What is it about?
This article explains how African victims of the Middle Passage appropriated Enlightenment, revolutionary, Christian, and Muslim ideology to attack transatlantic slavery. Over two hundred published accounts by Africans were assessed. Not all had the opportunity to attack slavery for a number of reasons, but a large number who were able did just that.
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Why is it important?
The number of published accounts by Africans enslaved in the transatlantic slave trade is much larger than scholars realize. This article is the first to assess such a large number of African voices and thus validate the impressionistic view that Africans appropriated revolutionary ideology to attack slavery. Further, with such a larger number of accounts investigated it shows the breadth and depth of African appropriation of numerous important ideologies during the Age of Revolutions in order to attack transatlantic slavery.
Perspectives
Since finalizing this essay the number of published African narratives I have collected has grown to nearly five hundred. This essay is the first of many in which I will assess various questions about Africans in transatlantic slavery based on this large corpus of published accounts. I am also co-editing a catalog with complete bibliographic information on these Africans and a print history of their texts. The Catalog will appear soon in book form, followed by digitization with free online access, including a search function and links to all texts.
Distinguished Research Professor Aaron Spencer Fogleman
Northern Illinois University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ideologies of the Age of Revolution and Emancipation in Enslaved African Narratives, July 2020, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003088127-11.
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