Judith Carney

This proposal is to fund research and writing of a book on the African botanical legacy in the Americas. The volume illuminates key plants of African origin and the role of the enslaved in establishing them for subsistence, cultural identity, religious practice, and healing. The book fills a void in the Columbian Exchange literature, which ignores African botanical contributions to global plant history and the role of the enslaved as botanical agents. Attention is directed to how African indigenous knowledge complexes
informed subsistence in plantation economies. In drawing attention to the botanical resources of the African diaspora, the intent is to promote historical recovery of African contributions to the making of the Americas.