1

An Analysis of the Role of the Study of the African Diaspora within the
Field of Atlantic History

Nathaniel Millett

Department of History, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri

Abstract: This article is a quantitative study of the percentage of recent Atlantic World
scholarship that focuses on the African Diaspora. This is accomplished by analyzing monograph,
article, and PhD dissertation production in the fields of Atlantic and African Diaspora history.
The article begins with an overview of the origins of Atlantic History and African Diaspora
History and concludes with some thoughts on what the data reveals for both fields.

Bio: Nathaniel Millett is an assistant professor of history at Saint Louis University. He received
his PhD from Cambridge University and his bachelors degree from the University of Edinburgh.
His primary interests are the history of the Atlantic World and Borderlands of colonial and
Revolutionary North America with special attention to African American and Native American
history.

Keywords: Atlantic studies; African diaspora; comparative history

Email: nmillet1@slu.edu
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Introduction, Definitions, and Challenges

One of the most remarkable and pronounced recent developments in historical scholarship has
been the emergence of Atlantic History as a clearly defined and distinct mode of historical
inquiry. In the past few decades scholars from across the globe have written and presented works
of the highest caliber that seek to integrate the histories of Europe, Africa, and the Americas
from a vantage point that transcends the traditional narrative of the nation state and prizes human
connections above all else. Likewise there are now journals, seminars, book series, textbooks,
conferences, internet discussion forums, awards for both funding and scholarly achievement, and
degree programs that are solely devoted to Atlantic History.
Self consciously defined works of Atlantic social, cultural, economic, military, and
political history have tended to fall into one of David Armitage’s three useful categories of
“Circum-Atlantic History,” “Trans-Atlantic History,” or “Cis-Atlantic History.”1 Briefly
examining these three categories helps to clarify the more general definition of Atlantic history.
According to Armitage, Circum-Atlantic History is “the transnational history of the Atlantic
World” or a history that attempts to tell a story set to the backdrop of the entire Atlantic littoral.
For example an economic history of Portugal’s empire and its effects on the lives of people in
Portugal, West Africa, and Brazil could be described as “Circum-Atlantic” in its scope. Trans-
Atlantic history is the “international history of the Atlantic World” that frequently compares two
or more things that are related by their proximity to the Atlantic. A comparative history of slave
rebellion in South Carolina and Jamaica would fit Armitage’s definition of “Trans-Atlantic
History.” And finally Cis-Atlantic History is a “national or regional history within an Atlantic
context” that examines things in their own right as uniquely constituent parts of the broader
Atlantic World. For example a case study of seventeenth century Virginia and its relationship
with the Atlantic World would qualify as “Cis-Atlantic History.” Whether they are macro, micro,
or comparative, each of these approaches emphasizes the lived experience of inhabitants of a
world defined by its relationship to the Atlantic Ocean.
Atlantic History is not without its critics. Some critics contend that this is an artificial
construction that does not accurately reflect the world view of contemporaries or that,
essentially, nothing vaguely resembling an Atlantic World existed. Furthermore these critics
 3
contend that peoples’ lives were highly localized and that they were only nominally, if at all,
affected by realities elsewhere on the Atlantic Ocean and if they were it was not in a way that
was systematic or defining. In fact, historians have correctly argued that for much of the Early
Modern Period, people living near the Atlantic did not conceptualize of it as a large ocean, but
rather a series of smaller seas and bodies of water of which they were only familiar with the one
closest to their homes. Other critics, while grudgingly conceding that something resembling an
Atlantic World probably existed, argue that the Atlantic Ocean is simply too large a geographic
entity to allow for meaningful analysis. They suggest that it is simply unfeasible to master the
necessary literature and to perform the required archival work to write history that is truly
Atlantic in scope. Conversely, voices can be heard which argue that a more fruitful approach
would be to adopt a truly global perspective. These critics see merit in an Atlantic approach, but
feel that it only tells part of a story and fails to fully appreciate the global realities of peoples’
lives. There are skeptics that argue that despite its lofty goals and high ideals, that Atlantic
History is little more than a 21st century version of the traditional Western Civilizations narrative
that is a politically correct retelling of European expansion and domination of large portions of
the globe. And finally some individual works have been criticized for advertising themselves as
works of Atlantic History when, on closer inspection, they have little to do with the Atlantic
World.2 Regardless of definitions and criticisms, Atlantic History is one of the most dynamic
fields of historical research and is reshaping many traditional views of history.
By the very definition of the field, Africa, Africans abroad, and people of African
ancestry factor prominently in many works of Atlantic History. The scale and scope of early
modern empires, which allowed for the emergence of the Atlantic World, were made possible by
an immense contribution by Africa and Africans that was unrivaled in human terms.
Subsequently, Africa and Africans made an indelible contribution to the economies, societies,
and cultures of the Atlantic World. Few serious Atlantic historians, regardless of their area of
expertise, would question the role played by Africans and their descendants in creating and
sustaining the Atlantic World even if this contribution was most frequently made in the context
of slavery. In fact because of the very nature of Atlantic History that de-emphasizes the
traditional narrative of the nation state, embraces human contacts, and seeks to draw connections
between broad and often far-flung phenomena, its practitioners, many of whom are progressive
 4
in outlook, have been particularly quick and enthusiastic in their recognition of the role of
Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic World. Because of this, the study of the African
Diaspora and/or the Black Atlantic have emerged both alongside and as vital components of
Atlantic History in ways that prior attempts to more fully integrate Africa and its Diaspora into
the history of Europe or the West failed to fully achieve.3 With this in mind, the essay seeks to
quantify what role the study of the African Diaspora plays within the field of Atlantic History at
present. To accomplish this, the essay is organized around a quantitative analysis of the
percentage of Atlantic Historical scholarship that is primarily focused on the study of Africans
and their descendants over the decade spanning 1997 to 2006; the closest ten year period with a
full amount of data. Through the examination of three areas of scholarly writing (monographs,
articles, and PhD dissertations ) I will seek to demonstrate the present role that the study of the
African Diaspora plays within the broader field of Atlantic Historical scholarship and then draw
a number of conclusions based on the results.

