From Africa to the Americas: Ethnicity in the Early Black Communities of the Americas

Abstract

Any analysis of African cultural continuities in the Americas confronts certain methodological minefields. The first African slaves arrived with Cortés during the military invasion, and by 1640 perhaps as many as a hundred thousand had been enslaved in the colony. This chapter addresses the large question of the degree to which African-born slaves were able to reestablish and maintain ethnic ties and their ethnicity in the slave societies of the Americas. It argues that ethnicity informed spousal choices and that ethnic distinctions remained an important and enduring part of African life in the Americas. Marriage choices provide a window through which to examine the larger issues of ethnicity, identity, and ethnic continuities. The evidence is clear, however, that African slaves developed a network of social relationships as soon as demographic factors, the sex ratio, and chance facilitated it.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.