• Preface to the second edition; Preface to the first edition; Introduction; Part I. Africans in Africa: 1. The birth of the Atlantic world; 2. The development of commerce between Europeans and Africans; 3. Slavery and African social structure; 4. The process of enslavement and the slave trade; Part II. Africans in the New World: 5. Africans in colonial Atlantic societies; 6. Africans and Afro-Americans in the Atlantic world: life and labour; 7. African cultural groups in the Atlantic world; 8. Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world; 9. African religions and Christianity in the Atlantic world; 10. Resistance, runaways, and rebels; Part III. Africans in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.

'A major contribution … the strongest and most articulate statement that Africa and Africans were not passive agents … provocative and insightful.' Paul E. Lovejoy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History