Book

Slave traders by invitation : West Africa's Slave Coast in the precolonial era

Fuglestad, Finn, 1942- author

Overview

\"The Slave Coast, roughly the shores of present-day Benin and Togo, was the epicentre of the Atlantic Slave Trade. But it was also an inhospitable, surf-ridden coastline, subject to crashing breakers and devoid of permanent human settlement. Nor was it easily accessible from the interior due to a lagoon which ran parallel to the coast. The local inhabitants were not only sheltered against incursions from the sea, but were also locked off from it. Yet, paradoxically, it was this coastline that witnessed a thriving long-term commercial relationship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organized? And how did the locals react to the opportunities these new trading relations offered them? The Kingdom of Dahomey is usually cited as the Slave Coast's archetypical slave raiding and slave trading polity. An inland realm, it was a latecomer to the slave trade, and simply incorporated a pre-existing system by dint of military prowess, which ultimately was to prove radically counterproductive. Fuglestad's book seeks to explain the Dahomean 'anomaly' and its impact on the Slave Coast's societies and polities.\"--Book jacket.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Subject: Slave trade Africa, West History. / Slave traders Africa, West History. / Slave traders Europe History. / Slave trade. / Slave traders. / Slavery. / Africa, West.
• ISBN: 0190876107, 9780190876104

Item info:

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
HT1332.F84 2018	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE