Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora

Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora. MICHAEL A. GOMEZ. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 236 pp. (Cloth US$ 55.00)

Michael A. Gomez has established himself as one of the premier scholars in the field of African Diaspora studies, not only as the author of such critically acclaimed books as Exchanging Our Country Marks and Black Crescent, but also as the founder and president of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). As such, few people are as qualitied as Gomez to write a general history of the African diaspora. Reversing Sail is not the lengthy, in-depth study that some might expect. Rather, it is a 236-page interpretive overview of the African diaspora, aimed primarily at the undergraduate classroom.

The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, "'Old' World Dimensions," Gomez highlights the contributions of Africans and their descendants in the ancient histories of Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, noting that Africans were "not always under the heel but were in fact at the forefront of human civilization" (p. 8). Chapter 1, "Antiquity," is a discussion of Africans in Egypt, Nubia, Greece, and Rome. Chapter 2, "Africans and the Bible," considers the historical role of Africans in the Bible, as well as the influence of the Bible on post-Biblical Africans in the diaspora. Chapter 3, "Africans and the Islamic World," concentrates on the role of Africans in the formation and spread oflslam between roughly 600 and 1500 CE.

Much of Part One seems torn between a desire to note the various contributions of African-descended peoples and the desire to bring new interpretive perspectives to their histories. The "contributionist" aspects of these chapters make for difficult...