Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in
Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic
groups. Drawing on a wide range of materials in four languages as
well as on her lifetime study of slave groups in the New World,
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explores the persistence of African ethnic
identities among the enslaved over four hundred years of the
Atlantic slave trade.
Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by
large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the
fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough
cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared
culture. Hall concludes that recognition of the survival and
persistence of African ethnic identities can fundamentally reshape
how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved
Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways
shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the
elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced
regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.