ABSTRACT
An important and ongoing discussion among historians provides the theoretical backdrop for this chapter. That is, certain scholars deny the notion that it was the dispersal of continental Africans during the transatlantic slave trade which created the first and only significant African diasporic rupture (Cohen 1997; Segal 1995). Although arguably the most socially and culturally disruptive, the forced migration of continental Africans for the purposes of labour exploitation was not the first African diaspora. Cheik Anta Diop (1990), Ivan Van Sertima (1976) and Runoko Rashidi (1992) among other revisionist scholars have provided ample historical and archaeological evidence that continental Africans circumnavigated the globe-the New World in general and the Americas in particular-many centuries before the celebrated journey of Christopher Columbus among other explorers. These scholarly interventions pave the way for reconceptualizations of contemporary (pre-and post-Columbian) African diasporas. In turn, these periodized reformulations of African diaspora(s) carve out cogent spaces for contemporary discourses on the English-African diaspora. In particular, as I have defined it, the English-African diaspora conventionally comprises African post-colonial constituents from the Caribbean, North and Latin America and continental Africa who find themselves in England for labour, schooling, political asylum, and frequently by birth.
