Liquid Motion: Reimaging Maritime History through an African Lens

Abstract

“Liquid Motion” examines how African women and men perceived, understood, and interacted with oceans and rivers through swimming, underwater diving, surfing, canoe-making, and canoeing. Africans inspire us to rethink assumptions about maritime history, by considering maritime traditions absent in the Western lexicon, like harnessing wave energy to transport goods through the surf or swimming into the depths to salvage goods from shipwrecks or harvest pearl oysters. Enslaved Africans carried these traditions to the Americas, where they used them to benefit their exploited lives and enslavers exploited them to generate wealth.