By Jane G. Landers

Crusing the tide of a tumultuous period of Atlantic revolutions, a striking crew of African-born and African-descended contributors reworked themselves from slaves into lively brokers in their lives and instances. mammoth Prince Whitten, the black Seminole Abraham, and basic Georges Biassou have been “Atlantic creoles,” Africans who stumbled on their strategy to freedom via actively undertaking crucial political occasions in their day. those women and men of numerous ethnic backgrounds, who have been fluent in a number of languages and conversant in African, American, and eu cultures, migrated around the new world’s imperial barriers looking for freedom and a secure haven. but, in the past, their awesome lives and exploits were hidden from posterity. via prodigious archival examine, Jane Landers noticeably alters our imaginative and prescient of the breadth and volume of the Age of Revolution, and our knowing of its actors. while Africans within the Atlantic international are generally noticeable as destined for the slave industry and plantation exertions, Landers reconstructs the lives of distinct people who controlled to maneuver purposefully via French, Spanish, and English colonies, and during Indian territory, within the risky century among 1750 and 1850. cellular and adaptive, they shifted allegiances and identities looking on which political chief or application provided the best chance for freedom. no matter if struggling with for the King of Kongo, England, France, or Spain, or for the Muskogee and Seminole chiefs, their thirst for freedom helped to form the process the Atlantic revolutions and to complement the heritage of progressive lives in all instances. (20100430)