World wars, long-distance markets, and the slave trade brought millions of Africans to the Americas, a population movement that is at the center of modernity in the West. The era of European contact with Africa and the indigenous societies of the Americas contributed to vast global changes in the social, cultural, ecological, and political realms. It created new cultures and new peoples. The scattering of Africa's millions was unique in that this diaspora [Greek, dispersion, from diaspeirein to scatter, from dia- + speirein to sow] was the result of elaborate planning and often carried out by force in ways that obscured the historical connections between the western hemisphere, Africa, and the Eurasian land mass.

This course will recover some of those historical linkages. Topics covered include the slave trade; reconstituting and reinventing African communities in the Americas; maroonage, rebellion and revolution; mercantilism, Islam in the Americas; contract laborers and returnees; the emigration and colonization movements; Garveyism; Ethiopianism; and anticolonialism.