A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade of the Age of Revolution

Historian Green (The Rise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589) won’t disappoint scholarly readers with his dense latest. Covering five centuries, this meticulously researched book, based on archival research in nine countries, lays out a comprehensive overview of the economic history of West Africa and West-Central Africa before and after the slave trade. Green enumerates the ways in which Africa had formed global economic and political connections long before the arrival of Europeans, trading gold, cloth, pearls, and other commodities. Gradually, these were replaced by trade in captives, so that by 1750, “almost every area in West and West-Central Africa was affected by trans-Atlantic and/or trans-Saharan slave trades.” Green links the slave trade to the militarization of African states, the growing inequalities between African ruling classes and their populations, and 19th-century revolts against these established authorities “as people sloughed off the aristocracies that had emerged to prey on them in the preceding centuries.” This valuable history, while written in an accessible style, covers so much historical and theoretical ground that it will be probably be appreciated more by Africanists than a general readership. (Apr.)