What are the origins of slavery and race-based prejudice in the mainland American colonies? How did the Atlantic slave trade operate to supply African labor to colonial America? How did African-American culture form and evolve? How did the American Revolution affect men and women of African descent?

Previous editions of this work depicted African-Americans in the American mainland colonies as their contemporaries saw them: as persons from one of the four continents who interacted economically, socially, and politically in a vast, complex Atlantic world. It showed how the society that resulted in colonial America reflected the mix of Atlantic cultures and that a group of these people eventually used European ideas to support creation of a favorable situation for those largely of European descent, omitting Africans, who constituted their primary labor force.

In this fourth edition of African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution, acclaimed scholar Donald R. Wright offers new interpretations to provide a clear understanding of the Atlantic slave trade and the nature of the early African-American experience. This revised edition incorporates the latest data, a fresh Atlantic perspective, and an updated bibliographical essay to thoroughly explore African-Americans’ African origins, their experience crossing the Atlantic, and their existence in colonial America in a broadened, more nuanced way.

DONALD R. WRIGHT is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, Emeritus, at SUNY-Cortland, USA. In 2003 he was Scholar-in-Residence at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.  He is the author of African Americans in the Early Republic, 1789—1831 and The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia, 3rd ed., and is co-author of The Atlantic World: A History. He lives in Beaufort, South Carolina.