John Thornton (historian) - Principal Publications

Principal Publications

Books:

The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983).

Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1992, second expanded edition, 1998). Portuguese translation: África e Africanos na Formação do Mundo Atlântico, 1400-1800 (Rio de Janeiro: Estampa, 2004); Italian translation, L’Africa e gli africani nella formazione del mondo atlantico, 1400-1800 (Bologna: Mulino, 2010).

The Kongolese Saint Anthony. Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 (University College of London Press/Routledge, 1999)

(with Linda Heywood), Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

(ed. and trans.) Evangelical Missions to the Kingdom of Kongo by Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, 1665. Translation published on internet, presently at http://www.bu.edu/afam/faculty/john-thornton/john-thorntons-african-texts/.

A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820. (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Articles

"Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1550-1750," Journal of African History 18 (1977): 507-30.

"An Eighteenth Century Baptismal Register and the Demographic History of Manguenzo" in C. Fyfe and D. McMaster (eds.) African Historical Demography (Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies, 1977): 405-16.

"The Slave Trade in Eighteenth Century Angola: Effects on Demographic Structures" Canadian Journal of African Studies 14 (1980): 417-28.

"Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations, 1483-1575: A New Interpretation" History in Africa 8 (1981): 183-204. French translation in Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire 3 (2001)

"The Chronology and Causes of Lunda Expansion to the West, ca. 1700-1852," Zambia Journal of History 1 (1981): 1-13.

"The Demographic Effect of the Slave Trade on Western Africa, 1500-1850" in C. Fyfe and D. McMaster, African Historical Demography, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies, 1981): 691-720.

"The Kingdom of Kongo, ca. 1390-1678: History of an African Social Formation," Cahiers d'études africaines 22 (1982): 325-42.

"The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1483-1750," Journal of African History 25 (1984): 147-67.

(with Linda M. Heywood), "Demography, Production and Labor: Central Angola, 1890-1950," in Joel Gregory and Dennis Cordell (eds.), African Population and Capitalism (Boulder and London: Westview, 1987): 241-54.

"Tradition, Documents and the Ife-Benin Relationship" History in Africa 15 (1988): 351-62.

"On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas," The Americas 44 (1988): 261-78.

(with Linda Heywood), "African Fiscal Systems as Demographic Sources: The Case of the Central Highlands of Angola, 1770-1900" Journal of African History 29 (1988): 213-28.

"The Art of War in Angola, 1575-1680," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988): 360-78.

"Ideology and Political Power in Central Africa: The Case of Queen Njinga (1624-1663),” Journal of African History 32 (1991): 25-40.

"African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion," American Historical Review 96 (1991): 1101-13. Reprinted in: Darlene Clark Hine and Ernestine Jenkins, eds. A Question of Manhood: A Reader in US Black Men’s History and Masculinity (Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 115–29 and Mark M Smith, Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt, (University of South Carolina Press, 2005) pp. 73–87

"Pre-Colonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade, 1500-1800," and "The Historian and the Pre-Colonial African Economy: John Thornton Responds," in African Economic History Review 9 (1992), along with comments by four other historians.

"'I am the Subject of the King of Congo': African Ideology in the Haitian Revolution," Journal of World History 4 (1993): 181-214.

"African Soldiers in the Haitian Revolution," Journal of Caribbean History 25 (1993): -80. Reprinted in Laurent Dubois and Julius Scott, eds., Origins of the Black Atlantic: Rewriting Histories (Routledge, 2010), pp. 195–213.

"Central African Names and African American Naming Patterns," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 50 (1993): 727-42.

“The African Experience of the ’20 and Odd Negroes” Arriving in Virginia in 1619,” William and Mary Quarterly 3d series, 55 (1998): 421-34.

“The Coromantees: An African Cultural Group in Colonial North America and the Caribbean,” Journal of Caribbean History 32/1-2 (1998): 161-78.

“War, the State, and Religious Norms in Coromantee Thought,” in Robert Blair St. George (ed.), Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 181–200.

“The Origins and Early History of the Kingdom of Kongo, c. 1350-1550,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34/1 (2001): 1-31.

(with Paula Gershick-Ben Amos) "Civil War in the Kingdom of Benin, 1689-1722: Continuity or Political Change?" Journal of African History 42 (2001): 353-76.

“Religion and Cultural Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500-1800,” in Linda Heywood (ed.), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 71–90.

"Cannibals, Witches and Slave Traders in the Atlantic World," William and Mary Quarterly 60/2 (2003): 273-94.

“Elite Women in the Kingdom of Kongo: Historical Perspectives on Women’s Political Power,” Journal of African History 47 (2006): 437-60.

(with Linda Heywood), “Central African Leadership and the Appropriation of European Culture,” in Peter Mancall, ed., The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 194–224.

“Les États de l’Angola et la formation de Palmares (Brésil),” Annales: Histoire, Sciences sociales 63/4 (2008): 769-97.

(with Linda Heywood) “Kongo and Dahomey, 1660-1815: African Political Leadership in the Era of the Slave Trade and Its Impact on the Formation of African Identity in Brazil,” in Bernard Bailyn, ed. Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1825 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 86–111.

“African Political Ethics and the Slave Trade,” in D. R. Peterson, ed. Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa and the Atlantic. (Oxford, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009), pp. 58–93.