# BIOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND DIASPORA  
The Bight of Benin and Bahia Kristin Mann and Lisa Earl Castillo  
Exciting new research is demonstrating the possibility of recovering biographical information about individual African slaves and reconstructing the contours of their lives. Long limited to the rare African men and even rarer African women who left narratives or autobiographical testimony of one kind or another, historians are now expanding research on individual Africans, both enslaved and freed, by combing ecclesiastical, notary and other secular sources in archives around the Atlantic world and piecing together the fragments of information they uncover to narrate and interpret their lives. Oral traditions handed down within families, religious communities, town quarters, and other populations are also yielding vital insights. The work is beginning to reclaim the untold stories of men, women and children torn from their natal homes and brutalized by enslavement and trade, rescuing them from near universal anonymity. The recovery of these human stories is bringing to light anew the terrible realities of slavery and the slave trade in Africa and the Americas and making them more immediate and concrete. The biographical research, moreover, is casting a bold new light on Africans' resilience and resourcefulness in surviving slavery, re-forging identity and community, and, sometimes, escaping slavery through redemption, manumission, rebellion, running away, or other means. In the case of the fortunate minority of Africans who freed themselves, biographical analysis is demonstrating the oppression and vulnerability they  
continued to face. All of this new historical knowledge is transforming our understanding of the origins and development of the global African diaspora (Law and Lovejoy, 2001; Reis, 2008; Sweet, 2011; Scott and Hébrard, 2012). ${ }^{1}$