Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora

This edited volume, the result of papers delivered at the 1999 Bantu into Black conference, represents an important contribution to African diaspora studies. It seeks to correct the lingering imbalance between the study of West Africa’s impact on New World cultures and the significance of Central Africa as an anchor site of diasporic formation. Scholars tend to stress Yoruba roots over Central African ones in the study of religion and culture. Since nearly half of all slaves that crossed the Atlantic hailed from Central Africa, a new appreciation of this population’s impact is warranted. While the work of scholars like John Thornton, Winifred Vass, Stuart Schwartz, Robert Farris Thompson, Mary Karasch, and others have made significant advances in our knowledge of Central African contributions, there is more to be done. In colonial Brazil, for example, we are just beginning to unravel the social, political, and religious contributions of slaves from the Angola-Kongo regions. And in Haiti, key cultural and religious manifestations such as Vodou are only starting to be studied in light of Kongo influences.This book is tightly interconnected in its presentation and analysis—a rare achievement for edited collections—and many essays refreshingly build upon each other’s research and insights. One of the key concepts developed throughout the text is that Central African contributions in the New World may have come about more subtly than West African ones. The Kongo kingdom, for example, became Christian in the sixteenth century. While it retained certain aspects of traditional religion, it also adopted and adapted European cosmologies in ways that eventually allowed for deep interpenetration into Catholic cultural environments in the New World. Expressions of popular Catholicism and the integration of Catholic religious references in Vodou have been seen as a “superficial veil behind which Haitians obstinately continued to practice their true African religions” (p. 245). An understanding of the broader history of Kongo religion casts doubt on this assumption. Given that between 1760 and 1860 few Catholic priests resided in Haiti and that over half of plantation laborers during the closing decades of the eighteenth century came from Central Africa, does it not make more sense to understand Haitian religious practices in light of Christianized Kongo traditions?The essays emphasize hybridity. Linda Heywood’s chapter does a fine job of exploring the impact of African-Portuguese creole culture on the worldview of slaves prior to their departure for the Americas. Combined with Joseph Miller and John Thornton’s essays, we arrive at a richly nuanced understanding of changes taking place in Africa that would become manifest in the New World. The remaining authors expertly pull the traces of Central African culture into various regional settings in the Americas. The authors are less effective in demonstrating how Central African culture blended with that of other African groups to create Black diasporic culture.The book’s first part introduces the demographic and sociocultural landscape of Central Africa, neatly and succinctly addressing many of the major advances and debates regarding Central African historiography. Its accessibility and detailed maps will prove immensely useful for scholars unfamiliar with the region. The second section deals with Brazil. Mary Karasch provides a fine demographic survey of Central African slaves in Goiás, as well as a convincing argument about their ability to retain Central African historical traditions. Elizabeth Kiddy follows with a detailed account of the history of the Reis Congos and their roles in maroon resistance and Brazil’s confraternities. She argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century the Congo Kings were transformed from ethnically specific cultural representations into symbols of a broader Brazilian-ness. In the final chapter of this section, Robert Slenes interprets a fascinating microhistorical event—the obscure “Porpoise-Skull Strike”—to show how one can tease from such a minor episode a hitherto unknown Central African cultural universe.The book’s third section contains three masterful essays on Central African expressions in Haitian religion. And Jane Landers’s essay on maroons in Spanish America offers a splendid panoramic contribution, sweeping through Florida, Cuba, New Spain, Santo Domingo, and Colombia and skillfully employing archival and archaeological research to convey the maroons’ Congolese heritage. However, the major shortcoming of the book is that Landers’s essay stands alone in dealing with the Spanish-speaking Americas. We would like to know, for instance, more about Central African influences on Cuban religious practices and see more evidence regarding Central Africans in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia.The fourth section begins to address some of the remaining silences—both chronological and regional. Monica Schuler’s striking essay uses oral history and archival evidence to examine the impact of nineteenth-century freedmen on local Guyanese society and memory and addresses the re-Africanization of Guyana’s creole culture. The last two essays explore the Central African presence in the United States, Brazil, and Martinique.No one book can attempt to do everything, and Central Africans and Cultural Transformations is no less valuable because of its silences. The book’s strengths clearly lie in demographic and cultural history. While it is a powerful contribution to the literature and is sure to become widely adopted in many undergraduate and graduate courses, it ultimately raises as many questions as it answers. The book left me wondering just how deeply the Central African tradition affected the New World in its entirety, especially in areas where the modern-day presence of blacks is less prominent

Archaeology · Bantu languages · Colonialism · Diaspora · Ethnology · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Yoruba · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law

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