Review of Patrick Manning's "The African Diaspora." (2009)
Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pgs. 394
Written as a synthesis for undergraduates, but also to provide scholars with one view on the state of the field, Patrick Manning (1941 - present), a historian of the global Black Diaspora and professor emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh, frames his book The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (2009) as a means of exploring and navigating the concept of a global Black diaspora. This book has some useful insights, though its arguments are not as strong as the author believes.
Manning organized his book chronologically into seven chapters. That he was able to synthesize and organize cohesively history from the medieval period to the early 2000s is quite remarkable, particularly given the breadth of his discussions. Ultimately, Manning, as a global historian, argues that connections between the strands of the African diaspora cannot be ignored and that Black people have etched a continual mark on the world. Important to his thesis is the concept that Afrocentricity (idea of creating a Black nationalism through reframing Africa’s history as triumphant and innocent) or the Black Atlantic world (looking at African descended peoples in the Atlantic Ocean Basin) are insufficient. He argues that to understand the framework of modernity it is essential to understand not only the history of Europe, but also that of Africa and the rest of the globe. By tracing Black peoples’ experience across the globe, one can come to see the the transition to modernity.
Another key point in Manning’s argument is that Black people are contributors to the cultures and engage in cultural change and cultural creation. Unlike previous historians who argue that Black cultures in the Americas are in reality primarily a reflection of Africa, Manning follows the view (similar to Michael Gomez) that there is a blending of cultures that have regional variations. While emphasizing race as a construct, unlike other scholars such as Gomez who see Black peoples helping create a construction of race, this was a white Euro-American imposition on the entire Black diaspora.
Overall, Manning’s suggestion to remember that there is a broader global context is important. His evidence of Black people residing across the globe is compelling and as he notes, this surely had an impact on cultures and the creation of the idea of race. He also does a good job in reminding scholars to remember the complexity of history. Rather than a single slave trade, there were numerous trades that emanated out of and into Africa. Furthermore, the Black diaspora’s cultural creation was not just tied to slavery, but to a longer and much larger history that spans centuries and across hundreds of empires, kingdoms, nations, and regions.
However, in his global approach there is too much generalizations that ultimately undermine the metanarrative. While Manning’s narrative has far more complexity than I have seen in other works, there is much to be desired. For example, his depiction of the Haitian Revolution is a case in point of the over generalizations that overemphasize a harmonistic world shattered by exploitative European practices that as Manning states in Chapter Three led to the “corruption of African society.”
In Manning’s narrative the Haitian Revolution is a heroic revolt in which enslaved people rise up against their white enslavers, and though engaging in complex alliances, ultimately set up a triumphant republic. This narrative will likely be familiar to many who read general narratives of Haiti, however the reality is so much more complex. It is true that the enslaved rose up in the northern province of San Domingue (Haiti) and that this ultimately led to a civil war that broke the power of slavery and resulted in a Black Republic (eventually in the mid-19th century). However, missing in Manning’s narrative are the complexities of the revolt. Enslaved people not only fought white enslavers, but also Black enslavers. Former enslaved people allied with their former masters and others who promoted slavery. White people fought white people over the ideas of the French Revolution, and my account fails to recognize the intervention of the Spanish, the British, and the Americans which created even more chaos. Furthermore, the establishment of Haiti was not the establishment of a republic, but rather an empire. Dessalines, the victorious leader of the Haitian rebels (as well as the famous Toussaint Louverture) promoted a system of exploitation of the lower sorts that was as near to slavery as one could get. This is the reality of Haiti that is gone from Manning’s triumphant narrative.
This small story is emblematic of other aspects of the book. Africa was “ a balance of egalitarian society and domination” (a concept I find lacking historical reality). He also argues that John Thornton, a careful scholar of early modern Africa, employed “orientalist” methods in understanding Africa.1 Ultimately, however, Manning’s text does not capture the richness or complexity of Africa, his text generally suggesting that all of Africa could be lumped together with minimal distinctions. Africans are framed as victims in the Atlantic world, forced into an oppressive capitalistic system by market driven Europeans. While certainly those who were forced into the slave trade are victims, Manning’s arguments ignore the reality that Europeans were not the only factors in expanding the slave trade.
While widely praised by peer reviewers, this text ultimately left me unconvinced of the interconnections of a global Black Diaspora prior to the twentieth century. Manning failed to demonstrate a strong flow of ideas between his three regions of “African homeland, Old World, and Atlantic world.” Furthermore, the framing of the narrative of Africa as almost a heroic narrative (particularly the African communist parties) downplays the realities of a world that was as violent, exploitative, and coercive as any other across the globe. There are good points, such as noting that the African Diaspora was more widespread than scholars generally think about and that there are interesting parallels in experiences of those within the Black Diaspora. However, as noted in my comments on his framing of the Haitian Revolution, far too much in the narrative stripped the complexity of the Black Diaspora and global history, creating an interesting story, but one that ultimately has large amounts of mythmaking embedded within its pages.
Robert Swanson
This felt more like a “dog-whistle” for fellow academics, rather than a strong argument. Manning ignores some of the best evidence presented by Thornton and straw mans much of Thornton’s larger argument.