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"John K. Thornton"
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A cultural history of the Atlantic world, 1250-1820
\"A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 explores the idea that strong links exist in the histories of Africa, Europe and North and South America. John K. Thornton provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Atlantic Basin before 1830 by describing political, social and cultural interactions between the continents' inhabitants. He traces the backgrounds of the populations on these three continental landmasses brought into contact by European navigation. Thornton then examines the political and social implications of the encounters, tracing the origins of a variety of Atlantic societies and showing how new ways of eating, drinking, speaking and worshipping developed in the newly created Atlantic World. This book uses close readings of original sources to produce new interpretations of its subject\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820
A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820 explores the idea that strong links exist in the histories of Africa, Europe and North and South America. John K. Thornton provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Atlantic Basin before 1830 by describing political, social and cultural interactions between the continents' inhabitants. He traces the backgrounds of the populations on these three continental landmasses brought into contact by European navigation. Thornton then examines the political and social implications of the encounters, tracing the origins of a variety of Atlantic societies and showing how new ways of eating, drinking, speaking and worshipping developed in the newly created Atlantic World. This book uses close readings of original sources to produce new interpretations of its subject.
eBook
Kongo : power and majesty
\"A landmark presentation that will radically redefine our understanding of Africa's relationship with the West, Kongo: Power and Majesty, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this September, will focus on one of the continent's most influential artistic traditions, from the earliest moment of direct engagement between African and European leaders at the end of the 15th century through the early 20th century. The creative output of Kongo artists of Central Africa will be represented by 134 works drawn from more than 50 institutional and private collections across Europe and the United States, reflecting five hundred years of encounters and shifting relations between European and Kongo leaders. From a dynamic assembly of 15 monumental power figures to elegantly carved ivories and finely woven textiles, the exhibition will explore how the talents of Central Africa's most gifted artists were directed toward articulating a culturally distinct vernacular of power.\"--Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Book
New Light on the “Jaga” Episode in the History of Kongo (1567-1608)
L’origine et la nature de l’invasion Jaga du Kongo est l’un des débats les plus anciens de l’historiographie africaine. Ce projet, utilisant plusieurs documents récemment découverts, soutient que l’invasion n’était pas une révolte locale, ne découlait pas d’une crise constitutionnelle et qu’elle impliquait une armée petite mais très compétente qui est entrée dans le pays par l’Empire de Mwene Muji pendant le règne du roi Bernardo Ier. The origin and nature of the Jaga invasion of Kongo is one of the longest standing debates in Africa’s historiography. This project, using a number of newly discovered documents, argues that the invasion was not a local revolt, did not stem from a constitutional crisis, and that it involved a small but highly competent army that entered the country through the Empire of Mwene Muji during the reign of king Bernardo I.
Journal Article
Revising the Population History of the Kingdom of Kongo
Research conducted into the demography of the Kingdom of Kongo some forty years ago, employing baptismal statistics left by missionaries, has been in need of revision thanks to challenges by more recent scholarship. This article revises the estimated population of Kongo by addressing these challenges, drawing on newly discovered documentary sources. Using this new evidence, the estimate for the kingdom's population in the mid-seventeenth century has been elevated from 509,000 to around 790,000. The original article's claims about levels of fertility and mortality have been retained. The article also addresses questions concerning the validity of missionary statistics and the impact of the slave trade, which was small before 1700 but then increasingly large thereafter, reaching very high levels by the early nineteenth century. While a quantitative estimate of the later population is not possible given the limitations of sources for this period, it is likely that the population of the kingdom fell as slave exports peaked.
Journal Article
Modern Oral Traditions and the History of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo is blessed both with a large volume of written documentation reaching back to the late fifteenth century, and a rich volume of oral traditions set to writing in the twentieth century. However, marrying these two has proved a difficult problem as the written material seem to relate a typical history of kings and battles, while the traditions outline migrations and village settings. This work demonstrates how the modern oral traditions, usually used to reconstruct early periods in the kingdom’s history, actually relates to events in the last century of its existence, outlining the break of the kingdom’s provincial structure into hereditary independent units; followed by the emergence of new “entrepreneurial” nobles who built their own political structures, and finally lists of villages and stopping point for people engaging in the long distance trade of the nineteenth century.
Journal Article
AFRO-CHRISTIAN SYNCRETISM IN THE KINGDOM OF KONGO
This article examines the way in which Christianity and Kongo religion merged to produce a syncretic result. After showing that the Kongo church grew up under the supervision and direction of Kongo authorities rather than missionaries, it will track how local educational systems and linguistic transformations accommodated the differences between the two religious traditions. In Kongo, many activities associated with the traditional religion were attacked as witchcraft without assigning any part of the traditional religion to this category. It also addresses how Kongo religious thinkers sidestepped questions of the fate of the dead and the virginity of Mary when harmonizing them would be too difficult.
Journal Article
The Kingdom of Kongo and the Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War, while still regarded as primarily a European war, also has, as some historians recognize, an Atlantic dimension. That Atlantic dimension in turn is widely recognized as centering on the Dutch Republic's seizure of Bahia and then Pernambuco in Brazil, and on the other side of the Atlantic, the island colony of São Tomé, the Portuguese fort at Elmina, and the biggest African prize, the colony of Angola, a project that Dutch historians have labeled the \"Groot Dessyn\" (Great Design). What is more generally overlooked is that on the African side, the Kingdom of Kongo, hostile and independent northern neighbor of Portuguese Angola, played a crucial role in shaping the Dutch strategies on the African side of the Atlantic. It was Kongo's initiative, as I will demonstrate, that caused the Dutch to conceive of having an African colony at all, and it was Kongo diplomacy that led the Dutch to attack Angola, first in 1624 and then, successfully in 1641. Recognizing this African initiative helps us to understand the multilateral and even multicontinental nature of the Thirty Years' War.
Journal Article
Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800
Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 investigates the impact of warfare on the history of Africa in the period of the slave trade and the founding of empires. It includes the discussion of: : * the relationship between war and the slave trade * the role of Europeans in promoting African wars and supplying African armies * the influence of climatic and ecological factors on warfare patterns and dynamics * the impact of social organization and military technology, including the gunpowder revolution * case studies of warfare in Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Benin and West Central Africa
John K. Thornton is Professor of History at Millersville University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1998).
eBook
In Search of the 1619 African Arrivals
A year later, English ships captured a slave ship of the coast of Honduras.4 It was in this context that two English privateers set out in 1619 to attack Spanish shipping. Because of the formal truce between Britain and Spain, they did not get their letters of Marque (license to capture enemy shipping) from England. Since the fifteenth century, Portugal had a monopoly on the slave trade from Africa. Antonio Fernandes d'Elvas won the Asiento in 1615, and he then obtained the contract for the Angolan trade. [...]all slaves legally shipped to Spanish colonies would come from Angola.6 The Portuguese colony of Angola, established in 1575, was based on a charter from the king of Portugal given to Paulo Dias de Nováis, grandson of the famous explorer Bartolomeu Dias. In addition to concentrating people directly by warfare, the kings of Ndongo also demanded about a dozen slaves each year from its several hundred local political leaders, called sobas.7 The people who were captured in war were enslaved-and called mubika (plural abikd), a word derived from a term that means subordinate or under someone's rule-and could be sold.
Journal Article