AFRICAN FOUNDERS

A highly valuable new study of African Americans as vital “agents of change in the early history of the United States.”

In his latest sweeping, scholarly history, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Fischer delivers an exhaustive, multidimensional work about the waves of enslaved Africans brought forcibly to America and how their cultural elements interacted with White-controlled society to create a variety of unique American regions. Skillfully delineating background stories and autobiographical details that were often lost or erased—where they came from, what languages they spoke, and the cultural and spiritual beliefs they brought with them—Fischer makes excellent use of primary sources such as slave narratives and records of resistance movements as well as recent advances in online databases. “For the history of African slavery in America,” he writes, “the leading example is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a major project of quantitative research, with free and open digital access to all who wish to use it.” In addition to archival research, Fischer clearly demonstrates “the importance of going there”—i.e., traveling to the places he discusses, including the port of Anomabu, on the Gold Coast, a significant source of enslaved labor during the 18th century. From the first Puritan colonies to the Hudson Valley and New York City to the Delaware Valley, Chesapeake Virginia and Maryland, the coastal Carolinas and Georgia, Louisiana, and throughout the Gulf Coast, Fischer thoroughly examines the regional cultural melding of White communities (British, Dutch, Scots-Irish, etc.) with clusters of diverse enslaved Africans. The author chronicles many examples of notable personages, such as authors, spiritual leaders, and highly skilled artisans. He also deftly tracks insurgencies, which were often followed by punishment and further repression; literacy as a form of resistance; and the origins of “hyphenated ethnicity,” which, “in its many applications…greatly enlarged the idea of America itself” and “was put to work in many other nations of increasing diversity.”

A tour de force of fascinating, multilayered research that adds significantly to the literature on the early republic.