African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: identities between integration and conflict
Author
Ehud R. Toledano (ed.)
Publisher
Trenton, London: Africa World Press
Year of publication
2012
ISBN
978-1-59221-851-6
OPAC
Abstract
The undeniable presence of the past and its cultural vestiges in the daily lives of displaced populations has been a noticeable feature of diasporas across the globe. The world of spirits and the need to keep in constant touch with them have been part and parcel of almost all pre-modern cultural systems, African ones being a prominent case in point. There can hardly be any doubt that coerced displacement and forced migration of enslaved populations from Africa into many parts of the world was a traumatic experience, and Africans in the diasporic communities of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Worlds had frequent and intense recourse to significant components of their origin-cultures.