P. MANNING. THE AFRICAN DIASPORA: A HISTORY THROUGH CULTURE. N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2009. 395 p.*

The peer-reviewed work by Patrick Manning, Professor at the University of Pittsburgh (USA), is the first comprehensive study of the slave trade, the adaptation of Africans to new living conditions in different parts of the world, their struggle for liberation and equality, the formation of the "black" diaspora and its impact on various aspects of the life and culture of the peoples of some countries and continents. As the author rightly points out, "the history of Africans and natives of Africa, complex in itself, is at the center of the history of all mankind" (p.XV). In his opinion, the history of modernity simply cannot be considered without a thorough study of the African continent and the" scheme " of movement of its peoples.

The study covers the period from the beginning of the XV century, i.e. from the time of the first contacts of Africans with the outside world, to the beginning of the XXI century. Manning examines the history of the interrelationships of the peoples of Africa, North and South America, as well as Europe and part of Asia from the point of view of African migrations and the formation of the African diaspora there.

The author sees Africa and the African diaspora as a single whole. Instead of dividing the world of "blacks" into separate areas and exploring each one separately, he looks at the vast enclaves in chronological order and traces the close connections and interactions between them over the centuries. The author focuses on: connections that preserve the African diaspora as a globally identified whole; the process of racial mixing; changes in the economic and economic life of people from Africa; the evolution of family ties and the development of popular culture.

Based on extensive research, Manning claims that Africans accompanied European travelers to America and the Caribbean at the very beginning of the era of maritime expansion in that direction. The Africans, along with the Spaniards and Portuguese, explored new territories and the people who inhabited them. At least one African sailor served on Columbus ' crew during his second voyage to South America. Most likely, the author notes, those Africans came to America from the Iberian Peninsula, and not directly from Africa. The first batch of African slaves was brought to the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti) in 1518. Africans participated in the unification of the two worlds and made their unwitting contribution to the spread of diseases of the old world in the new lands, which had a literally devastating effect on the Indian population. That is, the first African "emigrants" appeared on the American continent as free soldiers, sailors, adventurers, craftsmen, and slaves. Africans fought against slavery, intermarried with the inhabitants of the Bahamas, the Antilles and other islands, gave birth to children of mixed blood, worked on the first sugar plantations of Hispaniola and in the port cities of Santo Domingo and Havana. From 1519, Africans participated in the conquest of Mexico by Cortes. Together with the Spaniards, they moved inland from the islands and coast of South America.

In the first decades after Columbus discovered the Americas, there were fewer Africans than Spaniards and Portuguese. However, already in the 16th century, the situation began to change rapidly: about 150 thousand Africans were brought as slaves to the Spanish part of South America in the second half of that century. Africans didn't just work on plantations. As the production of sugar, tobacco, and indigo expanded, more slaves acquired the skills of carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, tailors, cooks, grooms, and others.

Since the 17th century, slave societies began to be created. On the islands and in Brazil, unions of African immigrants, in addition to performing the functions of preserving African traditions, served as societies of mutual assistance and joint opposition to the owners.

Not all Africans in America lived as slaves. Due to numerous escapes, as well as voluntary emancipation by the owners of their slaves, the number of free black South and North American populations grew. Largest number of freed slaves

* P. Manning. The African Diaspora: A cultural perspective on History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 395 p.

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It is concentrated in Brazil and in the French Caribbean island and Spanish mainland colonies. Many Africans were able to get a job and start working in big cities. A significant proportion became free peasants or joined farming communities that formed in Brazil, Venezuela, Hispaniola, and Suriname. Some researchers, Manning notes, have compared black Latin American communities with African ones and found many similarities between them. The legal rights of recent slaves were restricted by racial prejudice. Blacks and non-blacks (born of mixed marriages), freemen, and slaves were registered separately from whites in specially designated birth and death registers. However, free Africans could engage in business, thus increasing their social status, sometimes running profitable firms and even buying slaves to expand production. Often, free immigrants from Africa volunteered for the army and rose to high ranks.

