Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

This year 2019 is 400-years since the first Africans landed in Jamestown, Virginia (1619-2019). Although many scholars and others have concluded that it marks the beginning of the enslavement of Africans in English North America, the historical documents do not support this conclusion. Few modern-day scholars and others have reviewed any historical manuscript from 400-year ago, and most look at 18th and 19th century records and draw conclusions about the early seventeenth century. The first Africans in Jamestown came from the Portuguese colony in Angola, they did not come directly from African kingdoms. In addition, they did not come from Elmina castle on the Gold Coast of modern-day Ghana. The Portuguese built Elmina in 1482 (10-years) before Columbus sailed to America. For the first 50-years the Portuguese transported captive Africans into Elmina and used them as human-porters to carry imported merchandise from Elmina to inland markets. Elmina did not initially ship enslaved people into bondage in European colonies. See my recent book, BEFORE MIDDLE PASSAGE: TRANSLATED PORTUGUESE MANUSCRIPTS OF ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADING FROM WEST AFRICA TO IBERIAN TERRITORIES, 1513-26, Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2015. The beginning of the Atlantic slave trade was very different from the way it ended..