Working the Diaspora: the Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World
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Working the Diaspora: The impact of African labor on the Anglo-American World
In the book, Working the Diaspora: The impact of African labor on the Anglo-American World, Frederick C. Knight exercises his study of the labor and culture practices of Africans in the colonial period through the antebellum south period. The book states that from the sixteenth to early-nineteenth century, four times more Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. While this dissolved them of their freedom, it failed to destroy many of their cultural practices, which came with Africans to the New World. In Working the Diaspora, Frederick Knight examines work cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, from West and West Central Africa to British North America and the Caribbean.
In Chapter one, Material Life in West and West Central Africa, 1650-1800, the term and meaning of “material life” is introduced. The material life of Africans were the food they ate, the clothes they wore, the tools they used, the markets where they conducted trade, the cities they established, the dwellings they inhabited, and the household furnishings they possessed (Knight pg. 13). Their material life assessed their role in the New World plantation development. Although some Africans were being stripped of their liberty, the things that comprised of their culture followed them wherever they went. Africans do not view the earth and life as separate entities, therefore, care for the land was as important as breath. I believe this is something that benefited Anglo-Americans due to the need for agriculture.
This chapter goes on to raise questions such as: What was the nature of Africans during the slave trade? What was so significant about African material life over other regions of the world? What molded its development? This chapter also went in to detail about the social, political, and ideological structures through which West and West Central Africans conducted their material lives. Knight explains that both internal and external factors shaped West African trading networks during the Atlantic slave trade, and political decentralization was the most important internal factor. When the Songhay empire collapsed, many regions that traded with them were forced to shift trading to west Africa. The fact that the African trading system was referred to as the “vascular system” is what helps make them so significant over other regions.
The African vascular system was something like the modern USA military system, unstoppable, and one of a kind. There was a wide range of items being traded such as gold, salt, kola nuts, food, cloth, knives, polished beads, mirrors, pins, bangles, as well as slaves. Everything you can think of flowed through the vascular system and the currency also consisted of a wide variety of things. The different kinds of currencies included gold, cotton, iron bars, and cowry shells. Needless to say, Africans were highly experienced in trading and developing production , so when they were bought through the Atlantic slave trade they came with a wealth of knowledge.
In chapter two, Seeds of Change: African Agricultural Workers in the Anglo-American Colonies traces the history of West and West Central African agriculture during the Atlantic Slave trade years. This chapter also displayed the role that Africans had in food crop production in the British American colonies. Although Africans started off working next to Native Americans and Europeans, this quickly shifted and they became the central key for production. Knight explains that West and West Central Africans caught up in the slave trade used different production techniques, making decisions based off of the season, soil, crops, and climates. Again, the notation that Africans are bonded with the earth come into play. Africans lived from the earth so the fact that they could come up with highly creative ways to increase production is something that came along with the territory.
The fact that people can raise the question of What had African Americans