Genealogies

It is important to begin by considering the genealogies of these two intertwined fields. The
origins of Atlantic History are generally traced to the era of the Second World War and its
immediate aftermath. 4 Bernard Bailyn, who has done as much as any scholar in defining and
developing the field of Atlantic History as well as analyzing its origins, has argued that as the
Second World War gave way to the Cold War a number of Western journalists (most notably
Walter Lippmann and Forrest Davis) and intellectuals began to suggest that the nations of the
North Atlantic were linked by a common history and culture. This common history and culture
were Judeo-Christian, liberal, and democratic and stood in stark contrast to the Soviet Union.
Furthermore these intellectual assumptions were reinforced by the increasingly stark grouping of
nations as the Cold War hardened behind organizations like NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
Quickly historians on both sides of the Atlantic, who were influenced by these developments,
began to produce the first works of what would become Atlantic History. Examples of such
scholarship include: Jacques Godechot, Histoire de l’ Atlantique (1947), Michael Kraus, Atlantic
 5
Civilization: Eighteenth-Century Origins (1949), Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Seville et
l’Atlantique (1955-1959), and R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959-
1963).5 (Throughout the essay, in each set of examples I have chosen works that examine
different topics and fields of history by adopting approaches that are variously Cis-Atlantic,
Circum-Atlantic, and Trans-Atlantic as a means to emphasize the vitality and scope of the
Atlantic History.) These early forays into Atlantic History were, in many ways, extensions of a
traditional Western Civilizations model that now incorporated European colonies on the other
side of the North Atlantic. During the next two decades, with the expansion of the historical
profession, growing methodological advances, and diversifying interests in the face of the Civil
Rights Movement, Women’s Rights Movement, Anti-Colonial Movements, and more general
shifts in political ideology, Atlantic History began to expand by leaps and bounds. Works such as
Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
(1972), Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (1973), John Elliott, The Old and New
World, 1492-1650 (1970), Charles Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (1970),
and J.H. Parry, The Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement (1963) are just a
small sampling of a growing field. Interestingly, as will be discussed later, at this point, scholars
working on the history of Africans and slavery were, in fact, the most likely historians to be
adopting an Atlantic model of inquiry.
Atlantic History was certainly developing in scope, scale, and sophistication during the
1960s and 1970s, as a number of very talented historians produced works of social, cultural,
economic, military, and political history that were Atlantic in size and methodology and largely
escaped the traditionally accepted narrative of European expansion. However it was during the
1980s and, especially, the 1990s that the field truly exploded onto the consciousness of the
historical profession in a wave of books, articles, panels, degrees, prizes, and centers. One of the
hallmarks of this outpouring of scholarship has been its methodological, topical, and regional
diversity as well as its sophistication and quality. A mere sampling of monographs from this
period including: D.W. Meining, Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (1986), Nicholas Canny and
Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (1989), Lester
Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution (1996), Colin Colloway, New Worlds for All:
 6
Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (1998), Alison Games, Migration and
the Origins of the English Atlantic World (1999), Eliga Gould, The Persistence of Empire:
British Political Culture in the Age of Revolution (2000), and John Elliott, Empires of the
Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America: 1492-1830 (2007) demonstrates the vitality of the
field.
The study of the African Diaspora, if not the term,6 predates Atlantic History by nearly a
half century. The patriarch of the field is undoubtedly W.E.B. DuBois whose 1896 Suppression
of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 was an Atlantic approach
to the study of Africans and their descendents. DuBois, who was an incredibly prolific scholar,
was soon joined by the equally prolific Carter Woodson who, as the founder of the Journal of
Negro History in 1916, created a forum for scholarship that frequently focused on the African
Diaspora. These two men were vital in the creation of the field of the Black Diaspora and
