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The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown |
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The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
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by Tim Hashaw
Sales Rank: 266247
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Discount: 45 %
List Price: $26.95
$19.67
At Amazon
on 6-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 336 pages
Published by: Carroll & Graf; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition February 15, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0786717181
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0786717187
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
Weighs: 9.6 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Hashaw (Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle for Mixed America) offers a welcome variation on early America and the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown. Historians have long known that Africans first appeared in the Virginia record in 1619. Hashaw traces those first black Virginians back to Portuguese Angola: they were captives on a Spanish slave ship, which was attacked by two pirate vessels that eventually transported sixty or so Africans to Virginia and Bermuda. Hashaw recreates the lives some of these early African Virginians made for themselves: Benjamin Doll purchased six indentured English servants, became a plantation owner, learned to read and write, and was appointed by a white widow to serve as her attorney. Another eventually purchased African slaves. Perhaps straining to find a partially happy ending to the tragic first scene in the history of American racial slavery, Hashaw notes that Angolan Virginians participated in Bacon's Rebellion, and he suggests that the 1676 revolt was the first expression of a fighting spirit that culminated in abolition. Hashaw offers both an exciting story of crime on the high seas and a fascinating social history of 17th-century black America. Illus., maps. (Feb. 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Perhaps the most fateful year in black American history was 1619, when the first recorded shipment of enslaved Africans landed at Jamestown. Hashaw greatly expands on the central facts encountered in textbooks to connect the unwilling arrivals to their homeland, Angola, and to the financial and political affairs of England's Virginia Company. Hashaw also explores the subsequent lives of these Africans and their immediate descendants, many known by name from traces of their legal affairs as semifree traders and farmers; the shackles of outright chattel Slavery took several decades to be applied in Virginia, and never without resistance. Following a description of Angola's constellation of powers in the early 1600s--the Portuguese and African allies on the coast versus Bantu kingdoms in the interior--Hashaw details the seizure of the Jamestown Angolans from a Spanish slave ship by English ships. Whether this was piracy or legal privateering provoked conflict in London, which Hashaw contends had ramifications on other English colonizing projects. Notable in itself, Hashaw's history gains traction in this 400th anniversary year of Jamestown's founding. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
This book is excellent for 1) putting the arrival of Africans at Jamestown in context both in European (English, Spanish and Portuguese) politics of the time, and 2) giving in great detail the political, social and economic situation of the Angolan kingdom whence these Africans originated. The activities of the Spanish ambassador to the court of King James is enjoyable diplomatic intrigue; the relation of James to Africa is convincing and should be part of literary studies of Ben Jonson's work. I was amazed to learn that many of the enslaved Africans had Christian backgrounds of several generations, and familiarity with European languages and customs, resulting from Portuguese colonization and missionary activities for more than a century prior. Hashaw does himself credit in showing the similarities and differences in the political and military activities and alliances of these African and European rulers and aristocracies. In addition, he shows in great detail the identities, activities and onward movements of these Africans and their descendents (who are normally anonymous figures in standard histories), and gives credible evidence on the origin of the Melungeon families of Appalachia, and insight into the contributions of Africans to cattle herding and to agricultural success in the Americas. A real page-turner -- a riveting and enlightening account that makes fresh some once-stale facts from your obligatory American history class.
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The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
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