Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Western Africa Series, 7) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847011365 ISBN 13: 9781847011367

Publisher: James Currey, 2016

Synopsis

Leading scholars here consider commercial agriculture in Africa in relation to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery within Africa itself, from the beginnings of Afro-European maritime trade in the fifteenth century to the early stages of colonial rule in the twentieth century. For Europeans, the export of agricultural produce represented a potential alternative to the slave trade from the outset and there was recurrent interest in establishing plantations in Africa or in purchasing crops from African producers. This idea gained greater currency in the context of the movement for the abolition of the slave trade from the late eighteenth century onwards, when the promotion of commercial agriculture in Africa was seen as a means of suppressing the slave trade.

About this title

About the Author:

Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University of Worcester; Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham.

Review:

(These essays) add much information about the African economies from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as provide new insights into the Atlantic Economy in these years. This is an important collection of first-rate essays. --H-Net

(Looks)... at one of the most perplexing questions in world history: as so many of the crops which were cultivated in the Americas by African slave labour were grown or could be grown in Africa, why were the costs and the horrors of the Middle Passage undertaken? ... It is problematic and demands a serious discussion of what we know about African political economies in the last half of the last millennium AND a real command of the intentions and understandings of the 'merchants trading into Africa..'.This will prove, at least I hope it will prove, to be a much-discussed book. It is a fine collection and it is a major collection.' --Professor Richard Rathbone, Emeritus Professor and Professorial Research Associate, SOAS

Though many books deal with the so-called transition in West Africa from slave trading to legitimate trade, none has such a valuable, direct focus on the role of commercial agriculture in the process. One learns an enormous amount about slavery, slave-trading, the Atlantic slave trade, and the movement to abolish slave trading and slavery from reading this book. This book is of critical importance to each of these topics or sub-fields.' - --Professor Donald Wright, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, State University of New York

About this edition

• Publisher: James Currey
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1847011365
• ISBN 13: 9781847011367
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Law Robin, Schwarz Suzanne, Strickrodt Silke