Colonialism, slavery, and trade

Anthropological research on colonialism, slavery, and Atlantic trade examines how the forced movement of millions of Africans across the Atlantic between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries reshaped societies, economies, and identities on multiple continents simultaneously. Scholars work to reconstruct the lived experiences of enslaved people — their acts of resistance, their cultural adaptations, and the legal and social structures that defined their circumstances — drawing on archival records, material culture, and oral histories. A central tension in current work concerns how racial identity was constructed and enforced through colonial institutions, and how those formations continue to shape inequality today. Ongoing questions include how enslaved communities sustained and transformed African cultural practices in diaspora, and how we can write histories that center the agency of people whose lives were systematically excluded from official records.

Works

107,971

Total citations

439,556

Keywords

Transatlantic Slave TradeAtlantic HistorySlaveryAfrican DiasporaSlave ResistanceColonial America