Donald A. Yerxa, ed. Recent Themes in the History of Africa and the Atlantic World: Historians in Conversation. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. 2008. 128p.

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In 1963, Hugh Trevor-Roper dismissed the idea of an African history, let alone that of the Atlantic world, stating, “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europe in Africa.”[1] Such a dismissive remark would be absurd if made today because of the inundation of scholarships produced in recent years on Africa and on the Atlantic world. Now we can all call ourselves Africanists or Atlanticists, or so it appears, as the history of Africa and Atlantic world have become the subjects of interest among scholars of the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, and Western Europe. Indeed, African and Atlantic histories have taken an important place in recent historiographical developments and there is no challenging of this fact, yet there remains an important question, “how adequately the history of Africa is being integrated into world history. And when the attempt is made, does the African past get flattened out, as Patrick Manning notes, with single, civilization-wide generalizations.”[2]

The need to conceptualize Africa’s place in world history and address other pressing questions about the Atlantic world, is what resulted in Donald Yerxa’s book under review here. The book is a compilation of academic debates drawn from Historically Speaking and written by outstanding African, Atlantic, and world historians who have investigated the links between Africa and the rest world, particularly the Atlantic world, and reviewed the growing field of Atlantic history. The book is simply as the subtitle suggests—historians in conversation. The various works have been thoroughly researched, presented in a lively argument and counter-argument approach, and touches on several issues that contribute to a better understanding of Africa’s elusive past. The state of the field of Atlantic history, the principal theories in the field, and the nature of academic contestations regarding the spirited Olaudah Equiano, are some of the themes the contributors situate in the context of colonialism.

The African past is perhaps the only past in world history that is compressed and interpreted within frameworks of other historical pasts to such an extent that it leaves Africans without their own history. Joseph C. Miller takes this challenge on by arguing for an alternative approach, a “multicentric” world history that accentuates the African past on its own terms. Miller argues that if we see African history in world history through the lens of European or Asian standards we hold the African past in intellectual oppression (14-17). Eight historians respond to Miller’s thesis, and indeed, their counter-theses signify a lot. The exchanges indicate how historians are wrestling with the important conceptualizations and the complexities in world history. Patrick Manning, for instance, argues that while “multicentrism” is essential for writing Africa into world history, doing so “does not resolve problems in interpreting the world and Africa’s place in it. Instead, they reveal further complexity,” (26).

As the debate on Africa’s proper place in world history continues, that of the growing field of Atlantic history takes on a life of its own. One of the prominent scholars in the field, Bernard Bailyn, has cautioned against understanding Atlantic history as “the aggregate of four or five discrete European histories together with the regional histories of the native peoples of West Africa and America,” (76-77). Against Bailyn’s argument, Trevor Burnard argues that the “principal theme of Atlantic history is that from the fifteenth century to the present, the Atlantic world was not just a physical fact but a particular zone of exchange and interchange, circulation, and transmission,” (76). Hence, we must view the various component parts of Atlantic history as “additives” to the making of the Atlantic world.

What Atlantic history conversation goes without a reflection on one of the most prominent figures of the field, Olaudah Equiano? In Atlantic history, Equiano’s narration of his life as an enslaved person has often been used as the reference point for the horrors of the “Middle Passage” as well as with life in eighteenth century North American and West Africa. Vincent Carretta opens the discussion with the observation that Equiano was “a central figure in the reconstruction of Atlantic history, and to our understanding of the Atlantic world” (81). Yet, he questions, what if Equiano was actually born in South Carolina and had fabricated his African identity, (83-84)? Although Carretta notes that Equiano was “an Atlantic Creole whose life and writings demonstrate the challenges and opportunities of the Atlantic world,” he concludes Equiano probably fabricated his story; hence, there is the need for re-examination in the way historians interpret and use Equiano’s autobiography (90). Paul Lovejoy, Trevor Burnard, and Jon Sensbach disagree with Carretta’s assessment that Equiano lied about his identity; pointing out that the document, which Carretta based his argument on cannot be authenticated.

Although originally intended as a course companion for students of African and African Diasporic history, world history, and Atlantic history, this book will undoubtedly appeal to the intellectual response of scholars in various academic areas, particularly those interested in race and identity formation. It also holds a real treasure in historical analysis by providing in a single volume not only arguments and counter-arguments, but also opportunity for the proponents of the arguments to respond to the counter-arguments.

Notes

Sandra Amponsah
University of Texas at Austin