Deep roots : rice farmers in West Africa and the African diaspora / Edda L. Fields-Black.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fields-Black, Edda L.

Series:

Blacks in the diaspora.

Blacks in the diaspora

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nalu (African people)--Agriculture--Guinea.

Nalu (African people).

Baga (African people)--Agriculture--Guinea.

Baga (African people).

Rice farmers--Guinea--History--18th century.

Rice farmers.

Rice trade--Guinea--History--18th century.

Rice trade.

Slave trade--Guinea--History--18th century.

Slave trade.

Rice--South Carolina--History--18th century.

Rice.

Rice--Georgia--History--18th century.

Slavery--South Carolina--History--18th century.

Slavery.

Slavery--Georgia--History--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

The Rio Nunez region : a small corner of West Africa's rice coast region

The first-comers and the roots of coastal rice-growing technology

The newcomers and the seeds of tidal rice-growing technology

Coastal collaboration and specialization : flowering of tidal rice-growing technologies

The strangers and the branches of coastal rice-growing technology

Feeding the slave trade : the trade in rice and captives from West Africa's rice coast

Conclusion

Appendix 1 : fieldwork interviews

Appendix 2 : rice terminology in Atlantic languages spoken in the coastal Rio Nunez region.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-256) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-23829-9

9786612238291

0-253-00296-6

OCLC:

434586616