Page 153 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

38 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Religious
and other
articles on
display at
an Afro-
Caribbean
celebration.

fieldwork and archival research, Verger documented African and African-American religions have always
extensive and continuous contact between religious spe- been at the center of debates concerning the retention of
cialists in Africa and religious organizations in the New African cultural traits in the New World. Some prominent
World. He painstakingly demonstrated that the slave scholars, most notably sociologist E. Franklin Frazier
trade was not only “of” Africans (i.e., as objects of the (1964), have suggested that New World slavery was so
trade itself), but “by” Africans as well, in the sense that disruptive that few African traits were able to survive.
Africans and African-Americans were not only laborers Other scholars, most notably anthropologist Melville J.
but also producers and traders in the plantation system, Herskovits (1941), have argued effectively for the survival
and thus played an active role—not just a passive one— of African traits in New World societies. Herskovits’s view
in the ongoing drama of slavery. But Verger also notes has predominated, but the issue remains complex (see
that such “flux and reflux” was rare during the early days Mintz and Price 1992).
of slavery, and most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century The quest for African cultural traits in the New World
slaves were forced to improvise from a limited knowledge continues, but with new and refined sensibilities. The
of African religious traditions. question is no longer whether, but how much? As Stuart
On both sides of the Atlantic the meeting of religions Hall (1990,228)—commenting on the presence africaine
among Africans and people of African descent involved in his native Jamaica—noted,
more than Christianity and the traditional religions of
Africa was, in fact, present everywhere, in the everyday life
Africa. It also involved Islam. Working its way from the
and customs of the slave quarters, in the language and pat-
Sahara long before Christianity began to touch the coast
ois of the plantations, in names and words; often discon-
of West Africa, Islam—like Christianity—interacted in nected from their taxonomies, in the secret syntactical
complex ways with the traditional religions of Africa. structure through which other languages were spoken,in the
Brought to the Americas by enslaved African Muslims, stories and tales told to children, in religious practices and
Islam struggled to survive in an inhospitable, Christian- belief in the spiritual life,the arts,crafts,music and rhythms
dominated environment. of slave and post-emancipation society.... Africa remained