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Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America by Duncan Bell

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Princeton UP | Hardcover | $39.85 | Paperback | $27.95 | Published 2020 | 488 pages | ISBN 9780691194011

“Between the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of the First World War, many prominent thinkers in Britain and the United States elaborated a vision for the unification of the English-speaking world into a single political entity. The basis for this utopian thinking was a shared assumption about the racial and cultural exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. This book by Duncan Bell is the first study of the wide range of figures – prominent scholars, journalists, novelists, politicians, and businessmen – who pushed for closer co-operation and integration between the two transatlantic anglophone powers and even for the eventual creation of an ‘Angloworld’ which would extend to the British settler colonies in North America and the Pacific. Such ideas were given added impetus by geopolitical crises, including the Venezuela boundary disputes of the mid-1890s and the imperial wars in South Africa and the Philippines.

The author takes up the ideas of dozens of thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic, from the celebrated to the obscure, though central to the book is a quartet of noteworthy figures: Andrew Carnegie, W.T. Stead, Cecil J. Rhodes, and H.G. Wells. Campaigning groups were established; transatlantic networks were formed; articles, pamphlets, books, and speeches were written and disseminated – all with the aim of emphasizing unity. Proposals for institutionalizing transatlantic links ranged from the modest to the extraordinarily bold. The former included strengthening defense cooperation, deepening economic connections, and coordinating imperial strategy, while the latter encompassed plans for the creation of novel forms of political community, even a single transatlantic state. And much of the thinking was underpinned by ideas about race and a shared Anglo-Saxon cultural inheritance.

Although the popularity of this vision began to wane in the mid-Edwardian era, versions of it reverberated through the twentieth century, and echo now into the present”

Entry prepared by Ammie E. Harrison.

The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man Edited By Barbara McCaskill and Sidonia Serafini, with Paul Walker

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Hardcover| $39.95| Published June 15, 2020| 312 pages | ISBN 9780820356556

From the press: “Born into slavery in Hampton County, Virginia, orphaned soon thereafter, and raised for almost two years among Native Americans, the charismatic Rev. Peter Thomas Stanford (c. 1860-May 20, 1909) rose from humble and challenging beginnings to emerge as an inventive and passionate activist and educator who championed social justice. During the post- Reconstruction era and early twentieth century, Stanford traversed the United States, Canada, and England advocating for the rights of African Americans, including access to educational opportunities; attainment of the full rights and privileges of citizenship; protections from racial violence, social stereotyping, and a predatory legal system; and recognition of the artistic contributions that have shaped national culture and earned global renown. His imprint on working-class urban residents, Afro-Canadian settlements, and African American communities survives in the institutions he led and the works that presented his imaginative, literate, ardent, and often comic voice.

With a reflection by Highgate Baptist Church’s former pastor, Rev. Dr. Paul Walker, this collection highlights Stanford’s writings: sermons, lectures, newspaper columns, entertainments, and memoirs. Editors Barbara McCaskill and Sidonia Serafini annotate his life and work throughout the volume, placing him within the context of his peers as a writer and editor. As an American expatriate, Stanford was seminal in redirecting antislavery activism into an international antilynching movement and a global campaign to dismantle slavery and slave trading. This book squarely inserts this influential thinker and activist in the African American literary canon.”

New Book: Rebecca Shumway, The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

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shumway.cover

From Amazon:

The history of Ghana attracts popular interest out of proportion to its small size and marginal importance to the global economy. Ghana is the land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 19 60s; it has been a temporary home to famous African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois and Maya Angelou; and its Asante Kingdom and signature kente cloth-global symbols of African culture and pride-are well known. Ghana also attracts a continuous flow of international tourists because of two historical sites that are among the most notorious monuments of the transatlantic slave trade: Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. These looming structures are a vivid reminder of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade/ explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana’s coast between 1700 and 1807. Here author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807. Rebecca Shumway is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh.