African Diaspora

African Diaspora

The study of cultures in the African Diaspora is relatively

young. Slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade brought numerous

Africans, under forced and brutal conditions, to the New World. Of

particular interest to many recent historians and Africanists is the

extent to which Africans were able to transfer, retain, modify or

transform their cultures under the conditions of their new

environments. Three main schools of thought have emerged in scholarly

discussion and research on this topic. Some argue that there are no

significant connections between Africans and African American

communities in the Americas. Others argue that Africans retained

significant aspects of their cultures. Similar to this argument, some

have argued that Africans, responding to their new environments,

retained and transformed African cultures into new African-American

ethnic units.

Detailed research done on slave communities in Surinam, South

Carolina and Louisiana allow us to look deeper into the stated

arguments. Having recently addressed the same issues using Colonial

South Carolina as a case study, I will focus largely on some of the

arguments and conclusions drawn from this study. The evidence from

South Carolina, Louisiana and Surinam supports the second and third

arguments much more than the first. The third argument, that of

cultural transformation, is the argument I find to be most valid.

John Thornton's analysis of this issue is extremely helpful.

He addresses the "no connections" arguments in chapters 6, 7 and 8. He

outlines the claims made by scholars Franklin Frazier, Stanley Elkins,

Sidney Mintz and Richard Price. Frazier and Mintz believe that the

extreme trauma and disruption experienced by Africans during the

process of enslavement and the middle passage minimized the

possibility that they maintained aspects of their cultures in the new

world. They argue that this process "had the effect of traumatizing

and marginalizing them, so that they would became cultural receptacles

rather than donors" (152).

Mintz and Price have argued the slave trade had the effect of

"permanently breaking numerous social bonds that had tied Africans

together..." (153). Another element of the "no connections" argument

claims that Africans did not receive enough associational time with

each othe...

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... capacity. The use of poison as a form of rebellion is

visible in both the examples from Colonial South Carolina and Jamaica.

Cases of death by poison in Colonial South Carolina leading up to the

Stono Rebellion led to its inclusion in the Negro Act of 1740. The Act made poisoning a felony punishable by death.

In conclusion, both significant African retentions and

transformations took place in the early European settlement of the

Americas. More recently, there has been a tendency to overemphasize or

even romanticize the "Africanisms." While acknowledging "Africanisms"

did make their way into the Americas, I find the evidence from

accounts of early slave cultures and the Anthropological background

provided by Thornton on cultural transformation and change persuasive

in suggesting the formation of Afro- American rather than

"Afro-centric" communities. This approach to the slavery and the slave

era is relatively young and will have to be developed. A conclusion

that is clear after studying works of Peter Wood, Gwendolyn Hall and

Richard Price, is that the early arguments suggesting no connection of

African heritage to the Americas are entirely invalid.