Randy J Sparks

Biographic Data

ID1100335
NAMERandy J Sparks
GIVEN NAMESRandy J
FAMILY NAMESparks
SIGNATURESPARKS R J
AFFILIATIONSTulane University
ORCID0000-0001-7752-3385
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS42
TOTAL CITATIONS27
AUTHOR COUNT39
EDITOR COUNT3
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1990
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX4

  • Atlantic Cataclysm

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLENew West Indian Guide / Nieuwe…2026

  • The Atlantic and Africa

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLENew West Indian Guide / Nieuwe…2023

  • Paths to Freedom

    Rosemary Brana-Shute, Randy J SparksBOOKPaths to Freedom2021

  • Money, Trade, and Power

    Jack P Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute et al.BOOKMoney, Trade, and Power2021

  • Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807–1896

    Open AccessSean M Kelley, Suzanne Schwarz et al.BOOKLiberated Africans and the…2020

    Interrogates the development of the world's first international courts of humanitarian justice and the subsequent "liberation" of nearly two hundred thousand Africans in the nineteenth century

  • Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896

    Richard Anderson, Henry B Lovejoy et al.BOOKLiberated Africans and the…2020

  • On the frontlines of slave trade abolition

    Randy J SparksARTICLEAtlantic Studies2020Cited by: 1References: 19

    This essay explores the careers of two British consuls on different sides of the globe, David Turnbull in Cuba and Lyons McLeod in Mozambique, both engaged in a long-running battle against the illegal slave trade. Consuls were often on the frontlines of efforts to police the trade, but they faced serious opposition from slave traders and government officials who often received bribes and kickbacks to turn a blind eye to the traffic. Far removed f…

  • The Peopling of an African Slave Port

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLEAlmanack2020References: 10

    Annamaboe, located on the Gold Coast in modern-day Ghana, was a sleepy Fante fishing village when Dutch traders arrived there in 1638. The arrival of the Europeans ushered Annamaboe into the Atlantic world and brought fundamental changes to the town's physical landscape, economic and cultural life, and literally to its DNA as Europeans and Africans formed relationships that gave rise to a substantial mixed-race population. Like other Atlantic tow…

  • Esteban

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLEJournal of American History2019Cited by: 1

    Esteban, one of the first Africans to explore North America, is deserving of scholarly reexamination, and Dennis Herrick, a journalist and popular historian, has taken up the task. Long a footnote in the history of the early sixteenth-century Narváez expedition and the Spanish exploration of what is today the southwestern United States, Esteban played a more important role in these expeditions than many scholars have understood or acknowledged. H…

  • Blind Justice

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLELaw and History Review2017Cited by: 4References: 22

    On March 2, 1807, President Thomas Jefferson signed a bill outlawing the African slave trade. Opponents of the traffic rejoiced that the bill was passed at almost the same time as a similar anti-slave-trade bill in Britain. As one Philadelphia newspaper put it, “Thus, will terminate, on the same day, in two countries of the civilized world, a traffic which has hitherto stained the history of all countries who made it a practice to deal in the bar…

  • Servants of Allah

    Randy J SparksARTICLEJournal of Islamic Studies2016

    The publication of a fifteenth-anniversary edition of Sylvanie Diouf’s Servants of Allah is a welcome reminder that the book remains as fresh today as when it was first published, and it offers an opportunity to consider what new research on the topic has added to our understanding of the Muslim presence among enslaved Africans in the Americas. The book was widely praised when it first appeared in 1998. Writing in the American Historical Review, …

  • Africans in the Old South

    Randy J SparksBOOKAfricans in the Old South2016Cited by: 1

    The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history, yet most of its stories are lost. Randy Sparks examines the few remaining reconstructed experiences of West Africans who lived in the South between 1740 and 1860. Their stories highlight the diversity of struggles that confronted every African who arrived on American shores

  • Zephaniah Kingsley and the Atlantic world

    Randy J Sparks, Randy SparksARTICLESlavery and Abolition2016

    Zephaniah Kingsley and the Atlantic world: slave trader, plantation owner, emancipator." Slavery & Abolition, 37(1), pp. 225–226

  • Diana Paton. The Cultural Politics of Obeah

    Randy J SparksARTICLEThe American Historical Review2016

    In her provocative and ambitious study The Cultural Politics of Obeah: Religion, Colonialism, and Modernity in the Caribbean World, Diana Paton explores the complex and varied meanings of obeah, an African-derived spiritual practice, in the social, cultural, and political life of the Anglo-Caribbean from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. She explores how that term has been applied and understood by Euro- and Afro-Caribbeans and wha…

  • Freedom's Debt

    Open AccessRandy J SparksARTICLENew West Indian Guide / Nieuwe…2016

    In Freedom's Debt, William Pettigrew analyzes "the ideas, the disputes, the compromises-in short, the politics-that established England's involvement in and later dominance of the transatlantic slave trade" (p.4).He does so through a focus on the Royal African Company, and a detailed examination of the long-running debates over monopoly versus free trade, debates that flared up frequently from the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries.…

  • Marcus Rediker. The Amistad Rebellion

    Randy J SparksARTICLEThe American Historical Review2015

    In his review of Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997), film critic Roger Ebert identified the film's chief weakness when he observed that “[i]t is too much about the law and not enough about the victims.” It is a shame that Spielberg did not have Marcus Rediker's moving account of the Amistad rebellion, which puts the focus where it always belonged: on the illegally enslaved Africans who rose up against their captors, won their freedom, and eventual…

  • Ambiguous Anniversary

    Randy J SparksARTICLEJournal of American History2015

  • Where the Negroes Are Masters

    Randy J SparksBOOKWhere the Negroes Are Masters2014

    Annamaboe--largest slave trading port on the Gold Coast--was home to wily African merchants whose partnerships with Europeans made the town an integral part of Atlantic webs of exchange. Randy Sparks recreates the outpost's feverish bustle and brutality, tracing the entrepreneurs, black and white, who thrived on a lucrative traffic in human beings.

  • Gold Coast Merchant Families, Pawning, and the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade

    Randy J SparksARTICLEThe William and Mary Quarterly2013Cited by: 6

  • American Sodom

    Open AccessRandy J Sparks, Randy SparksARTICLENuevo mundo mundos nuevos2007Cited by: 1

    In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faced critics ranging from members of the religious right who saw the storm as God's judgment on a sinful city, to politicians who condemned the city's free-wheeling lifestyle and history of political corruption. In the face of a disaster that resulted from improperly built levees, the residents of the beleaguered city were forced to defend their city's right to exist. This essay explores the roots of…

  • Murder at Montpelier

    Randy J Sparks, Douglas B ChambersARTICLEThe Journal of Southern History2006

  • The Slave Ship Fredensborg

    Randy J Sparks, Leif SvalesenARTICLEThe Journal of Southern History2003

  • Religion in Mississippi

    WAYNE FLYNT, Randy J SparksARTICLEThe Journal of Southern History2003

  • Religion in Mississippi

    Frederick A Bode, Randy J SparksARTICLEJournal of American History2002

    Recently, African American residents of Laurel, Mississippi, defended their fellow townsman, Charles Pickering, an outspoken conservative, against the opposition that his nomination to the federal court of appeals had aroused among national liberal organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Pickering enjoyed respect in the town as a good man who worked toward racial reconciliation. What weighed h…

  • Caribbean New Orleans

    Randy J Sparks

    In this pathbreaking study, Cecile Vida situates the history of New Orleans within the broader Caribbean and Atlantic worlds, and in her framing, the city becomes ‘a test case to analyze the expans