The author identifies two stages in the history of slavery. The first is characterized by the capture, trade, and use of slave labor. In the second stage, increased criticism of the slave trade led to a reduction in the supply of new slaves to the markets, although their number continued to grow naturally (children of slaves automatically became slaves). However, slave seizures, although on a smaller scale, continued in North and Tropical Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and some Pacific Islands, as well as in Cuba and Brazil. A natural increase in the number of slaves was observed in parts of the Americas until the 1880s, and in Africa and the Middle East itself until the third decade of the twentieth century. Slavery without the slave trade was a special stage in the history of slavery.

In the 19th century, the use of slave labor, caused by the expansion of territories allocated for sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations, even expanded in Cuba and Brazil. In the United States, after the prohibition of the slave trade in 1808, about 40 thousand "units of live goods" were delivered.

One of the most notable cultural consequences of this wave of slavery was the spread of traditional Yoruba beliefs in Brazil, Cuba, and several other regions, including the southern United States. The Yoruba people from what is now Nigeria and Benin formed the largest group of "newly imported" people (they were easy prey as a result of prolonged tribal wars in their territories). The pantheon of Yoruba gods, led by the supreme deity Olorun, had long since arrived in America, but in the 19th century the Yoruba religion and culture gained special significance and spread. Sacred ceremonies, initiations, witchcraft, and divination have become part of the daily life of black communities, both slave and free. Even after the abolition of the institution of slavery, Yoruba traditions continued to be preserved by South and North American communities of immigrants from Nigeria and other countries in the West African region. To this day, the Yoruba religion and traditions live on under the names "Candomble" in Brazil and "Santeria" in Cuba, and are also preserved by groups of the African diaspora in other parts of the continent.

The number of African slaves in the United States was greatest in the period from the middle of the XVIII to the end of the XIX century. The need for slave labor has increased especially with the expansion of cotton production to meet the needs of the cotton industry in Great Britain and New England. From 1810 to 1860, about one million black slaves migrated from the tobacco plantations of the" old South "of the United States to the cotton fields of the North American"new South". Sometimes the masters themselves moved, bringing their army of slaves to the "cotton paradise" of Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi. When the Americans gained control of Louisiana in 1803, Florida in 1819, and later Texas, large groups of slaves were sent to those states as well.

Almost at the same time, slave migrations took place in Brazil: from the "sugar" areas of Baja to the expanding coffee plantations around Rio and Sao Paulo. By 1860, up to 2 million people were concentrated here. black slaves, including many who had recently arrived from Africa.

The size of the African diaspora in a given country was constantly changing. For example, in Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, the black population has almost disappeared into the local Native American and European populations due to migration and intermarriage, and has almost lost its identity. But in the nineteenth century, the black population grew markedly in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, where Africans and Creoles migrated from the Caribbean islands.

In the nineteenth century, those blacks who were born free and those who were freed during their lifetime were in constant danger of being enslaved. Even when all the slaves in one place were freed, the existence of slavery somewhere else left its mark

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on their existence. However, after the abolition of slavery, one big problem was replaced by another - racial discrimination. Now those who have just been released are on a par with those who have been free for a long time, looking for work, getting an education, and fighting for civil rights, but both are at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. In the United States, at least, the division of society into slaves and freemen has given way to a deep black-and-white divide.

In South America and the Caribbean, free people of color began farming if they were able to buy or take over a piece of land. Former slaves in Haiti also mostly became peasants, as many Africans in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil had already done. In addition to agriculture, construction, transportation, and blacksmithing were industries in which former slaves could easily find work. Women who were not engaged in farming went to work as servants or in the manufacture of clothing. For many, the choice was small: become wage earners or tenants of land - a piece of the very land on which they worked as slaves. These different opportunities varied from country to country, but the categories were generally the same.

