1

Atlantic African, American, and

European Backgrounds to Contact,

Commerce, and Enslavement

B

y the turn of the 16th century, Western knowledge

of Asia was based on certain theological teach-

ings, classical tales, and phantasmagoria and was

shrouded in mystery, misconception, and misunderstand-

ing. In the fourth century bce, legends of Alexander the

Great’s conquests included, among other things, tales of

Cynophali, or dog-headed men, and Sciopods, or one-

legged men who ran with amazing swift ness and used their

massive foot as a sunshade when resting.^1 Marco Polo, who

had traveled to Asia in the late 13th century, dazzled Euro-

peans with tales of cities and civilizations whose enormity

and sophistication not only matched that of Europe, but also

eclipsed the West in many regards. Much like earlier legends,

Marco Polo also noted the presence of some fantastic crea-

tures including stories of Rukh, a bird of prey so enormous

that it could “seize an elephant with its talons... lift it into the

air, in order to drop it to the ground and in this way kill it.”^2

Interestingly enough, while much of Europe’s knowledge

of the East tended toward fantasy, signifi cant information

regarding the topologies, societies, and cultures of Asia and

India was available. In the 12th century, Muslim chronicler,

Al-Idrisi, had recorded from Sicily in 1154 information on

India and Southeast Asia.^3 Moreover, communities of Eu-

ropean Jews had substantial knowledge of the East through

Jewish trade and religious networks that extended from Eu-

rope into Eastern lands. In particular, Benjamin of Tudela,

a Spanish Jew, traveled throughout Europe and the Middle

East between 1166 and 1171, during which time he visited

Italy, Greece, Palestine, Damascus, and Egypt, among other

locales. Benjamin’s observations, chronicled in Th e Itiner-

ary of Benjamin of Tudela, bear the distinction of being the

fi rst work of the Middle Ages, written in Europe, to men-

tion a possible route to China.^4 As it stands, however, the

work of Al-Idrisi and other Muslim scholars went largely

untranslated until the 17th century and Christian Europe

generally ignored Jewish knowledge of the East.

Regarding Africa, European interest in the continent

had been developing since ancient times. Herodotus and

other Greek and Roman writers detailed aspects of African

life and culture; but much like the chronicles of Marco Polo,

these writings were infused with the fantastic and were

limited and fragmented in scope. Still, some of the most

outlandish stories that ancient writers recorded in refer-

ence to Africa turned out to be quite true. So Herodotus

wrote in the sixth century bce, in reference to reports of

a Phoenician expedition that rounded the Cape of Good

Hope, “there they said—what some may believe, though I

do not—that in sailing round Libya [Africa] they had the

sun on their right hand.”^5 Th is voyage around the southern

tip of Africa occurred well before the 15th-century exploits

of Portuguese explorers Bartolomeu Dias, who rounded the

Cape in 1488, and Vasco da Gama, who surpassed his pre-

decessor by not only rounding the South African coast but

also reaching India in 1497. Th us, the generally held notion