This introduction to the history of the African diaspora is essentially directed at undergraduates in North America. Ambitiously, Manning interprets the history of Africa and the dispersion of people from Africa in broad sweeps of time that begin well before the era of trans-Atlantic slavery and last until the present. In an introductory chapter, he defines the various terms that he uses in relatively simple language that should assist in teaching the subject matter of African history and the dispersal of African peoples, especially through slavery. In a field of study that is rapidly changing as new research comes to light, Manning's attempt is bold, but nonetheless selective and individualistic.

The book is organized into eight chapters, whose themes are intended, in chronological sequence, to outline the cultural history of African migration. After the opening chapter of definitions, which focuses largely on Anglophone scholarship and definitions, the book chronicles the interaction of Africa with the rest of the world in the context of slavery and the racialized legacy of slavery in the Americas. Manning convincingly connects African history to the history of the Americas and the development of the Atlantic world. He also places Africa in the context of the Islamic world and the Indian Ocean. His perspective is important in conveying a global approach to history, of which he has been a primary advocate. The power of the interpretation, beginning before trans-Atlantic slavery and extending to the present, is Manning's sweep of history. By looking at history through culture, he is able to bridge the slavery era of the Middle Passage to both the African past and the multicultural present. Slavery itself is put in perspective, as reflected in his interesting effort to assess the relative numbers of free Africans and enslaved Africans in different parts of the world in 1800, 1860, and 1900 (p. 163). The high points of the book are the 27 wonderful illustrations that are used to develop the main theme of the book, the examination of Africa and the African diaspora through culture.

The main elements of the African diaspora that Manning explores address how it is that Africans and their descendants have cohered into a global community, which inevitably involves a discussion of the discourse on race that has prevailed over the past several centuries. By examining the changing economic conditions and developments of the ‘modern’ world, Manning shows how the daily life of people, as conditions changed over time, influenced the evolution of popular culture and the shaping of the contemporary world. Far from treating Africans and their descendants as if they lived on the margins of the modern world, he shows how the African experience has been central to its evolution.

While there are bibliographic essays at the end of each chapter that can assist undergraduates in exploring the literature, there is no overall bibliography, which limits the functionality of the book as an introduction. In Manning's discussion of African history, his citations often do not include the latest scholarship, and therefore the bibliography is outdated. In his discussion of the Sokoto Caliphate, for example, he cites the pioneering and indeed important scholarship of Murray Last and Melvyn Hiskett, which dates to the 1960s, but nothing more recent. Even for the Bight of Benin, an area of specialization for Manning early in his career, the references to the best scholarship are thin, and there is no explanation why he accepts interpretations that doubt that Olaudah Equiano was born in Africa. The book leaves us with the stereotype that North America has been the center of the African diaspora, more because of the undergraduate market than because that is what happened. Fraser and Herskovits are discussed as if this was the only debate in the Americas, once again reflecting the bias of Anglophone scholarship, which will be surprising for most Africanists who have to deal with the debates and contributions of scholars from various backgrounds and where the English language is not the filter. Students are exposed to the literature through a lens that reinforces an image that if research is not published in English then it does not matter. Moreover, the choice of literature within the English-language tradition is also selective. Manning pioneered an early online journal to explore slavery and diaspora, which has subsequently ceased to exist. Yet that initiative was associated with important breakthroughs that subsequently spawned a very large literature on ethnicity and trans-Atlantic continuities and disjuncture, which unfortunately is overlooked in this volume.

While Manning considers the African diaspora experience throughout the world, there is still a concentration on North America, which is perhaps inevitable given the market there. While crucial, the experiences of slavery, emancipation, and renaissance in North America are privileged, even though fewer than 5 per cent of Africans went there during the era of slavery. By contrast, considerably more people of African descent have migrated to the United States since the ending of slavery, which now shapes the contours of the African impact there.

As Manning demonstrates, there was an extensive migration of Africans and people of African descent beginning in the medieval period and continuing to the present. Slavery was a central feature of this migration for centuries. How the world has responded to the continuing migration of free Africans since the ending of trans-Atlantic slavery adds dimensions to our understanding of the African diaspora and emerges as a major problem of analysis. Manning's study is a superb attempt to bridge the gap between our understanding of the forced deportation of Africans into slavery and the continuing emigration due to economic, educational, and other opportunities outside of continental Africa, and indeed for the migration within Africa, since the ending of the Atlantic slave trade.