established a very high standard of scholarship. Equally important and trend setting was the fact
that both men were activists and sought, through their scholarship, to correct injustices and
enhance the lives of African-Americans. These two scholars were also at the forefront of arguing
for the historical agency of Africans and Afro-Americans in shaping the world around them in
the face of an historical profession that overwhelmingly believed that they were passive actors
that were unwittingly subjected to forces beyond their control. Thus from its earliest beginnings,
the study of the Black Diaspora had a more overtly polemical and activist tone than many other
fields of Atlantic History that emphasized the agency of Africans and Afro-Americans.
The years of the 1930s through the 1950s saw a host of able and frequently
interdisciplinary scholars begin to produce work on the African Diaspora. Some of the most
important of these works were C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the
San Domingo Revolution (1938), Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (1941), Eric
Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944), and Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen (1947).
Each of these men’s work provided skillful analyses of the past and, with varying degrees of
subtlety, pointed comments about social and political conditions in the present: James used the
Haitian Revolution to comment on agency, class, and colonialism, Williams attempted to
demonstrate the interplay between slavery, empire, industrialization, capitalism, and, ultimately,
 7
the rise of the West, and Tannenbaum delivered a stinging commentary on race relations in his
Jim Crow United States. This is doubly remarkable and noble given the deeply entrenched
societal racism that was shared by many professional historians.
Driven by the expansion of higher education and the Civil Rights movement, the next
two decades witnessed an outpouring of scholarship on the African Diaspora that was nothing
short of seminal in its importance. Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969),
Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-
1713 (1972), Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670
through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and
Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976), Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-
American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977), Franklin Knight, The Caribbean: The
Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (1978), and Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to
Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (1979) expanded
the base of knowledge and provided a model for rigorous and creative scholarship. Over the
course of its approximately century long existence, the study of the African Diaspora has
borrowed from different models of historical scholarship that were generally designed by whites
to tell the story of their ancestors and used these tools to write powerful histories of Africans and
their descendants. This is most clear in the intertwined genealogies of African Diaspora History
and Atlantic History in which scholars of the global black experience quickly realized the
methodological and intellectual benefits of a field that had emerged as a politicized effort to see
commonalities between North America and Western Europe and utilized it to write highly
sophisticated histories of Africans and their descendants. This process, which has been driven by
a belief in the historical agency of Africans and their descendants and the centrality of these
experiences in shaping global history for centuries, is evident in each of the examples that have
been chosen.
Like the broader field of Atlantic History, the 1980s to the present day have seen the
study of the Black Diaspora grow in both quality and quantity. Herbert Klein, African Slavery in
Latin America and the Caribbean (1986), Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation
Complex (1990), Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the
 8
American South and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831 (1992), Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood,
Come Shouting to Zion: African-American Protestantism in the American South to 1830 (1998),
Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and
Lowcountry (1998), John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World,
1400-1800 (1998), David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (1999), Ira Berlin,
Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America (2000), Laurent DuBois,
A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804
(2004), and Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007) are amongst the best
historical studies in any field during the past two decades.

