Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa

Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa
Author: J. Cameron Monroe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2012-02-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107009391

"This volume applies insights drawn from the theories and methods of landscape archaeology to contribute to our understanding of the nature if West African societies in the Atlantic Era (17th-19th Centuries AD). The authors adopt a briad set of methods and approaches to tackle how the nature and structures of African political and social relations changed across regions in this period. This is only the second volume in a decade to focus on the archeology of this period in West Africa, and the first volume in sub-Saharan Africanist archeology to be focused in the recent past in oue sub-region of the continent from a coherent methodological and theoretical standpoint"--Provided by publisher.

The Precolonial State in West Africa

The Precolonial State in West Africa
Author: J. Cameron Monroe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107040183

This volume examines political life in the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in the Republic of Bénin.

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2018-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004380183

Landscapes, Sources and Intellectual Projects of the West African Past offers a comprehensive assessment of new directions in the historiography of West Africa. With twenty-four chapters by leading researchers in the study of West African history and cultures, the volume examines the main trends in multiple fields including the critical interpretation of Arabic sources; new archaeological surveys of trans-Saharan trade; the discovery of sources in Latin America relating to pan-Atlantic histories; and the continuing analysis of oral histories. The volume is dedicated to Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, whose work inspired the intellectual reorientations discussed in its chapters and stands as the clearest formulation of the book’s central focus on the relationship between political conjunctures and the production of sources. Contributors are: Benjamin Acloque, Karin Barber, Seydou Camara, Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, François-Xavier Fauvelle, Nikolas Gestrich, Toby Green, Bruce Hall, Jan Jansen, Shamil Jeppie, Daouda Keita, Murray Last, Robin Law, Camille Lefebvre, Paul Lovejoy, Ghislaine Lydon, Carlos Magnavita, Sonja Magnavita, Kevin MacDonald, Thomas McCaskie, Ann McDougall, Daniela Moreau, Mauro Nobili, Insa Nolte, Abel-Wedoud Ould-Cheikh, Benedetta Rossi, Charles Stewart.

The Precolonial State in West Africa

The Precolonial State in West Africa
Author: J. Cameron Monroe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014-06-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1139952536

This volume incorporates historical, ethnographic, art historical, and archaeological sources to examine the relationship between the production of space and political order in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey during the tumultuous Atlantic Era. Dahomey, situated in the modern Republic of Bénin, emerged in this period as one of the principal agents in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and an exemplar of West African state formation. Drawing from eight years of ethnohistorical and archaeological fieldwork in the Republic of Bénin, the central thesis of this volume is that Dahomean kings used spatial tactics to project power and mitigate dissent across their territories. J. Cameron Monroe argues that these tactics enabled kings to economically exploit their subjects and to promote a sense of the historical and natural inevitability of royal power.

Not Made by Slaves

Not Made by Slaves
Author: Bronwen Everill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674240987

How abolitionist businesses marshaled intense moral outrage over slavery to shape a new ethics of international commerce. “East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves.” With these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists from Europe to the United States to West Africa used new ideas of supply and demand, consumer credit, and branding to shape an argument for ethical capitalism. Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world. Antislavery affected business operations, as companies in West Africa, including the British firm Macaulay & Babington and the American partnership of Brown & Ives, developed new tactics in order to make “legitimate” commerce pay. Everill explores how the dilemmas of conducting ethical commerce reshaped the larger moral discourse surrounding production and consumption, influencing how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. But ethical commerce was not without its ironies; the search for supplies of goods “not made by slaves”—including East India sugar—expanded the reach of colonial empires in the relentless pursuit of cheap but “free” labor. Not Made by Slaves illuminates the early years of global consumer society, while placing the politics of antislavery firmly in the history of capitalism. It is also a stark reminder that the struggle to ensure fair trade and labor conditions continues.

Slave Traders by Invitation

Slave Traders by Invitation
Author: Finn Fuglestad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2018-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190934972

The Slave Coast, situated in what is now the West African state of Benin, 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 relation-ship between Europeans and Africans, based on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. How did it come about? How was it all organised? 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.

Reluctant Landscapes

Reluctant Landscapes
Author: Francois G. Richard
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2018-09-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022625254X

West African history is inseparable from the history of the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. According to historical archaeologist François Richard, however, the dominance of this narrative not only colors the range of political discourse about Africa but also occludes many lesser-known—but equally important—experiences of those living in the region. Reluctant Landscapes is an exploration of the making and remaking of political experience and physical landscapes among rural communities in the Siin province of Senegal between the late 1500s and the onset of World War II. By recovering the histories of farmers and commoners who made up African states’ demographic core in this period, Richard shows their crucial—but often overlooked—role in the making of Siin history. The book also delves into the fraught relation between the Seereer, a minority ethnic and religious group, and the Senegalese nation-state, with Siin’s perceived “primitive” conservatism standing at odds with the country’s Islamic modernity. Through a deep engagement with oral, documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic archives, Richard’s groundbreaking study revisits the four-hundred-year history of a rural community shunted to the margins of Senegal’s national imagination.

Imagining Vernacular Histories

Imagining Vernacular Histories
Author: Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2020-08-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1786614626

Imagining Vernacular Histories is centered on the idea of engaging with indigenous African cosmologies that signal at pluriversality. In conversation with Toyin Falola’s reading of the African pluriverse and his exploration of the idea of “ritual archives,” the contributors to this volume rethink the historical archive in search of vernacular histories. Simultaneously, they recognize the contributions from various other disciplines in pluralizing the term vernacular. The book brings together a wide range of topics, such as reflections on African historiography; the relationship between memory, history and literature; gender relations; and the construction of historical archives. While appropriating Falola’s conception of vernacular histories, the contributors collectively argue that pluriversality and ritual archives can potentially rescue African historical and creative scholarship from the sustained practices of epistemicide. Simultaneously, Imagining Vernacular Histories focuses on the emerging interdisciplinary conversations on constructing the pluriverse as well as on the geopolitics of knowledge production. Through a critical appreciation of Falola’s engagement with the ideas of postcoloniality, decolonizing epistemologies, and pluriversality, this book locates his scholarship in relation to postcolonial theory emerging from the Global South.

A History of West Africa

A History of West Africa
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2023-12-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1003801668

This book introduces readers to the rich and fascinating history of West Africa, stretching all the way back to the stone age, and right up to the modern day. Over the course of twenty seven short and engaging chapters, the book delves into the social, cultural, economic and political history of West Africa, through prehistory, revolutions, ancient empires, thriving trade networks, religious traditions, and then the devastating impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and subsequent colonial rule. The book reflects on the struggle for independence and investigates how politics and economics developed in the post-colonial period. By the end of the book, readers will have a detailed understanding of the fascinating and diverse range of cultures to be found in West Africa, and of how the region relates to the rest of the world. Drawing on decades of teaching and research experience, this book will serve as an excellent textbook for entry-level History and African Studies courses, as well as providing a perfect general introduction to anyone interested in finding out about West Africa.