In all Territories, those who were free or liberated could, in principle, engage in trade or receive formal education and begin to advance in public service. In the United States, during the time of slavery, free blacks mostly worked in industry in the north of the country. After the abolition of slavery, former southern slaves tried to acquire land, but for the most part were forced to remain workers or tenants on the land of their former masters. Some movement up the hierarchy for black Americans was possible only in trade, education, and military service.

As Manning rightly points out, it was the possession of property that most clearly separated slaves from free people. When the abolition of slavery officially extended to all territories, the main goal of the freedmen was to own at least a small piece of land. The owners who lost their slaves were faced with another task-to attract cheap labor to the plantations. This could be done in two ways: rent out part of the land or organize contract labor. Both prevented the emancipated from acquiring their own allotment. And in Jamaica, for example, the law did not allow former slaves to invest in the purchase of land. In this way, former slave owners tied recent slaves to the land. If the lease method failed, landowners recruited contract workers.

The author notes another important aspect of the life of the African diaspora: freed slaves were actively involved in the life of the church. In the northern United States, they mostly became Protestant Christians. The first African Methodist Episcopal Church opened in Philadelphia in 1816 and was the first independent black congregation. Former slaves of the American South formed mostly Baptist congregations. At the same time, a new religious movement emerged that very quickly attracted the masses of the black population of the United States and absorbed elements of different religions, including traditional African beliefs - pentacostalism. In turn, in the countries with the greatest influence of Catholicism, former slaves began to practice this religion, although " Santeria "and" Candomble " remained popular among them. In Jamaica, people from Africa formed the cult of "mialism". In Brazil, along with Catholicism in the XIX century, Islam was also widespread.

Migration and other changes in the life of the African diaspora had a significant impact on the formation of the African culture "in exile". In the southern United States, as the Creole population grew, the so-called African-American ethnic group began to develop, first including only slaves, and then covering a significant part of the free black population. Slaves and freemen have created their own artistic forms and musical and dance styles: "rumba" and "habanera" in Cuba, "spirituale" in the United States, "capoeira" in Brazil. Negro "spirituals" quickly became popular not only in the United States, but also in Europe of the XIX century. Soon they were adapted for concert performance and recognized as white. In the American South, new musical rhythms, such as blues and ragtime, were born in rural areas and gradually spread in the direction of megacities. In the first decades of the twentieth century, jazz appeared in the black neighborhoods of New Orleans, and after a couple of decades it conquered the whole world. Thanks to the spread of radio and cinema, several black artists have gained wide popularity: blues singer Bessie Smith," king " of jazz Louis Armstrong, dancer and singer Josephine Baker,

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long - time Parisian singer-songwriter of opera arias and church music Marian Anderson, jazz musicians Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.

Martinique poet and writer Aimee Sezer, as well as Trinidadian writers S. James and Eric Williams, have gained fame in literary circles.

The technological innovations of the twentieth century-radio, film, television, sound recording, and the development of mass media in general - provided black cultural figures with the opportunity to introduce their art to a mass audience, including a white one, who fell in love with African rhythms and melodies.

But not only in art, the author notes, natives of Africa have achieved great success. Some free descendants of African slaves have also achieved high positions in the political sphere. In the former Spanish territories, several blacks and mulattoes became presidents of states: Bernardino Rivadavia in Argentina (1825-1827), Vicente Guerro in Mexico (1829-1831), Vicente Rosa in Ecuador (1845-1849), Joaquin Crespo in Venezuela (1884 - 1886, 1892 - 1897), Ulysses Hero in the Dominican Republic Republic (1882-1899). All Haitian leaders were black or mulatto. In the United States in the 1970s, Ziram Revele and Blanche K. Bruce were elected senators from Mississippi, and 22 other black politicians were elected to the US Congress.