Recent Trends in Atlantic and Afro-Atlantic Research

The aim of this section is to gauge, in real terms, the percentage of Atlantic Historical studies
whose primary focus is the African Diaspora. While the goal is to provide a quantitative analysis,
it requires a number of qualifications and definitions. First this essay is an analysis of historical
works and, while it will take into account interdisciplinary scholarship, it does not consider
academic works that are entirely non-historical. Secondly, deciding exactly which works can be
categorized as “Atlantic History” or the “History of the African Diaspora” is highly subjective
and a matter largely of the author’s opinion. Luckily, many works frequently self-identify with
specific categories. However when this is not the case, I have chosen to categorize works as
“Atlantic History” if their primary subject is defined by its position within the Atlantic littoral or
is understood in comparison to other parts of the Atlantic. Likewise, I have chosen to categorize
works as “History of the African Diaspora” if their primary focus is the experience of Africans
and/or their descendants within the definition of “Atlantic History.” The final caveat concerning
this section relates to the sources that I have chosen to analyze. Given the immense growth of
both fields it is impossible to analyze all or even a majority of scholarly forums. At the same
time, the primary aim of this piece is to highlight the role of the African Diaspora within the best
and most mainstream of recent Atlantic Historical scholarship. To this end the analysis of
monographs will be based on the constantly updated “Bibliography of Atlantic History” found
 9
on the homepage of Harvard’s International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World. The
following journals will be examined: The American Historical Review, Atlantic Studies,
Itinerario, Journal of American History, The Journal of World History, and The William and
Mary Quarterly. Information on dissertations will be drawn from the American Historical
Association’s database and listings that are made available on the homepage of Harvard’s
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World.
If the production of monographs is the best indicator of an area’s relative health, status,
and direction, then Harvard University’s Atlantic History Seminar’s “Bibliography in Atlantic
History,” which began the same year as the seminar, reflects a robust and dynamic field of
scholarship in which works that examine the African Diaspora feature very prominently. Of the
588 total works contained in the bibliography, 144, or 24 percent, deal extensively or exclusively
with the African Diaspora in the Atlantic World. Within this quarter of Atlantic scholarship there
are some noticeable trends. With virtually the only exception to be found within edited
collections, the temporal span is exclusively Early Modern through the late nineteenth century.
This is hardly surprising since the Atlantic World emerged during precisely this era. Related to
this point is the fact that the overwhelming majority of works focus on the experience of
Africans as slaves, within and in relation to slave societies, or in the immediate aftermath of
emancipation. This is a reflection of a sad, but painful truth: Africa was largely integrated into
the Atlantic World through the institution of slavery. These studies adopt both macro and micro
perspectives and cover nearly every facet of the institution from economics, culture, psychology,
and politics. However there are issues that arise from focusing exclusively on slavery. There is a
tendency to write Africans into Atlantic History while writing Africa out of the same story. The
vast majority of works begin during or after the “middle passage” and seldom fully consider the
changes that were wrought on Africa itself as well as the continent’s continued interaction with
the wider world. Another issue arises at the other end of the spectrum with the lack of attention
paid to the post-emancipation experiences of people of African descent in the Atlantic World. If
there is a tendency to begin the history of the African Diaspora abruptly by leaving Africa out,
then there is a tendency to end the story equally abruptly.
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However in the end, these amount to merely trifling observations of a dynamic area of
monograph publishing. Based on the evidence provided by the bibliography, the African
Diaspora is the subject of a fair percentage of scholarly attention that strives to portray the role
played by Africans within the Atlantic World. That this scholarship tends to be chronologically
concentrated and centered around slavery, merely reflects the realities of the Atlantic World
during its existence.
An interesting testament to the quality of monograph publishing on the African Diaspora
can be found by looking at the recent list of recipients of the James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic
History and the Albert J. Beveridge Award for the “best book in English on the history of the
United States, Latin America, or Canada from 1492 to the Present” both of which are offered by
the American Historical Association.7 In 2006, Christopher Leslie Brown’s, Moral Capital:
Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill,NC, 2006) and in 2004, Laurent Dubois’s, A
Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2004) won the James A. Rawley Prize respectively. Both works focus on very
different, yet deeply intertwined, challenges to slavery and brilliantly contextualize these
developments within the political and intellectual contours of the Atlantic World. The Albert J.
Beveridge Award went to Melvin Ely’s, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in
Black Freedom from the 1790s to through the Civil War (New York, 2004) in 2005, Ira Berlin’s,
Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (Cambridge, MA., 2003) in
2003, and Philip Morgan’s, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century
Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998) in 1998. Berlin and Morgans’ books,
while they disagree on a number of fundamental points, are both magisterial studies of the
experience of Africans within slavery while Ely presents a fascinating case study of black efforts
to claim elements of freedom across a number of decades. The frequency with which studies of
the African Diaspora win major international awards is evidence of the quality of works being
