Like in his earlier seminal work, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, John Thornton and Linda Heywood's Central Africans rest on a simple premise, the Americas during the period of Atlantic expansion were more of an African than a European periphery. Operating from this premise, the authors spend the majority of a book about the foundation of the Americas within the geographic confines of the African continent.
In Thornton and Heywood's telling the slave trade was fueled by European demand but the contours of the trade, those who were enslaved, and their cultural traits were shaped by trends within Africa. This is not to say that the authors assign agency or responsibility for the Atlantic slave trade to Africans rather than Europeans, but they emphasize the ways in which Europeans were forced to reckon with the reality of African power and could not engage in slaving precisely as they wished.
Creolization, in this account was not the product of European enslavement but likewise had its roots in Africa. The rise of Atlantic creoles was not an indication of European hegemony but was at times freely chosen by Africans for their own political, economic, and nationalistic interests. Especially within Kongo the adoption of Christianity, European language, and writing were no way imposed. The author's major contribution is to conceive of the birth of African American culture not simply with Africans, or Africanisms, but within Africa.
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