Review of Trajectories of Empire: Transhispanic Reflections on the African Diaspora. Vanderbilt UP, 2022, edited by Jerome C. Branche.

Resumen

Trajectories of Empire: Transhispanic Reflections on the African Diaspora, edited by Jerome Branche, is an interdisciplinary research work that provides a better understanding of the presence of Africans in the Iberian Peninsula and the Ibero-American empire. The book is an effective reading of the journey and settlement of Africans in the Iberian Peninsula from the fifteen-century as well as their living conditions in Cuba and Brazil. From enslaved and freed individual to swordsman, leaders and venerable, afrodescendant experiences are not monolithic nor homogeneous but diverse and multidimensional. By using case studies in their research papers, the authors personalize human experiences at a microlevel and show how different aspects of an afrodescendant's life are related to and also different from each other. This method is also a way of relativizing general assumptions that might not correspond to individual context.