produced on the subject as well as being indicative of a mainstream acceptance of the importance
of these works and their central role in the understanding of Atlantic and Western Hemispheric
History.
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An examination of six leading historical journals sheds a great deal of light on the
African Diaspora’s role within Atlantic History.8 Between 1997 and 2006, The William and
Mary Quarterly, which is published four times a year and describes itself as “the leading journal
for the study of early American history and culture...[prior to 1820 with a geographic scope that
includes]...North America–from New France and Spanish-American borderlands to British
America and the Caribbean–and extends to Europe and West Africa,” published 107 articles in
Atlantic History of which 45 were substantially focused on the African Diaspora. Thus in the
forum for the best and most creative scholarship on North America and its connections to the
broader world forty two percent of Atlantic History essays focused on the African Diaspora. This
represents both an explosion in quantity and quality of both areas of studies and also
demonstrates the growing centrality and frequency of an Atlantic approach to understanding the
Early Modern world and, furthermore, the prominent role of Africans within this mode of
inquiry. 1
During the same years, the semi-annual Journal of American History, “the leading
scholarly publication and journal of record in the field of American history,” published 31 essays
in Atlantic History of which 11, or 35 percent, focused on the African Diaspora. Considering
both the enormous diversity of topics covered, the strict focus on the United States and those
colonies which became states, and the frequent emphasis on the twentieth century, these numbers
reflect both the “mainstreaming” of Atlantic History, the healthy role that studies of the African
Diaspora play within this broader field, and the sheer quality of these works. At the same time,
the American Historical Review, “the [added italics] major historical journal in the United
States….[that]…. includes...publications in all fields of history....[and]...seeks to engage the
interests of the entire discipline of history,” published 36 pieces in Atlantic History of which 15,
or 42 percent of the total, focused on the African Diaspora. In light of the fact that the American
Historical Review spans the entire scope of human history and every corner of the globe (both
eras and areas that by definition could not involve the Atlantic World) this provides even
stronger evidence that Atlantic History has emerged as one of the central fields of history
scholarship within which the African Diaspora is an essential component.
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The contents of Atlantic Studies, Itinerario, and the Journal of World History, each of
which is truly international in scope, but from distinctly different perspectives, yield valuable
insights concerning the development of Atlantic History and the History of the African Diaspora.
By definition, every piece that is published in Atlantic Studies, adopts an Atlantic approach that
is often times interdisciplinary. During the three full years since Atlantic Studies first appeared in
2004, it has published 36 articles of which 16, or 44 percent, focused on the African Diaspora.
Since Atlantic Studies is the first and at present only journal devoted solely to the Atlantic
World, this data is interesting. This is strong evidence that scholars who most strongly self-
identify their work as having an Atlantic perspective frequently focus on the African Diaspora.
In fact Atlantic Studies contains the highest percentage of African Diasporic scholarship of the
six journals under examination. This is also interesting because this journal seeks to be a
definitive forum for discussions of various methodologies, approaches, and theories of Atlantic
Studies. Thus the most cutting edge forum for Atlantic studies devotes nearly half its resources to
works about the African Diaspora vividly demonstrating the centrality of the topic to the broader
field of Atlantic history. It also suggests that studies of the African Diaspora at present are, and
will continue to be, central to the growth and expansion of Atlantic History and that scholars
place the experience of Africans at the center of this growing field.
Itinerario, which is the “International journal on the history of European Expansion and
Global Interaction,” publishes excellent articles written by scholars from across the globe.
Between 1997 and 2005, Itinerario published 27 articles on Atlantic History of which 7, or
almost exactly 25 percent, were devoted to the African Diaspora. The fact that this represents the
lowest percentage of essays on the history of the African Diaspora is, upon reflection, not
entirely surprising. Itinerario is a global history journal that emphasizes European interaction
with the broader world and a large percentage of its essays are devoted to the study of Europe,
the Middle East, East Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. Likewise much of its work on Atlantic
History focuses exclusively on the European experience. In other words, while Itinerario
publishes a steady amount of high quality pieces that focus on the African Diaspora, much of its
attention is focused elsewhere or solely on the European experience within the Atlantic World.
 13
The Journal of World History embraces a truly global perspective and publishes articles
that cover the entire chronological and geographic scope of human history. However between
1997 and 2006, The Journal of World History published 9 articles in Atlantic History of which 4,
or 44 percent focused on the African Diaspora. The percentage of Atlantic pieces that are
devoted to the African Diaspora are similar to those found in the other five journals, however
the percentage of Atlantic pieces amongst all articles is the lowest. This is presumably the result
of two factors. The first factor is the global scope of the journal that frequently emphasizes extra-
Western history. Within this concentration many of the pieces adopt an explicitly comparative
framework that examines two regions in stark relation to each other. So in other words, much of
the scholarship does not necessarily reflect a broad international perspective, but rather a linear
comparative one. The second factor relates to a degree of skepticism that may be harbored by
many Atlanticists towards global history and vice versa. By definition Atlantic History is global
