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    Middle Passage Theme

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    Jon Vogt
    This summary provides an overview of a book review of James Campbell's book "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005". The book is a historical narrative about migrations of African Americans to Africa driven by their quest to define their relationship to Africa, their ancestral home. It examines early passages to Africa, including one in 1787 that established Sierra Leone and another in 1791 that established Freetown with the arrival of former American slaves from Nova Scotia who had fought for the British. The review praises Campbell's understanding of history and ability to weave a compelling story around African Americans' efforts to reconcile their rejection in America with their longing for Africa.

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    Middle Passage Theme

    Uploaded by

    Jon Vogt
    160 views2 pages
    This summary provides an overview of a book review of James Campbell's book "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005". The book is a historical narrative about migrations of African Americans to Africa driven by their quest to define their relationship to Africa, their ancestral home. It examines early passages to Africa, including one in 1787 that established Sierra Leone and another in 1791 that established Freetown with the arrival of former American slaves from Nova Scotia who had fought for the British. The review praises Campbell's understanding of history and ability to weave a compelling story around African Americans' efforts to reconcile their rejection in America with their longing for Africa.

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    A quick overview of the Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

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    This summary provides an overview of a book review of James Campbell's book "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005". The book is a historical narrative about migrations of African Americans to Africa driven by their quest to define their relationship to Africa, their ancestral home. It examines early passages to Africa, including one in 1787 that established Sierra Leone and another in 1791 that established Freetown with the arrival of former American slaves from Nova Scotia who had fought for the British. The review praises Campbell's understanding of history and ability to weave a compelling story around African Americans' efforts to reconcile their rejection in America with their longing for Africa.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    160 views2 pages

    Middle Passage Theme

    Uploaded by

    Jon Vogt
    This summary provides an overview of a book review of James Campbell's book "Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005". The book is a historical narrative about migrations of African Americans to Africa driven by their quest to define their relationship to Africa, their ancestral home. It examines early passages to Africa, including one in 1787 that established Sierra Leone and another in 1791 that established Freetown with the arrival of former American slaves from Nova Scotia who had fought for the British. The review praises Campbell's understanding of history and ability to weave a compelling story around African Americans' efforts to reconcile their rejection in America with their longing for Africa.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005

    By Allen, William E.
    Academic journal article from The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2
    Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005. By James Campbell. New York:
    The Penguin Press, 2006. Pp. xi, 513; 29 images, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.
    James Campbell has written a superb historical narrative about migrations of African Americans to
    Africa. All the voyagers were ultimately driven by the quest to define their relationship to Africa, the
    ancestral home that nurtured, and yet, cast them away into the barbarity of Atlantic slavery. African
    American poet Countee Cullen succulently expressed this dilemma when he asked "What is Africa to
    me?" However, Campbell contends, African Americans often attempted to define their relationship to
    Africa during periods of utter rejection in the United States. Thus, when blacks inquired "What is
    Africa to me?" they were in the first place uncertain about their position in American society; in other
    words, they also asked "What is America to me?" Campbell's book is a potent story of African
    Americans' endeavor to reconcile this predicament: contempt in America and longing attachment to
    the ancestry that once abandoned them.
    Campbell shows remarkable understanding of American and African history and his familiarity with
    the subject enables him to weave a compelling story. The Prologue and Chapter 1 open with the
    slave trade, two notable voyages to Africa, and a number of historic ironies. In the Prologue,
    Campbell introduces Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a West African from an influential Fulani family, who
    was abducted by neighboring Mandinka traders in 1730, enslaved in the New World, and freed in
    1734 through a set of fortunate circumstances. Campbell uses the kidnapping of Ayuba to broach a
    controversy in transatlantic history: culpability. He points to Ayuba and his captors as proof of
    Africa's guilt in the atrocious trade in human cargo. But Campbell argues that responsibility does not
    end here. It was the insatiable demand for plantation slaves in the New World that prompted a
    relatively small but powerful African elite like Ayuba's family to participate in what was obviously a
    lucrative venture. Moreover, Ayuba's gun, seized by his abductors, was among millions of European

    firearms exported to Africa to sustain the slave trade: warfare and kidnapping constituted the
    leading source of slaves. Finally, Ayuba's story debunks a common fallacy about African slavery,
    namely, that Africans sold their kinfolk into slavery. Campbell shows that Ayuba was captured by
    Mandinka men, not Fulani. Similarly, slave traders generally enslaved captives from outside their
    ethnic group. This was easy to do, considering the multitude of diverse ethnicities or "Africans," as
    Europeans conveniently tagged the disparate peoples.
    In Chapter 1, Campbell examines the early passages to Africa. The first was sponsored by English
    humanitarians in 1787 and led to the founding of Sierra Leone by immigrants of African descent
    residing in the slums of London. The new colony, Granville Town, struggled to survive and was
    eventually incinerated by a disgruntled local chief. A new town called Freetown was established,
    following the arrival in 1791 of the Nova Scotians, former American slaves who had fought alongside
    the British during the American Revolutionary War in return for their freedom. Settled in Nova Scotia,
    Canada, the erstwhile slaves were scorned by local whites. The British finally repatriated them to
    Sierra Leone. Here Campbell creates a breathtaking tension in the story. John Gordon, a Nova
    Scotian, encountered the person who had originally

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