In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World

by Judith A. Carney, Richard Nicholas Rosomoff

The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early nineteenth century, African slaves came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans. In the Shadow of Slavery provides a startling new assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment. Many familiar foods—millet, sorghum, coffee, okra, watermelon, and the “Asian” long bean, for example—are native to Africa, while commercial products such as Coca Cola, Worcestershire Sauce, and Palmolive Soap rely on African plants that were brought to the Americas on slave ships as provisions, medicines, cordage, and bedding. In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots—“botanical gardens of the dispossessed”—became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Food, Africa, Science, Historical, Race

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 2009

Reviews

[Mary]

With the buzz I heard about this book from friends it sounded interesting, and I hoped it would be good. I didn't expect phenemonal. It was. It took all summer for me to read In The Shadow of Slavery because it gave me so much to think about I had to keep putting it down. This book was very engaging and well researched without being dry - a rare find. I absolutely loved it.

[Jeremy]

Great book about the history of African agriculture and foodways in the 'new world'!

[Garret Shields]

Though this book leaves many questions unanswered, it rightly brings Africa into the foreground of the Columbian exchange.

[Lauren]

Carney and Rosomoff have written a study that places food at the center of our understanding of the African diaspora. With an attention to the ways in which African foodstuffs transformed the transatlantic slave trade, their book recenters studies of botanical exchange around the notion of subsistence -- how Africans and European enslavers used African foods to feed themselves and to survive in New World tropical environments. With chapters on maroon communities, the slave ship, and "botanical gardens of the dispossessed" (among many others, of course!), the authors show the interdependence of the material environment and the social-cultural environment. _In the Shadow of Slavery_ is indispensable to any environmentally informed study of slavery in the Americas.

Small gripes:
* referring to enslaved Africans as the first American "immigrants": while I understand that the authors are attempting to restore/change our stories of Americanness and of immigration, and to place Africans at the center of the story of the developing nation, to call enslaved, kidnapped people "immigrants" is, in my view, to do violence to their history, which was one of forced enslavement and violent removal from homelands. "Immigrant" as a term implies free will.
* referring to (usually African/African-American) botanic medicine in the New World as "homeopathy": homeopathy was a distinct medical practice that developed in Germany in the late 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann and does not stand in for all botanic medical practice.

[Rey]

Very important for the historical record, top 3 book of the year, broadened my worldview and made me hungry.

[Tamara]

The book was informative but become repitive after a few chapters. I think a dofferent organization of the chapters or maybe just a shorter book could solve. It was fun to learn new information and make more connections amongst the African diaspora through this read.

[Bat]

The story of African people with African food plants and their influence on the world is one that desperately needed to be told. This book does so with clarity and appeal as well as authority. Both readable and credible. 

[Alexis Reads Books]

This book was referenced in a lecture class and I decided to read it, very informative of genetic heritage of plants, the naturalization of common crops, and the agricultural intellect as a result of the enslaved people. It was an on-and-off read through mainly because of the subject matter.

[Jason S]

Amazing account of the way that Africa crops, livestock, and knowledge made the Atlantic World and helped create the culinary practices in the America's today. Plentiful evidence to support a competting argument.

[Scripps]

Very in-depth and reads like a textbook

[Mikel]

This book is very enlightening. I highly recommend it to those interested in culinary history, food history, or African history.

[Zaynab]

I'll come back to this

[didiandgogo]

history is always being written, every day in our minds and words. history is a balance too, and a performance, a never ending performance in which no act is final. this book is truth, one i needed

[Dree]

Carney's book looks at a variety of crops domesticated in Africa that became staples in slave-holding areas of the Americas. Her thesis is that Africans transported as slaves were instrumental in establishing these plants as crops for their own subsistence--some were later recognized as being potentially salable crops.

Carney says that in the past, plantation owners and slave ship crews/captains were held responsible for the transmission and establishment of these plants. She feels (and backs up with many, many contemporary sources) that without the farming (and animal husbandry) knowledge of the native Africans, these crops would not have been recognized as legitimate food sources, nor successfully grown.

Though this is a very academic book (UC Press)-- only 186 pages of this book is text, the rest is endnotes and bibliography--it is still readable. I would have appreciated an expansion on the last chapter (Memory Dishes of the African Diaspora), with more detail, even to the point of sample recipes, from more regions of Brazil, the Caribbean, and the American South.

[Lisa]

An illuminating book, but rather repetitious in the execution. Might have benefited from stronger editing - it is possible to emphasize a point without using the same formulation word for word each time. The history part seems solid, and at some points turns the history one learns in school on its ear. (African contributions to domestication of both plants and animals gets short shrift in most accounts of history.) It's just a shame it was let down by the writing.