history that should, in theory at least, find a frequent home in The Journal of World History.
However this is apparently not the case and may suggest a substantial disconnect between
scholars that use an Atlantic perspective and those that use a global perspective.
Taken as a whole, the number of Atlantic World and African Diaspora essays in these
journals is testament to the strength of both fields. This is doubly true when it is borne in mind
that I have excluded, due to the nature of the present experiment, journals such as The Journal of
Negro History or later The Journal of African American History and Slavery and Abolition that
focus exclusively on the African Diaspora. It is interesting to note that the percentage of Atlantic
World pieces that are devoted to the African Diaspora remains fairly steady across the six
different journals. With 25 percent of its Atlantic essays focusing on the African Diaspora,
Itinerario has the lowest percentage whereas both Atlantic Studies and World History having the
highest proportion at 44 percent (this is a virtual tie with The William and Mary Quarterly and
The American Historical Review both at 42 percent). However in real terms The William and
Mary Quarterly has published the greatest amount of Atlantic and, by extension, African
Diaspora pieces (it should be noted that if Atlantic Studies continued to publish at its present rate
then it would rival these numbers after a decade) whereas The Journal of World History has
published the lowest with the other four journals publishing at a steady and intermediate rate.
 14
This makes sense upon closer analysis. The William and Mary Quarterly is the premier journal
of North America, the Caribbean, and these areas’ connections to the broader world during the
Early Modern Era and Age of Revolution. These represent both the areas and eras in which the
Atlantic World and Africa’s role within it were most evident. Likewise this represents a
collective scholarly embrace of an Atlantic model that highly prizes the role of the African
Diaspora as one of the best means for understanding the history of this world. The relative lack
of Atlantic and African Diaspora pieces in the Journal of World History is the product of a
different geographic orientation and disconnect between the fields of Atlantic and Global history.
The fact that The Journal of American History, The American Historical Review, and Itinerario
publish a steady rate of Atlantic pieces which frequently focus on the African Diaspora, reflects
the extent to which the top scholars of three different, yet deeply related fields (American
History, World History with a North American Emphasis, and Europe in a Global Context
respectively) have also embraced an Atlantic model which frequently examines the African
Diaspora as a way to view a great deal of history. This is even more so the case when it is
remembered that a great deal of the articles published in these journals focus on the twentieth
century or parts of the world that had no connection to the Atlantic. And finally, the fact that
nearly half of all pieces published in Atlantic Studies are about the African Diaspora is
compelling evidence that Atlantic historians place great importance on the role of Africans
within their evolving theoretical construct.
The production of PhD dissertations is a strong indicator of both the present state of a
scholarly field as well as its potential future direction. Graduate students are required to come to
grips with resent trends in historiography and, ideally, select a dissertation topic that reflects this
knowledge. Likewise the frequently brutal realities of the job market, often times leads graduate
students towards “hot topics” which they believe will increase their chances of finding
employment. Given all of these facts, it is not surprising that the last decade has witnessed an
explosion of Atlantic History dissertations many of which frequently study the African Diaspora.
The best quantitative evidence that is available comes from the homepage of Harvard’s
International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World which lists a total of 40 Atlantic
History dissertations which have been completed or are in progress, of which exactly a quarter
 15
focus on the African Diaspora. This list of dissertations only consists of titles and abstracts that
were voluntarily submitted, but considering that Harvard’s Atlantic Seminar is widely regarded
as one of the premier forums of Atlantic scholarship, especially for younger scholars, it can be
assumed that this distribution reflects broader trends of students selecting Atlantic topics and,
within these numbers, ones that focus on the African Diaspora. Less quantitative, but equally
informative is the American Historical Associations Dissertation Database which lists over
23,000 dissertations from 1882 to the present. If one runs a search that is limited to the last ten
years and uses the keywords “Atlantic”, “African”, “Diaspora”, and “Slavery” in four separate
searches than 112 dissertations on the history of the African Diaspora are found. Because it is
impossible to fully browse the data base and many relevant titles may not use any of these key
words, it is impossible to ascertain what percentage of the total production of Atlantic History
are represented by these 112 dissertations. However 112 dissertations, in either real or
comparative terms, represents a major outpouring of work from young historians.
In the final analysis, the last decade has witnessed an immense outpouring of excellent
scholarship on the Atlantic World that has been one of the defining trends across the historical
profession. Within this broader field, a large percentage of quality work has been devoted to
studying the African Diaspora. In fact much of the very best and prize winning work on Atlantic
History has focused on the African Diaspora. That the majority of this work focuses on slavery is
a reflection of the realities of contemporary life and not an effort to marginalize Africa’s
contribution to the Atlantic World. The truth is in fact contrary to this, and reflects a growing
realization about Africa’s importance to the Atlantic World. This is underscored by the
substantial percentage of monographs, articles, and dissertations that appear on regular basis
which focus on the African Diaspora. The two fields are deeply intertwined and will continue to
grow and expand both together and as part of a dynamic scholarly “push-and-pull” in which they
push each other’s boundaries and horizons.
 16
References

