John K. Thornton is Professor of History and African American Studies at Boston University. He is the author of Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500 1800 (1999) and Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400 1800 (Cambridge, 1992, 1998) and the co-author of Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585 1660 (Cambridge, 2007) with Linda M. Heywood.