Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavement 5that Berlin ascribes to Atlantic Africans may very well be
applied to other Africans. As noted above, West and West-
Central Africa had been connected through commercial,
cultural, and religious networks to the Middle East, India,
and Asia in the centuries preceding the Atlantic slave trade.
Th at is, they were engaged in global systems of trade and
communication and there is no reason to believe that they
were not cosmopolitan in any sense of the word. We know,
for example, that European traders along Africa’s west coast
marveled at Africans’ skill with language and noted their
keen ability in negotiating terms of trade.^24 As John Th orn-
ton notes, Africans were well aware of the global systems
of trade and competition that marked Atlantic trade and
sought, to the best of their ability, to secure benefi cial terms
at every point.^25
If the 17th century off ered a certain access, freedom,
and mobility, a cursory look at the biographies of some At-
lantic Africans encourages a qualifi cation of the degree of
mobility and movement so oft en attributed to blacks who
lived around the Atlantic Rim during the 17th century.^26
While many argue that Atlantic Africans existed at cultural
interstices, I think it important to note that this intercul-
tural space was oft en uneven and coerced. Th at is, rather
than operating in the liminal spaces between cultures,
blacks around the Atlantic were ever made to approximate
European culture. In the main, they adopted (or were as-
cribed) European names, spoke European languages, and
were forced to dress and exhibit themselves in accordance
with European norms of posture, composure, and attitude.
Th rough religious conversion, the adoption of European
dress, diet, and comportment, Atlantic Africans were made
to mimic the cultures of the English, French, or Dutch,
even if only imperfectly so. So Albert King, born Ukaw-
saw Gronniosaw, adopted the language and cultures of the
Dutch who enslaved him in the early 18th century. Being
thus “clothed in the Dutch or English manner,” Gronniosaw
donned not only European-styled dress, but also adopted
the prejudices and predilections of his captors, coming to
regard Africa as a land of devilish heathens and Europe as a
space of moral and religious piety and purity.^27
Consider, for example, the oft -cited life of Anthony
Johnson, a captive African who arrived in Virginia in 1621.
Johnson married, fathered four children, and eventually
earned his freedom in the colony where he became a land-
holder in his own right. Indeed, he was among the most
successful and long-lived planters in the colony. Althoughslavery existed alongside other forms of coerced labor and
did not dominate the economic, social, and cultural forma-
tions of colonial British societies as it would in subsequent
generations. During this period, one notes a certain open-
ness and fl uidity with regard to racial and cultural identities
that allowed for a measure of mobility that became progres-
sively closed once the plantation societies of the Americas
became more entrenched. Unlike the harshness of fully
developed slave societies these 17th-century societies with
slaves were less brutal and aff orded for Atlantic Africans a
greater measure of mobility. Indeed, during the 17th cen-
tury, Atlantic Africans oft en served as cultural and com-
mercial intermediaries, “employing their linguistic skills
and their familiarity with the Atlantic’s diverse commercial
practices, cultural conventions, and diplomatic etiquette
to mediate between African merchants and European sea
captains.”^22
Atlantic Africans intrigue many scholars because their
lives exist in stark opposition to the standard images of
slavery to which many have become accustomed. Stated
simply, the lives of that fi rst generation of Atlantic Afri-
cans approximate a degree of personal freedom that would
be largely unthinkable just a few decades later. Writing in
Many Th ousands Gone, Ira Berlin argues that Atlantic Afri-
cans enjoyed special knowledge and experiences along with
a “genius for intercultural negotiation.”^23 Th ey were presum-
ably more confi dent than other Africans and, as a result,
were regularly regarded by Europeans as insolent, imper-
tinent, and arrogant. While Berlin never makes the claim
outright, the notion that Atlantic Africans exhibited sagac-
ity and genius vis-à-vis their interactions with Europeans
suggests that other Africans were less sagacious than their
presumably more cosmopolitan counterparts. Th at Atlantic
Africans led lives apart is beyond question. Th ey traveled
back and forth between the continents that comprise the
Atlantic Rim and, in many cases, they had experiences that
rendered their lives remarkable, oft en involving, among
other things, piracy, military exploits, resistance, and re-
bellion. But this should not be read to mean that Atlantic
Africans were a people apart, distinct from other Africans
by talent or intellectual capability. Th is is an important mat-
ter because the cultural interplay indicative of the lives of
Atlantic Africans is occasionally rendered so as to suggest
a type of racial exceptionality. Indeed, many, though cer-
tainly not all, Atlantic Africans were the children of Afri-
can women and European traders. Th e talent and ingenuity