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The African Experience in Early Spanish America*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Matthew Restall  and
Jane Landers
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Extract

Of the five great African diasporas of historical record, as recently described by Colin Palmer, the fourth includes the story of Blacks in Spanish America. It remains the best studied of the “five major African diasporic streams,” thanks to pioneering work by scholars such as Palmer, Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Frederick Bowser, Herbert Klein, Rolando Mellafe, and others, as well as a flurry of recent and forthcoming publications by a new generation studying this diaspora—among them the contributors to this special issue of The Americas, and the late Kimberly Hanger, to whom the issue is hereby dedicated.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 57 , Issue 2: The African Experience in Early Spanish America , October 2000 , pp. 167 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2000

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Patrick J. Carroll for his insights as outside reader, to Judith Ewell for her support and willingness to move this issue into print with extraordinary speed, and to the contributing authors below for their commendable cooperation, dedication, and efficiency.

References

1 Palmer, Colin, “Defining and Studying the Modern African Diaspora,” Perspectives 36:6 (September 1998), 1, 22–25.Google Scholar Also cited by Lolita Brockington in her article below. Palmer broadly defines a diaspora as a “movement of specific peoples,” and it is in this sense that scholars of the African diaspora in Latin America have come to use the term.

2 The diversity of people of African descent in the Spanish colonies—as illustrated by the articles below—means that no single term adequately describes them all, so it is for obvious reasons of expediency that “black” and “African” are used in this special issue as blanket terms to refer to people of African descent; wherever possible, the authors use more specific, defined terms, such as “Afro-Mexican,” and “pardo” with “African” sometimes defined as a reference to someone certainly or probably born in Africa.

3 See the articles below for specific citations.