Moving in Circles: African and Black History in the Atlantic World

Abstract

The article examines the development of African diaspora history during the last fifty years. It outlines the move from a focus on African survivals to a focus on deep rooted cultural principles and back again to a revived interest in concrete cultural transfers from Africa to the Americas. This circular movement can be explained by a combination of elements characterizing African Atlantic and black Atlantic history. Among them is a lack of attention to questions of periodisation and change. Likewise, it has proven difficult to conceptualize Africa and America at one and the same time as characterized by cultural diversity and variation. Moreover, the field has been haunted by a tendency of moving to easily from descriptive evidence to conclusions about African identity in the Americas. A promising way to overcome these problems, it is suggested, is to develop research that focuses on single individuals and their Atlantic trajectories.