Biography and the Black Atlantic. Edited by Lisa A. Lindsay and John Wood Sweet (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 370 pp. $55.00

Abstract

This exceptional set of essays explores the “Black Atlantic” through biography. The volume is organized around particular life stories that illustrate the implications for interpreting the interconnected histories of Atlantic societies. Generally, these fine contributions raise issues of how to reconstruct biographies to determine their significance as individualized glimpses into patterns of history; responses to enslavement; and the quest for liberty, dignity, and meaning. Implicitly, biography is interdisciplinary because it draws on written and sometimes oral texts that have to be examined through the lens of literary criticism while explaining the context in terms of historical methodology. This volume addresses this dual orientation carefully and thoroughly. Suitably critiqued, it can help to propel the genre even further as a historical tool of analysis. The book is divided into twelve chapters and an afterword. A number of contributions summarize or extend earlier studies of individuals.One of the great achievements in this volume is the focus on the biographies of women, who are seldom seen or heard in the history of slavery, particularly those women who were enslaved in Africa. Jon Sensbach discusses the lives of Rebecca Rotten and Maria, the “Mooress,” both of whom were Moravians. Cassandra Pybus looks at Jane Thompson, who escaped to British forces in Virginia and ultimately found her way to Sierra Leone in 1791. Rebecca Scott and Jean-Michel Hébrard follow the path of Rosalie of the “Poulard Nation,” identified as Fulbe, during the era of the Haitian Revolution.Martin A. Klein provides a marvelous overview of African biographical studies, as well as an introduction to the problem of finding the voices of the enslaved; he gives particular attention to scholarship about slaves born in Africa that has often been overlooked. Sheryl Kroen uncovers the ideological underpinnings of Atlantic history through the British animated character “Robinson Charley,” who personified the “North Atlantic” community during World War II and the subsequent Cold War. João José Reis reconstructs the story of Manoel Joaquim Ricardo, who left Hausaland in 1806/7 and, after gaining his freedom in Brazil, became a wealthy merchant and slaveholder who traded in West Africa. Lloyd S. Kramer follows the path of David Dorr who traveled from North America to Europe during the 1850s. Similarly, Roquinaldo Ferreira studies Francisco Gomes, a merchant and colonial official in the Angolan seaport of Benguela, who in the early 1820s was accused of plotting a rebellion to free the colony from Portuguese rule. Gomes was born in Rio de Janeiro, possibly as a slave; in 1800, he was exiled to Benguela as a criminal.Inevitably, a few caveats are warranted in measuring the success of this volume. Vincent Carretta repeats his well-known arguments about the methodological issues concerning the reconstruction of the life of Gustavus Vassa, whom he prefers to call Olaudah Equiano without exploring whether the individual in question was known, or preferred to be known, by that name at the time. Unfortunately, his methodology does not take into account either recent research of others or previous criticisms of his own work. Lisa Lindsay examines the mythology of “tribal marks” in her investigation of James C. Vaughan’s Yoruba background without raising questions about the meaning of facial and body scarification and the inappropriate use of the term tribal in discussing its significance. Nor does Lindsay question the application of the ethnic name Yoruba in the context of Egba history and its relationship to the collapse of Oyo.Jane Landers applies ethnic terminology from the Americas, specifically Mandinga, to ethnicity in West Africa, where the term was not used, without fully comprehending the antiquity and centrality of Islam in the Senegambia region of West Africa. She does not explain who the “Muslim converts” were in the Gambia; in the early eighteenth century, Muslim identity in Senegambia had more to do with the emerging age of jihad than with matters involving conversion to Islam per se.Reis is incorrect in claiming that kola was made into a drink when it was chewed. He also overlooks the practice of murgu in West Africa in the “hiring out” of slaves in Bahia. His subject of study was not “probably” enslaved during jihad; no other explanation is even plausible. Like Landers and Scott/Hébrard, he fails to place jihad in its proper context. Hence, on the one hand, these explorations in life histories reveal interconnections within the trans-Atlantic world, but, on the other, they sometimes betray weaknesses in comprehending the historiography of Africa during the period of Atlantic slavery.