Overview

Re-envisages what we know about African political economies through its examination of one of the key questions in colonial and African history, that of commercial agriculture and its relationship to slavery. This book considers 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. Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University ofWorcester; Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robin Law ,  Suzanne Schwarz ,  Silke Strickrodt ,  Bronwen Everill (Customer)
Publisher:   James Currey
Imprint:   James Currey
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.70cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.434kg
ISBN:  

9781847011367

ISBN 10:   1847011365
Pages:   288
Publication Date:   17 March 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Reviews

(T)his volume is the new and best gateway for students, non-Africanist historians, and specialists alike into the scholarly history of this subfield, its emergent (and enduring) debates, and state-of-the-art case studies that stimulate new theorizing. INT'L JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES (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. EH.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 a problematic that 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

(T)his volume is the new and best gateway for students, non-Africanist historians, and specialists alike into the scholarly history of this subfield, its emergent (and enduring) debates, and state-of-the-art case studies that stimulate new theorizing. INT'L JOURNAL OF AFRICAN HISTORICAL STUDIES (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. EH.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 a problematic that 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

'(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. EH.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 a problematic that 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, SOASBR> '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

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