Armitage, David, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” David Armitage and Richard Braddick,
eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, pp. 11-27.

Bailyn, Bernard, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (2005)

Bailyn, Bernard, “The Idea of Atlantic History,” Itinerario 20, no. 1 (1996): 19-44.

Berlin, Ira, Generations of Captivity: A History of African American Slaves (2003)

Berlin, Ira, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in America (2000)

“Beyond the Atlantic,” in William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series 63(4-October 2006): 675-742.

Brown, Christopher Leslie, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (2006)

Canizares- Esguerra, Jorge, “Some Caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ Paradigm, History Compass,
www.history-compass.com.

Canizares-Esguerra, Jorge and Erik Seeman, eds., The Atlantic in Global History. 1500-2000
(2007)

Canny, Nicholas and Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800
(1989)

Chaunu, Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique (1955-1959)

Coclanis, Peter, “Drang Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-Island, and the Idea of Atlantic
History,” Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 169-182.

Colloway, Colin, New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America
(1998)

Crosby, Alfred, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
(1972)

Curtin, Philip, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969)

Curtin, Philip, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (1990)
 17
Dunn, Richard, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies,
1624-1713 (1972)

Davis, Ralph, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (1973)

DuBois, Laurent, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French
Caribbean, 1787-1804 (2004)

Elliott, John, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America: 1492-1830 (2007)

Elliott, John, The Old and New World, 1492-1650 (1970)

Eltis, David, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (1999)

Ely, Melvin, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the
1790s to through the Civil War (2004)

Frey, Sylvia, and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African-American Protestantism in the
American South to 1830 (1998)

Games, Alison, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” American

Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 741-757.

