Africa and the Early American Republic: Comments

Historians of Africa and the Early Republic have overlapping interests both temporally and thematically. To date, this has largely been dominated by the role of the slave trade in both histories. Drawing on some existing examples of the historiography that makes use of comparison and shared methodology, the essay proposes that the two fields can learn from each other in ways that extend beyond their connections to the slave trade and enslaved labor. This essay suggests three ways that the two fields could be further enriched by sharing methodologies, by being imaginative about comparisons across time, and by thinking about the shared trends that developed in their overlapping Atlantic spaces.