Reviewed by Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter

This book is a rich collection of data on African ethnicities in the Americas, which Gwendolyn Midlo Hall has interpreted and presented in a scholarly manner and has attempted to put a face to the millions of African slaves who were shipped off to the Americas during slavery.

Hall begins the book with the "Truth and Reconciliation", similar to that of Nelson Mandela's attempt to heal a nation through reconciliation after the atrocities of Apartheid ended in South Africa. But Hall's truth and reconciliation is that of pulling free the covers on four centuries of slavery and baring the atrocities that occurred during that time where a set of people (Africans) were dragged across thousands of miles of water with only the memories of what their lives were before being forced to build an empire of wealth for the Europeans.

According to Hall, "This history is much more than a burden of the past. It has mutated into the present in new forms. Its victims cannot be blamed or ignored."

Hall challenges what she says is the still widely held belief among scholars as well as the general public that Africans were so fragmented when they arrived in the Western Hemisphere that specific regions and ethnicities had little influence on particular regions in the Americas. She does this by carrying the reader before the Atlantic Slave trade to medieval Spain and Portugal where slavery was aimed at people of light skin.

Hall then plunged into the "old" debate that slavery existed in Africa, long before the African lave Trade. She noted that much has not changed since the eminent Historian, W.E.B. Du Bois lamented about the state of denial and the high level of rationalisation that existed among historians of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. She said that today several historians are still forwarding this argument. She, however, emphatically stated that while slavery existed, it was not as vicious and brutal as the African Slave Trade.

Meat of the matter

Having said that, Hall moves the book along to the "meat of the matter" that of introducing these African slaves to the reader. Many of these enslaved Africans, according to Hall were blacksmiths, metallurgists, toolmakers, sculptors and engravers, silversmiths and goldsmiths, tanners, shoemakers and saddle-makers.

But Hall goes further than that. She identified the ethnicities of these enslaved Africans by where they came from and where they were transported to. She, however, noted her difficulty in doing so.

She notes, "Several ethnicities from West Central Africa recorded in significant numbers were not listed simply as Kongo or Angolan; they were, instead, listed as Mungola in Jamaica, Monjolo in Brazil, Mandongo in Louisiana and Cuba, and Mondongue in St. Domingue."

Hall, however, dealt with the ethnicities of enslaved Africans by regions in four chapters. In chapter three of the book, "The Clustering of African Ethnicities in the Americas", Hall highlights the areas where these enslaved Africans came from such as, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast before the 1650. After 1650, from the Greater Senegambia and west central Africa. The Bight of Benin was also a source for Africans for the Spanish Louisiana and along the Mississippi and New Orleans and the Caribbean.

Chapter Four of the book, "Greater Senegambia/Upper Guinea" challenges the prevailing wisdom among historians who minimize the demographic and cultural contribution of peoples from Greater Senegambia to many regions in the Americas.

The last three chapters of the book, Hall looked at Africans brought from the Lower Guinea, which include the Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast and Bight of Benin; the Bight of Biafra and the Bantulands.

Diverse languages

In Lower Guinea, Hall notes that there were a diverse languages spoken in these regions. For example, the broad Kwa language group was widely spoken among most of its peoples, but that there were also other language groups such as the Akan languages, mainly Twi, which predominated in the Gold Coast and spilled over into the ivory Coast to the west and into the Slave Coast to the east. Gbe languages and Yoruba were most widely spoken in the Slave Coast.

Hall concludes the book by noting that despite the difficulties of identifying African ethnic designations, these ethnic descriptions are key evidence linking Africans in Africa with Africans in the Americas.

Overall, this book is a good read and is rich in information on the ethnicity of African slaves brought to the Americans. The work reflects detailed research, which spans some 20 years. It also delivers what it promises to the reader. It is also a good source for history students studying African history and ethnicity in the Americas.