Games, Alison, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (1999)

Genovese, Eugene, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making
of the Modern World (1979)

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Gould, Eliga, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of Revolution
(2000)

Greene, Jack and Philip Morgan, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (2008)

Gutman, Herbert, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976)

Herskovits, Melville, The Myth of the Negro Past (1941)

James, C.L.R, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
(1938)

Klein, Herbert, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (1986)
 18

Knight, Franklin, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (1978)

Kraus, Michael, Atlantic Civilization: Eighteenth-Century Origins (1949)

Langley, Lester, The Americas in the Age of Revolution (1996)

Levine, Lawrence, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from
Slavery to Freedom (1977)

Meining, D.W., Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (1986)

Morgan, Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and
Lowcountry (1998)

Mullin, Michael, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South
and the British Caribbean, 1736-1831 (1992)

O’Reilly, William, “Genealogies of Atlantic History,” Atlantic Studies 1 (2004): 66-84.

Palmer, R.R., The Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959-1963)

Parry, J.H., The Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement (1963)

Rediker, Marcus, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007)

“Round Table Conference: The Nature of Atlantic History,” in Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999)

Shepperson, George, “The African Abroad or the African Diaspora,” in Emerging Themes of
African History, ed., Terence Ranger (Nairobi, 1968)

Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen (1947).

Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (1998),

Verlinden, Charles, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (1970)

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Wood, Peter, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono
Rebellion (1974)
 19
Yerxa, Donald, Recent Themes in the History of Africa and the Atlantic World: Historians in
Conversation (2008)
 20

Endnotes

1
David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” David Armitage and Richard Braddick, eds., The British
Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (London, 2002), 11-27
2
Jack Greene and Philip Morgan, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford, 2008) is a new critique of the
various areas of Atlantic History. Donald Yerxa, Recent Themes in the History of Africa and the Atlantic World:
Historians in Conversation (Columbia, SC, 2008) focuses on the role of Africa in the field of World History. The
numerous essays by Pieter Emmer and Willam Klooster, Silvia Marzagalli, Carla Phillips, David Hancock, Deborah
White, David Eltis, and Alison Games collected as “Round Table Conference: The Nature of Atlantic History,” in
Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): critique different aspects of the Atlantic model as does another forum consisting of
essays written by Alison Games, Philip Stern, Paul Map, and Peter Coclanis entitled, “Beyond the Atlantic,” in
William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series 63(4-October 2006): 675-742. Peter Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten: Bernard
Bailyn, the World-Island, and the Idea of Atlantic History,” Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 169-
182 and Jorge Canizares- Esguerra, “Some Caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ Paradigm, History Compass, www.history-
compass.com. offer appraisals and suggestions. Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and Erik Seeman, eds., The Atlantic in
Global History. 1500-2000 (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2007) is a fascinating collection of essays that provide fresh
approaches to nearly every aspect of Atlantic History.
3
Pier Larson, “African Diasporas and the Atlantic,” in Jorge Canizares-Esguerra and Erik Seeman, eds.,
The Atlantic in Global History. 1500-2000 (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2007), pp. 129-147 presents a
a good overview of these developments in an essay that is otherwise critical of the extent to which
historians of the African Diaspora have spent too much energy focusing on the Atlantic World and have
neglected the African Diaspora elsewhere in the world.
4
The emergence of Atlantic History is examined in David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” David
Armitage and Richard Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (London, 2002), 11- 27, Bernard
Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Ma., 2005), Bernard Bailyn, “The Idea of Atlantic
History,” Itinerario 20, no. 1 (1996): 19-44, Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and
Opportunities,” American Historical Review 111.3 (2006): 741-757, and William O’Reilly, “Genealogies of
Atlantic History,” Atlantic Studies 1 (2004): 66-84. A critique of Bailyn’s model of Atlantic History can be found in
Ian Steele, “Bernard Bailyn’s American Atlantic,” History and Theory 46(1): 48-58.
5
The examples appear in both Bailyn, Atlantic History and Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History.”
6
George Shepperson, “The African Abroad or the African Diaspora,” in Emerging Themes of African History, ed.,
Terence Ranger (Nairobi, 1968), 152-76 is credited with introducing the term. Reference also found in Larson, p.
129.
7
The American Historical Association also offers the Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History.
8
I have counted Forums as one article.