Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South

by Michael A. Gomez

The transatlantic slave trade brought individuals from diverse African regions and cultures to a common destiny in the American South. In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its African origins and traces the process by which African populations exchanged their distinct ethnic identities for one
defined primarily by the conception of race. He examines transformations in the politics, social structures, and religions of slave populations through 1830, by which time the contours of a new African American identity had begun to emerge.

After discussing specific ethnic groups in Africa, Gomez follows their movement to North America, where they tended to be amassed in recognizable concentrations within individual colonies (and, later, states). For this reason, he argues, it is possible to identify particular ethnic cultural influences and ensuing social formations that heretofore have been considered unrecoverable. Using sources pertaining to the African continent
as well as runaway slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives, and folklore, Gomez reveals concrete and specific links between particular African populations and their North American progeny, thereby shedding new light on subsequent African American social formation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, Race, American History, Read For School

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1998

About the author

Michael A. Gomez is the Silver Professor of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His books include Black Crescent: African Muslims in the Americas; Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South; Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora; and Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu.

Reviews

[Megan Doney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, and learned a lot. Although it's an academic work, it's quite readable. It presents a story about how Africans became African Americans, exchanging their tribal/ethnic African identities to become a unified group in opposition to whiteness--defined by race as opposed to ethnicity.

[Lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the earliest works of scholarship that forced historians to examine the Africans who first came to the United States and to rethink their understanding of them. It's challenging for newbies (that's right i said newbies!) but stick with it, you'll learn a lot. gomez is a brillant brother.

[Zachary Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuity of African culture--contra Thornton/P. Morgan rupture. Does a great overview of American regions and corresponding African ethnicities in those places. Biggest intervention is challenging Mintz/Price by saying that African culture in the Americas was allowed to continue or not depending on the will of the dominant white culture. Gomez challenges by adding another dimension, which is that African culture was impacted in relation other African groups outside of white culture, and this was more effective since unequal power poisoned the African-white relationship.

Focuses on how African in North America held onto their specific ethnic identities well into the 1800s. This is in conversation with Orlando Patterson 1982 work which posited that enslaved people lose their sense of self in the process of enslavement. According to Gomez, Africans gradually learned English, but kept a sense of difference "physically separated and psychologically estranged" from Europeans, who they generally resented.

"From the colonial to antebellum periods, Africans gradually underwent a process whereby the basis of their self-conception changed from ethnicity to race. To a certain degree this transformation was affected by white perceptions of the African, and was without question informed by the circumstance of a common servitude. But the way in which the transformation was approximated was largely determined by an internal dialogue."

Creolization was not unification: in the south groups aligned along how they assigned labor, and skin color. This was not the case in New England, where there were so few Africans that they all unified.

Africans keep their base metaphysical perspective regarding religion, over time adopting the trappings of Christianity but maintaining their traditional practices, such as hoodoo and shout. By the 1800s, these practices are split along class lines, with the upper classes abandoning African practices. Elite African Americans scorn African ways to the present, seeking inclusion in American culture. Af-Am underclass more representative of African cultural legacy.

[Ai Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay? It felt really disjointed in parts and sometimes was hard to follow, but I do think this makes a really important intervention in terms of tracing shifts in identity and identity formation, and the individual chapters in the latter half are mostly pretty good (of special interest: the chapter on language and the chapter on Islam among enslaved African-born folks were both really interesting and cool!) Ultimately I didn't love this, but I do think it does important work. (I'm not an African historian, for the record, which I think really impacted my reading of it, because so much of it was so new. Also the 'conclusion' chapter was absolutely WILD.)

[Malcolm Frazier · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional work that covers a lot of territory and really gave me insight on just how our Identities may have transformed from African to African American. Wonderfully put together. I really enjoyed the detailed description of African societies ascetic west and central west Africa. That was unexpected but gave the work a strong foundation to explore the continuation of our identities in America.

[Kai Grrreatnesss! · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a masterfully put together book on the transformation of identity for Black Americans. We are overwhelmed with facts and evidence for Gomez to make his claim so that there would be no doubt what he is saying is true.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting, somewhat academic writing style.

Fascinating ethnic history of different African customs which survived the middle passage to form African-American culture.

[Nina Chachu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dense, but fascinating, especially for those of us living in West Africa

[David Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Gomez’s Exchanging Our Country Marks attempts to reconstruct how Africans of diverse ethnicities, religions and cultures confronted the experience of enslavement, responded to it, and ultimately created a new collective racial identity. Using quantitative studies of the slave trade, anthropological investigations, and primary source accounts, newspaper descriptions of fugitive slaves, and scholarship on slavery within different colonies, Gomez is able offer informed speculation on the differing experiences of Muslim Wolof women and their intermarriage with Bambara men in Louisiana, the tension between Senegambians and Congolese in South Carolina. Along with signal accomplishments in reconstructing first generation experiences, Gomez draws attention to the development of widespread elements of antebellum slave culture in his explorations of voodoo and hoodoo, artistic style, and religious ceremonies, while highlighting the late adoption of Christianity and the English language as evidence of cultural resistance. “At any one time prior to 1830,” he tells us “it is possible that from two-thirds to three-fourths of all African-born slaves either could not or did not speak recognizable English or French. This means that they were either speaking their native languages to one another or a version of English/French so Africanized as to be unintelligible to whites, or both.” The scholarship of Exchanging Our Country Marks shines due to Gomez’s deft use of multiple disciplines and methodologies, and his frankly breathtaking achievement in offering a textured, detailed exploration of the worldview of diverse Africans over generations in North America. Rather than race being something which was constructed onto Africans by slavery, Gomez redefines it as the positive work of Africans within slavery creating a common identity.

