African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer
African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals by David Hackett Fischer
In this sweeping, foundational work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer draws on more than two decades of research to show that there were several varieties of slavery in America, varying from region to region. Moreover, enslaved Africans and their descendants ultimately expanded and enlarged the very concept of American freedom.
Enslaved people brought to America from Africa came from different regions and different ethnic groups, just like their enslavers. Over time they interacted with colonists of European origin to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States, from Puritan New England to Dutch New York, Quaker Pennsylvania, cavalier Virginia, Coastal Carolina, and multicultural Louisiana. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. African Founders reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new, distinctly American culture.
David Fischer has studied documents in dozens of libraries and archives and has done on-the-ground research in western Africa in the course of writing this book. African Founders re-creates the diverse regional life that shaped the early American republic and shows us the varieties of slavery in America and the emergence of a new American civilization.
This landmark work of history will transform our understanding of America's origins.
Simon & Schuster, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2022.
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.