More than 100 million Africans were forced from their towns and taken on the journey to the Atlantic shore; but only 15 million survived. Even less made it to the Americas Many were taken to South and Central America and enslaved there; the rest were brought to the New World. I found it difficult to grasp that of “6 ½ million people in the New World” from 1492-1776, “5 out of 6 were African.” It amazes me that about 1.1 million were able to oppress over 5 million people and it worked, sadly.
I also learned about the “maroon societies.” I find it very interesting how certain things are simply omitted from American history textbooks. It’s good to know that they actually did resist efficiently, and not only in the New World, in other countries as well. There were actually more slaves in Brazil than in the New World and we are not taught that either.
It is widely misconceived that the Africans forced from their homelands also abandoned all their traditions and culture. I did not know that so many things in our daily lives are from the the things Africans did not leave in Africa and we do not know it (i.e. food, music, language, literature, dance and countless others).
One way scholars tend to explain the African dismemberment is through “historical narratives of loss and emptiness.” They tend to view it as the Africans losing everything they once lived for and this resulted in a feeling of emptiness and therefore they absorbed everything from the New World and became Americanized. This is not necessarily a correct ay of looking at it because, as I stated earlier and how scholars reject the narrative of loss, the African people did not lose everything, they actually brought much of it with them to the new world.
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