Reversing Sail
A History of the African Diaspora

Captures the essential political, cultural, social, and economic developments that shaped the black experience.

Michael A. Gomez (Author)

9781108712439, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 October 2019

312 pages, 30 b/w illus. 8 maps
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.54 kg

'Reversing Sail will endure as the most competent book to introduce generations of students to what we now characterize as the African diaspora, as well as yielding considerable knowledge on the Indian Ocean, the Black Atlantic, Atlantic History, and World History.' Toyin Falola, Frances and Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas, Austin

Beginning with antiquity, Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora captures the essential political, cultural, social, and economic developments that shaped the black experience. In this second edition, Michael A. Gomez updates the text to include the most recent research on the African Diaspora. Continuing to pay particular attention to the lives of the working classes, the second edition expands its temporal boundaries to include developments into the twenty-first century, as well as integrating women and feminist perspectives more thoroughly. It also widens the geographical span to include Latin America, while incorporating more on African experiences in Europe, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf. Assessing the impact of religion, global trade, slavery and resistance, and the challenges of modernity, this edition further connects the experiences of Africans and their descendants over time and space, attending to both convergences and divergences, while explaining how the deep past informs subsequent developments.

Part I. 'Old' World Dimensions and the First Wave: 1. Antiquity
2. Africans and the Bible
3. Africans and the Islamic World
Part II. 'New' World Realities and Diaspora's Second Wave (to 1945): 4. Transatlantic moment and the dawn of modernity
5. Enslavement
6. Asserting the right to be
7. Reconnecting
Part III. Empire's Dismantling and the Third Wave (since 1945): 8. Movement people
9. Global Africa in the era of Mandela and Obama
Epilogue
Index.

Subject Areas: Migration, immigration & emigration [JFFN], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], African history [HBJH]