| Abstract: | "This multilayered study of the history of relations between Africa and the Americas focuses on the United States from the colonial era to the present. Our intent is to provide those interested in Africana studies, African American studies, African studies, Atlantic history, world history, and international relations with a one-stop account of Africa's bonding with the United States. The relationship began with the dawn of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which preceded the official founding of the United States. The early stage of relations highlight the contours of slavery and African American struggles for survival, emancipation, and reconnection with the African ancestral homeland. Tracing our history to the early colonial era allows us to account for shifting concepts, geographical spaces, and peoples. Africa, Pan-Africanism, and the United States have meant different things at different times to different peoples, including the new millennials who ushered in the presidency of Barack Obama in 2008. In our view, the manner in which Whites treated Blacks in America shaped the nature and substance of the United States-Africa relationship. The United States-Africa relations are analogous to a marital relationship. They share all the suspense, resolution, love, and hate that go with every connubial relationship, especially a forced marriage. They further denote the allure of creolization, trust and betrayal, patriarchal authority and defiance, the sublimity of rights and wrongs associated with kinship belonging, the consequences of the actions, inactions, and indulgences of members in a common union, and of course the rigors of hubris, abuses, diplomacy, and the throes of conflict and peacemaking. The African American experience was the most notable life force that produced the trans-Atlantic exchanges and continued to drive them until 1900. This process will likely continue to affect the future of United States-Africa relations"-- |
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