Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Interactions, Identities, and ...

enslaved and freed people—as well as slave merchants and slave owners—constantly traveled within the American continent and through the Atlantic ports.¹⁴ Many of these men and women spoke several languages and were able to move between different spaces and cultures. Usually perceived as mediators or in-betweens—sometimes seen as traitors and collaborators—they formed Atlantic Creole communities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.¹⁵ However, as James H. Sweet pointed out, historians such as Linda H. Heywood and John K. Thornton conceptualized creolization as the process through which Africans—both in the African continent and in the Americas—embraced European cultures and values.¹⁶ As some chapters in this book demonstrate, creolization was a multidirectional process (especially in the South Atlantic but in other regions as well). Creolization was a synonym not only for Europeanization but also for Africanization and Brazilianization. Whereas many Africans in Brazil embraced Catholicism and European values while keeping alive African cultures and religions, many Europeans and Brazilians living in West and West Central Africa embraced African religions and cultural values. As Peter Mark explained, during the sixteenth century, the Portuguese who lived in the Petite Côte (in present-day Senegal) and who initially spoke Portuguese eventually transformed their native tongue into Crioulo, a new language that mixed elements of Portuguese and of West African languages.¹⁷ In addition, during the seventeenth century in the Petite Côte, “Luso-African religion was actually an amalgam of Christian, Jewish, and African practices.”¹⁸ Brazilian slave merchants who settled in Luanda, Benguela, and Ouidah during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (e.g., the well-known Francisco Félix de Souza, 1754–1849) consolidated their ties with their new homelands by embracing African religions and customs and marrying African women.¹⁹ Although African-born former slaves who returned to the Bight of Benin brought with them Brazilian manners, tastes, cuisine, ways of dressing, and even architectural styles, they had kept their old connections with African religions such as Vodun and Orisha, as well as Isla

This book emphasizes the existence of many Atlantic worlds that, despite their interconnection, contain unique and diverse features that