Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World - by James H Sweet (Paperback)

About the Book

Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World"

Book Synopsis

Between 1730 and 1750, powerful healer and vodun priest Domingos Álvares traversed the colonial Atlantic world like few Africans of his time -- from Africa to South America to Europe -- addressing the profound alienation of warfare, capitalism, and the African slave trade through the language of health and healing. In Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World, James H. Sweet finds dramatic means for unfolding a history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world in which healing, religion, kinship, and political subversion were intimately connected.

Review Quotes

"Domingos Álvares imaginatively re-creates the life of a fascinating character brought before the Portuguese Inquisition, and in so doing the book highlights the social and political ramifications of vodun-inspired healing practices and other forms of cultural diffusion linking the Bight of Benin to Brazil during the eighteenth century." --William and Mary Quarterly

"[An] insightful examination of the politics of healing." --Early American Literature

"[A] laudable and exemplary new study. . . . This richly detailed account will be considered among the best of a generation of Black Atlantic histories." --International Journal of African Historical Studies

"[A] well-written narrative. . . . Sweet exposes one of the many ways in which African cultural practices profoundly shaped the interactions between 18th-century Africans and Europeans." --Journal of African American History

"[This book] will be of significant interest to specialists of the Atlantic World, particularly those of the Black Atlantic, and will likely generate lively discussions in graduate seminars." --Register of The Kentucky Historical Society

"A fine, well-constructed and cogently argued piece of microhistory." --The Americas

"Demonstrates an interesting, well-written, and rigorous methodological approach to studying the commonalities of the life and politics of Domingo Álvares. . . . Sweet has produced a comprehensive examination of the African diaspora with emphasis on the Black Atlantic." --The Historian

"Sweet offers not only a glimpse into the intellectual life of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world but perhaps even an epistemological model for the struggles of our own time." --HAHR

"Sweet's contribution to the literature is profound as he brings Africa to the center of an Atlantic historiography." --Latin American Research Review

"This book should become mandatory reading for graduate students as well as faculty working on Atlantic history. . . . The skillful prose of this work also should be a model for other historians." --Journal of World History