John K. Thornton is an American historian specializing in the
history of Africa
Archaic humans Out of Africa 1, emerged out of Africa between 0.5 and 1.8 million years ago. This was followed by the Recent African origin of modern humans, emergence of anatomically modern humans, modern humans (''Homo sapiens'') in East A ...
, the
African Diaspora
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from List of ethnic groups of Africa, people from Africa. The term most commonly refers to the descendants of the native West Africa, West and Central Africans who were ...
and the
Atlantic world. He is a professor in the history department at
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...
.
Biography
Early life and education
Thornton was born 3 May 1949 in
Fort Monroe
Fort Monroe is a former military installation in Hampton, Virginia, at Old Point Comfort, the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, United States. It is currently managed by partnership between the Fort Monroe Authority for the Commonwealth o ...
,
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
. His father, Col. Robert L. Thornton, was then serving in the
US Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
, eventually becoming a professor of Business Administration at
Miami University
Miami University (informally Miami of Ohio or simply Miami) is a public university, public research university in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the second-oldest List of colleges and universities in Ohio, university in Ohi ...
in Oxford, Ohio. His mother, Mary E. (Kelly) Thornton, a classicist, was also later a professor at Miami U. His sister is novelist
Betsy Thornton. His daughter
Amara Thornton is a historian of archaeology working in the United Kingdom. He was educated at the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
(1971) and
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
(1972 and PhD 1979).
He is married to fellow Africanist historian and collaborator
Linda Heywood.
Career
Thornton held various history faculty positions in the United States and Africa during the 1980s including the
University of Zambia
The University of Zambia (UNZA) is a public university located in Lusaka, Zambia. It is Zambia's largest and oldest learning institution. The university was established in 1965 and officially opened to the public on 12 July 1966. The language of ...
,
Allegheny College
Allegheny College is a private liberal arts college in Meadville, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1815, Allegheny is the oldest college in continuous existence under the same name west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is a member of the G ...
and the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
. He joined the faculty at
Millersville University in 1986 and joined the
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...
faculty in fall 2003.
Works
Thornton focused initially on the history of the
Kingdom of Kongo
The Kingdom of Kongo ( or ''Wene wa Kongo;'' ) was a kingdom in Central Africa. It was located in present-day northern Angola, the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, southern Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. At its gre ...
. From the start of this work, Thornton became convinced that the status of Kongo as a Christian country had not been fully recognized through his work on missionary baptismal statistics which he sought to show reflected large scale baptism and used this material to write a treatise on Kongo demography. His work on baptismal records resulted in the publication of the article "Demography and History in the Kingdom of Kongo" (1977), and a contribution on another baptismal document in the First Edinburgh Conference on African Historical Demography (1978).
Thornton's thesis, published as ''The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718'' (Madison, 1983) advanced the idea that Kongo's centralization was the result of a massive buildup of slave-worked plantations in the vicinity of its capital during the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, and allowed kings to be overwhelmingly powerful. However, he argued, the persistent civil wars of the seventeenth century and the rise of a new population center in the coastal province of
Soyo
Soyo (formerly known as ''Santo António do Zaire'') is a city, with a population of 200,920 (2014 census), and a municipality, with a population of 227,175 (2014 census), located in the province of Zaire in Angola, at the mouth of the Congo Riv ...
led to the depopulation of São Salvador and the loss of its centralization. In addition to this larger theme, Thornton also tried to integrate a history from below description of daily life and culture in the country by mining carefully the extensive documentation of the Capuchin missionaries in the country. In this work, he deliberately ignored using either earlier or later materials and much of the ethnographic materials so as to determine continuity and change in the kingdom. Thornton would return to this theme in writing the biography of
Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita in showing the daily life of Kongo in her times (1684–1706).
Thornton's second book, ''Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1650'' (
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
, 1992, the second edition in 1998 extended its framework to 1800) was an examination of the Atlantic portions of Africa and their involvement in the
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of Slavery in Africa, enslaved African people to the Americas. European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Pass ...
, as well as the impact of Africans in the American countries to which they were carried. In this work, Thornton sought to demonstrate that Africans had been more active participants in the trade that was previously believed, arguing controversially that African economic strength and power were sufficient to force Europeans to deal with them on their own terms.
At the same time, he also argued that Africans were not stripped of their culture in the
Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of Africans sold for enslavement were forcibly transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manu ...
and retained most of it in the first generation of their captivity. He tried to show how African sensibilities continued to be dominant in the first generation of captives in art, music, and language. He also suggested that resistance in the form of revolts in particular had roots in African military systems, and this last point was pursued in detail in several studies of
slave revolts and the
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution ( or ; ) was a successful insurrection by slave revolt, self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolution was the only known Slave rebellion, slave up ...
.
His studies of Africa in the slave trade led him, at the urging of English historian
Jeremy Black to write a systematic study of African wars and military culture in the period of the slave trade, which appeared in 1999 as ''Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800'' (
University College of London
University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...
, 1999).
In 2007 he and his longtime collaborator (and wife) Linda Heywood published ''Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660'' (Cambridge University Press). This work demonstrated that thanks to English and Dutch
privateering
A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since Piracy, robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sover ...
on Portuguese vessels, virtually all the first generation of slaves brought to the colonies of these two countries came from Central Africa. They then went on to argue that the long contact between this region and Europe, the conversion of many of the people to Christianity, and the adaptation of various European items of culture, they could be considered "
Atlantic Creoles" a term popularized by historian
Ira Berlin. Basing themselves of many local archives in the United States, Bermuda, Barbados, England and the Netherlands, they went on to suggest that the Christian background of many early slaves may account for their high
manumission
Manumission, or enfranchisement, is the act of freeing slaves by their owners. Different approaches to manumission were developed, each specific to the time and place of a particular society. Historian Verene Shepherd states that the most wi ...
rate and their role in cultural foundations of the Americas.
Thornton's work on the African Diaspora had also been accompanied by a growing interest in the indigenous people of the Americas, and their interaction with Europeans. Inspired by this idea,Thornton turned a course he had been teaching since 1995 into a new book, ''A Cultural History of the Atlantic World'', in 2012. This book was an attempt to rethink the heritage of the Americas, and particular North America as owing as much or more to the larger Atlantic World as to the extension of Europe. Thus it sought to have comprehensive coverage of Africa, both American continents and the Caribbean; while at the same time following up the cultural threads he had first explored in ''Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World''. The book was awarded the World History Association's annual prize for 2012.
Honors and awards
He shared the 2008
Herskovits Prize for his book (co-authored with
Linda Heywood) ''Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660''.
In 2012, he was awarded the World History Association's annual prize for the best book in world history.
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020
Selected bibliography
Books
*''The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718'' (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press
The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a Non-profit organization, non-profit university press publishing Peer review, peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic comm ...
, 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: 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: 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: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
*
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thornton, John
1949 births
21st-century American historians
20th-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
American male non-fiction writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American Africanists
Historians of Africa
University of Michigan alumni
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Boston University faculty
Living people
ASA Best Book Prize winners