic, I will focus my remarks on the period known as antiquity in order to set forth some points of departure for our discussion. My intellectual journey into the world of...

These edited proceedings of a 2013 symposium at Northwestern University are organized around the question of how to theorize the study of Africana religions across wide expanses of time and space. An international body of scholars representing the fields of history, religious studies, anthropology, American studies, sociology, African studies, clas...

The article describes volumes pertaining to slavery and the slave trade in the British Parliament House of Commons Sessional Papers of the eighteenth century, published by Sheila Lambert in 1975 but seldom used by historians of Africa and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In addition, the article provides an index for the eight volumes from 1788 to 1...

CHILDHOOD AND SERVITUDE - Child Slaves in the Modern World. Edited by GwynCampbell, SuzanneMiers, and Joseph C.Miller. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2011. Pp. vi+281. $49.95, hardback (isbn: 978-0-8214-1958-8); $24.95, paperback (isbn: 978-0-8214-1959-5). - Volume 54 Issue 2 - PAUL E. LOVEJOY

African Businessmen and Development in Zambia. By BeveridgeAndrew A. and OberschallAnthony R.. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1979. Pp. xv + 382. $22.50. - Volume 54 Issue 4 - Paul E. Lovejoy

This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European a...

Whether the author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa the African (London, 1789) should be referred to as Equiano or Vassa in part relates to where he was born and how he related to his place of birth. The choice of name also relates to how scholars want to perceive of the author, on the one hand, and ho...

Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The Making of an African Petite-Bourgeoisie. By KitchingGavin. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980. Pp. xx + 479. $35.00. - Volume 56 Issue 1 - Paul E. Lovejoy

WalzTerence and CunoKenneth M. (eds): Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean. xiv, 264 pp. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2010. ISBN 978 977 416 398 2. - Volume 75 Issue 1 - Paul E. Lovejoy

This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European a...

It is argued that what have usually been called ‘slave narratives’ sometimes more accurately describe ‘freedom narratives’, especially when individuals who had regained their freedom wrote or dictated such accounts. Most stories that are associated with slavery often focus on the quest for and achievement of freedom through escape, self-purchase or...

The surviving portions of Antera Duke’s diary from the slave port of Old Calabar, now the modern city of Calabar in Nigeria, have been accessible to scholars since the publication of Efik Traders of Old Calabar by Daryll Forde in 1956, also published by Oxford University Press, for the International African Institute. The extracts cover the years 1...

CLARK G. REYNOLDS. Navies in History. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 267. $24.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Joseph A. Maiolo

The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra dissects and explains the structure, dramatic expansion, and manifold effects of the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra. By showing that the rise of the Aro merchant group was the key factor in trade expansion, G. Ugo Nwokeji reinterprets why and how such large-scale commerce developed in the absen...

AFRICAN HISTORY AND THE DISPERSAL OF AFRICAN PEOPLES - The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture. By ManningPatrick. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Pp. xxii+394. £19.95/29.95, hardback (isbn978-0-231-14470-4); £17/$24.50, paperback (isbn978-0-231-14471-1). - Volume 51 Issue 1 - PAUL E. LOVEJOY

Eltis and Richardson's Extending the Frontiers is the first volume to analyze the latest, monumental, installment of their slave-voyage database. However, despite the volume's laudable synthesis of primary and secondary data about intra-Caribbean enslaved migration, its considerable contribution to scholarship about the operations of slaving ships...

The Scottish connection of Olaudah Equiano is well known. Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African, spent time in Edinburgh in 1792 selling subscriptions to his autobiography and continuing his honeymoon there with his wife, Suzannah Cullen. In two editions of The Interesting Narrative, the list of Scottish subscribers, both in Scotland a...

We are now better able to understand the impact of the slave trade on the evolution of the Atlantic world to a degree that could not have been imagined a generation ago, in a manner that might well fulfill the visions of Thomas Clarkson, W.E.B. Du Bois and other commentators.1 Thus there is a long tradition of assessing patterns of the slave trade....

I enrolled in the graduate program in History at the University of Wisconsin in January 1957, intending to major in East Asian History. When I met with the Department Chair, he informed me that the professor with that specialty would be on leave for the spring semester. He said that he would assign me to Prof. Phillip Curtin because "he was the onl...

