Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (Blacks in the Diaspora) - Hardcover

Fields-Black, Edda L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253352193 ISBN 13: 9780253352194

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Mangrove rice farming on West Africa's Rice Coast was the mirror image of tidewater rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans in 18th-century South Carolina and Georgia. This book reconstructs the development of rice-growing technology among the Baga and Nalu of coastal Guinea, beginning more than a millennium before the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals a picture of dynamic pre-colonial coastal societies, quite unlike the static, homogenous pre-modern Africa of previous scholarship. From its examination of inheritance, innovation, and borrowing, Deep Roots fashions a theory of cultural change that encompasses the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African diaspora.

About this title

About the Author

Edda L. Fields-Black is an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, specializing in pre-colonial and West African history. With research interests extending into the African diaspora, for more than 15 years Fields-Black has traveled to and lived in Guinea, Sierra Leone, South Carolina, and Georgia to uncover the history of African rice farmers and rice cultures.

Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253352193
• ISBN 13: 9780253352194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 277