8. African Diasporas in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds

Compare and Contrast “African Diasporas” in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.

Students might discuss African diasporas in comparative contexts within the framework of the following questions:

  • How do we define “diaspora”?

  • Compare and contrast the relationship between slavery, racial formation, and diasporic consciousness in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. How – if at all -- did British imperial abolition figure into these relationships?

  • What did “African” mean in the context of Indian Ocean slavery histories and how was it shaped by interactions with the Arab world?

    Scroll down for sample primary sources on some of these topics.

Sample Sources for African Diasporas in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds

  • Examine Source 8A: the photograph and quotation attributed to the pioneering Black feminist journalist and emigration advocate, Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Study Source 8B: the photograph and Memoirs of an Arabian Princess by Emily Ruete (Salamah bint Saïd; Sayyida Salme, Princess of Zanzibar and Oman) (1844-1924), who had been born of an enslaved Circassian mother. This source is available online on the Library of Congress website.

  • Reflect on what these sources tell us about the meaning of diaspora, the relationship between slavery and the formation of diasporic consciousness, and perceptions of British imperial abolition in the Black Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. For context, read Chapters 5, 6, 7, and the Epilogue, of Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves.

Source 8A

“You cannot be a whole African Nation here brethren, but you can be part of the Colored British nation. This nation knows no one color above another, but being composed of all colors, it is evidently a colored nation.” (Cited in Sojourners, n., 324)

Photo: Unidentified artist, portrait of Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893). Artwork in the public domain, courtesy National Archives of Canada, C-029977.

Source 8B

Memoirs of an Arabian Princess by Emily Ruete (Salamah bint Saïd; Sayyida Salme, Princess of Zanzibar and Oman) (1844-1924)

Translated by Lionel Strachey. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1907, open access on the Library of Congress website.
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/scd0001.00300071089