[Kaufmak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a game-changer for me, one of the best books I read about slavery, making a slave identity and beginning to understand how organized and truly diabolical the Atlantic system of slavery was.

The basic premise of the book is an examination of how Africans were selected, organized and molded into slaves. It was a process of stripping away identity, of breaking individuality and destroying community. Gomez brings this transformation to light and sums it up succinctly calling it the shift from ethnicity to race, making multiple,. diverse groups into one, subordinate mass. Gomez researched his work quite well and made use of a source that ultimately belied the idea that the owner class did not know of the subdivisions of African culture. That source was runaway slave ads which often went to great lengths to describe slaves, using cultural markers in order to get the slave back. There is also a look at some correspondence where plantation owners mention certain groups being better suited for the work they had in mind.

I'm pretty sure that Gomez was not the first to discuss Islam within the slave population, however it is another indictment of the slave trade in that there was a stated standard not to enslave "civilized" people, people of the Muslim faith were considered civilized if heathens, but evidence points that this was a minor concern of slavers.

As far as using this book as tool in teaching, it details the slaving process better than any source that I have found, from capture to final introduction to work, it gives a very good, detailed account, often from the perspective of the different ethnic groups, and how they went from a specific person to an anonymous cog in an evil wheel. If you are teaching the first session of US history, or discussing slavery in the second half of Western Civilization, this book will make your class better.

[Christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Understanding the origins of divisions amongst various colonial groups is important, because this sheds light on the conflicts and struggles associated with social status, class lines, politics and traditions between cultures throughout the course of American history. According to Michael Gomez, slaves during the antebellum colonial south experienced a division in class, race, gender and ethnicity. To prove this point, Gomez included evidence of various distinctions in his book. The knowledge of this division explains how race played a significant part in the formation of racial tensions and political strife, including gender conflicts while Europeans fostered a new country.

Gomez’s theory of divisions amongst African slaves regarding race, class structure and the issue of ethnicity versus race during the antebellum colonial south is quite evident in runaway slave advertisements published during the time. Using the eighteenth century slave advertisements from Virginia newspapers to investigate Gomez’s thesis, one finds numerous accounts to support his claims and little to refute them. These runaway slave ads clearly reveal how slave owners purposely reported missing and runaway slaves through description of complexion, ability and gender.

It is clear that people of African descent living in North America never constituted a seamless, undifferentiated mass of individuals”. Therefore, for Gomez to find tangible evidence of how Europeans separated African communities is extremely important to understanding the many social customs, traditions and racial conflicts, not only for African Americans, but also for the understanding of American history in general.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book outlines the history of Africans in America to the year 1830. In this text, he includes descriptions of the ethnicities and cultures of origin of many of the Africans that were taken captive and shipped to North America for the purposes of slavery. From his description of their respective customs, we receive a more complete picture of the Africanization of elements of life in this continent—including both religious rituals and European languages—all of which ultimately contribute to the transformation of these disparate ethnicities into the African American race.
Early in the text, Gomez states that one of his goals of the book is to “examine the means by which Africans and their descendents attempted to fashion a collective identity” (p. 4). He accomplishes this goal through his delineation of the aforementioned cultural practices that aided in the African people’s transformation to this identity, all of which entailed their religion, language, and their country marks.
Overall, a very interesting book. I think the traditional historical perspective of African American slaves neglects to remember they were from different tribes and ethnicities throughout Africa.

[Abonghatou · Rating 4 out of 5]

By emphasizing the fact that enslaved Africans in the Americas had distinct cultural identities before their enslavement and by giving specific examples of these defining cultural features, Gomez in a way, restores the humanity that was taken away from them by slavery. These individuals weren't a bunch of idle black people in Africa. They had lives, customs, functional societies, institutions, which they made every effort to hold on to in the Americas. Gomez provides a comprehensive picture of how the African antecedent influenced life among the enslaved, as they struggled to come to grips with and overcome their predicament.

[Crystal Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I respect about this book is that it's comprehensive. Instead of taking the easy way out (Black slaves came from Africa... duh), he goes for specifics. Why do Black churches function the way they do? Where did this religious practice, superstition, belief, old wives' tale, etc. come from? That big mass called Africa? Well yes.. but that's like saying the Carolina Panthers represent America. Gomez is much more specific pointing to specific cultures, regions, countries, civilizations. I learned a lot.

[Courtney]

This book is a dense forest of charts and data. As I managed to navigate through all that I would not remember, the major themes began to emerge and they are interesting! I think that Gomez had great intentions: the idea of studying the transformation from ethnic identity to race in regards to the transatlantic slave trade is real cool, but the execution of his idea left a little to be desired. This, I would not recommend as a book to read for pleasure, unless, of course, you are a nutty history lover who misses college.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given this to read for school and what I found was an engaging and interesting read. The book focuses on the transition in identity for African Americans in colonial america and extends to around 1830. I would recommend to anyone interested in cultural transitions or someone who wants a different perspective on the development of the slave culture in pre civil war america

[Janet Russ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5