In general, from the late 19th century to the 1960s, Africans in the Diaspora were governed by neo-colonial autocracies and racist democracies. These Governments, which saw "white supremacy" as part of Western culture, prevented blacks from obtaining citizenship. In the Caribbean islands, Spanish colonial rule was overthrown, but the British, French, and Dutch dominions persisted, supported by U.S. control of Puerto Rico and-at times - Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Latin American black communities, although not formally racially discriminated against, were denied the right to purchase real estate. But the greatest development of racial segregation, reinforced by formal racist ideology, was in the United States, especially in the south-east of the country.

Nevertheless, black workers made a significant contribution to the development of the world economy in the twentieth century. Many of them worked as diggers, carpenters, bricklayers, etc. The biggest construction project, employing tens of thousands of workers of African descent for many years, was the Panama Canal, after the opening of which in 1913 large groups of workers settled along it.

Former African slaves built railroads in Latin America, the islands, and the United States, as well as working in shipyards and all types of maritime transport. A large group of recent Africans were also employed in industry: in the steel mills of Alabama, the auto factories of Michigan, the textile factories of Baja in Brazil, and everywhere in small firms. In addition, there was a huge black army of service workers and domestic servants.

Descendants of recent slaves viewed their prospects differently: some looked forward to freedom, citizenship, and favorable living conditions in the most "advanced" regions of the world; others saw a pale picture of political and economic subordination and socio-cultural dependence created by centuries of slavery and perpetuated by racial discrimination and the exhausting discipline of industrial labor. As the author rightly notes, both of them turned out to be right in their own way, but, surprisingly, all communities of the African diaspora found the strength and will to face their future with dignity and even initiative.

Young descendants of slaves increasingly left rural areas and sought work in cities. Once settled, they took their families home. In the United States, the black population grew in the north - in Chicago, Detroit, New York, in the south - in Atlanta, New Orleans, as well as in St. Louis, Baltimore and Washington. In South America - in Caracas, Medellin, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, San Salvador, Havana and San Juan. They worked in the oil industries of Trinidad and Venezuela, and black crews of sailors and dockworkers became familiar to the eye in all ocean ports. People of African descent served in the army and the police.

Until the mid-twentieth century, higher education was available only to a small number of blacks; the most promising industries were medicine and law. It was also possible to make a church career. At the beginning of the XX century, the first "black" higher education institution was created - the University named after V. I. Abramovich. Howard University in Washington, D.C., received its first black rector in 1926. In the 1920s, the first newspapers published by black publishers and the first unions of black workers appeared.

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Serious positive changes in the life of the African diaspora, associated with the conquest of political independence by a number of African countries, began in the 1950s. Of course, there were many failures on the way to achieving social equality, and racial discrimination made itself felt for a long time and at all levels, but by the end of the 50s. an important turn was made: the ideology of white supremacy lost its significance.

Manning draws a fair conclusion that both during the time of slavery and after its abolition, the African diaspora made a huge (and not only cultural) contribution to the development of civilization as a whole. African slaves and indentured workers developed techniques to resist various forms of violence and exploitation. They have preserved an African identity, giving black communities around the world a sense of belonging to one influential group in their own way. The black population has developed flexible family ties and adapted them to complex social situations, as well as retained a time-tested love for their African Homeland.

Another important claim of Manning is that it was the emergence of the African diaspora and the movement of Africans around the world that strengthened trade, economic, political and other ties and interactions between peoples and continents. Moreover, the experience of the African diaspora provides a glimpse into the depths of human history. In the 19th and 20th centuries, people thought of their nations as isolated parts of the world, within which the part of history that they were mostly interested in "happened". In the twenty-first century, according to the author, "global forces will destroy borders" between states, and the African diaspora, which is a global system of existence and movement of huge masses of the population, will become one of the driving forces of this process.

P. Manning's work is a unique study in terms of the abundance of facts, breadth of thinking and boldness of forecasting. The book contains valuable material that is useful primarily for scholars of African studies, American studies, Latin American studies, as well as historians - researchers of the development of modern civilization.

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