Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic. By Wendy Wilson-Fall (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2015) 224 pp. $59.95 cloth $29.95 paper

Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic is a brave attempt to analyze the historical documentation relating to the movement of Malagasy slaves to Virginia and the recollections passed down among descendants of those captives. The specific focus is recondite to an extent, because the flow of slaves covered in the book was relatively small in scale and is not usually associated with histories of Virginia. Madagascar, as one might suppose from its location, mainly supplied slaves to the Indian Ocean world. However, between 1670 and 1698, an unknown number of Malagasy slaves were dispatched to New York, and between 1716 and 1721, around 1,500 Malagasy captives were shipped to Virginia and sold there. This latter cohort forms the basis of this book’s analysis regarding memories of the Malagasy slaves’ presence in Virginian society. The book later broadens its remit to discuss the possible Malagasy impact on the...