| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 234 words from this article are provided below; about 434 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. By Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiv, 370 pp. Cloth, $75.00, ISBN 978-0-521-77065-1. Paper, $22.99, ISBN 978-0-521-77922-7.)
Linda S. Heywood and John K. Thornton are well known for their work on Africa's role in the formation of the early modern Atlantic world and on the African origins of black cultures in the Americas. This important study of the roots and routes of slavery in the Americas combines archival research on three continents with the authors' combined expertise in Central African history, reinforcing their standing as leading practitioners of Atlantic history.	1
The book begins by showing that Central Africans in the early seventeenth century "exhibited varying degrees" of exposure to an Atlantic Creole culture (p. 221). The result of more than a century of interaction with the Portuguese and Dutch, this syncretic culture revealed itself in many ways, but most especially through the adoption of an Africanized Christianity. Noting that roughly 80 percent of slaves carried across the Atlantic on Portuguese and Spanish ships in the first half of the seventeenth century came from Angola, Kongo, Ndongo, and Luango, the book's early chapters build a convincing case that "wars, intrigues, violence, and unstable alliances" generated a "stream of captives" that included large numbers of these Central African Atlantic Creoles (p. 145).	. . .

There are about 434 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.