How people have perceived themselves as a community, and how identities are related to past allegiances and present circumstances, are essential questions in understanding the forms of resistance and accommodation that have shaped the Black Atlantic. Sidbury explores familiar territory as well as new terrain in examining these questions in the cont...

The findings of the scholarship that underlies the study of slavery are in considerable need of comparative study. Because of the great strides that are being made in the reconstruction of the history of the African dias-pora, periodic assessments of current trends and future possibilities are essential. However, such efforts at comparison are face...

Recent scholarship has raised doubts about whether or not abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was known in his own lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was born in Africa. While baptis- mal and naval documents indicate that he was born in South Carolina, it is argued here that his autobiographical account is nonetheless accurate, although allowing for reflect...

The proportions and number of children entering the trans-Atlantic slave trade changed over time and varied among the different regions of embarkation on the African coast. Until relatively late in the trade, children were generally perceived as a liability and were largely purchased to complete ship cargoes, but in the late eighteenth century and...

EXPLORING AND POPULARIZING AFRICAN HISTORY The Power of African Cultures. By TOYIN FALOLA. Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003. Pp. xiii+354. $75/£50 (ISBN 1-58046-139-5). - - Volume 47 Issue 2 - PAUL E. LOVEJOY

The article describes the organization of the caravans in Central Sudan. The work is based on different sources, particularly on Western reports and biographies of Haussa people. The author analyses the presence of merchants, porters and pet traders and also the financial system involved. The caravans are one of the most important activities within...

Paul E. Lovejoy is Distinguished Research Professor at York University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and holds the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora Studies. He has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited more than twenty books on African history and African diaspora studies. 1. Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrativ...

Enslaved Muslims constituted a relatively small proportion of the enslaved population in the Americas, and that population was largely male. This article explores an unappreciated dimension of the background of these enslaved Muslims, the fact that most came from towns and had traveled widely, between towns; that is enslaved Muslims tended to come...

SLOW DEATH; STILL ALIVE Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. By SUZANNE MIERS. Walnut Creek CA: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. xx+503. No price given (ISBN 0-7591-0339-9); paperback (ISBN 0-7591-0340-2). - - Volume 46 Issue 2 - PAUL E. LOVEJOY

This article suggests that differences in local political structures and credit protection regimes largely account for Bonny's displacement of Old Calabar as the principal slave port of the Bight of Biafra in the eighteenth century, despite Bonny's reputation for being particularly unhealthy for Europeans. We argue that this displacement occurred i...

Cet article examine l'importance relative des marchands musulmans dans la traite négrière en Afrique occidentale, incluant à la fois le monde transatlantique et les centres moteurs que constituent les régions islamiques trans-sahariennes. On y soutient l'idée selon laquelle l'implication des Musulmans dans la traite limita l'essor de l'économie atl...

The use of people as pawns to underpin credit was widespread in western Africa during the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This study examines where and when pawns were used in commercial transactions involving European slave merchants in the period c. 1600–1810. It is shown that European merchants relied on pawnship as an instrument of c...

A powerful community of royal slaves emerged in Kano Emirate in the wake of Usman dan Fodio's jihad (1804-08), which established the Sokoto Caliphate. These elite slaves held administrative and military positions of great power, and over the course of the nineteenth century played an increasing prominent role in the political, economic, and social...

THE ORIGINS OF MUSLIM slaves in Bahia can be traced to the interior of the Bight of Benin and the jihad of Sheikh Usman dan Fodio that established the Sokoto Caliphate. As is well known, the ethnic configuration of the Bahian population changed significantly in the last decades of the eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth, as Hausa,...

FRANCO-MUSLIM RELATIONS IN THE SAHARA La légende noire de la Sanûsiyya: Une confrérie musulmane saharienne sous le regard français, 1840–1930. 2 vols. Par JEAN-LOUIS TRIAUD. Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1995. Pp. xiii+1151. FF 250 (ISBN 2-7351-0584-9). - - Volume 40 Issue 2 - PAUL E. LOVEJOY

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30.3 (1999) 532-534 In Come Shouting to Zion, Frey and Wood explore the changes in African-American identity in the context of the Protestant missionary movement and the efforts to convert slaves to Christianity in both the American South and parts of the British Caribbean (Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua). The a...