Exploring this iconic Cape coastline (the West Coast of South Africa) and the people who call it home, West Coast Wander takes readers – travellers and home cooks alike – on a culinary caper from Yzerfontein to Doringbaai, documenting each delicious detour along the way. From heerboontjies to harders, the book encapsulates recipes both well known and newly discovered. Using a, uncluttered approach to cooking, author Georgia East highlights the unique ingredients cultivated along this coastline, transforming them into dishes filled with local flavour. Seeking out the best place to buy bread in Hopefield, discovering what sets a Sandveld Sauvignon Blanc apart and learning how the plumpest oysters in the country are farmed in Saldanha Bay are just a few of the corners covered. Combining Mediterranean simplicity with a dash of nostalgia, West Coast Wander is the definitive guide to sustainable seaside fare and a valuable addition to any South African kitchen.

Leon Nell’s sixth book to explore another captivating part of South Africa reveals a bounty of treasures that give the West Coast, or Weskus as locals call it, its particular allure. Beginning at Melkbosstrand just north of Cape Town, and ending where the Orange River meets the Atlantic Ocean, the book divides the coastal stretch into four discrete and easily explored regions. Coastal and inland towns are described, together with their main attractions, offering glimpses into early human history, local culture and traditions, nature and wildlife, and modern-day economic pursuits. SOUTH encompasses the Cape West Coast Biosphere Reserve, various wildflower reserves, Darling, Evita se Perron and !Khwa ttu San Heritage Centre. CENTRAL covers Yzerfontein and the West Coast National Park, including Langebaan Lagoon, Eve’s Footprints, Postberg Flower Reserve and Saldanha. NORTH explores the celebrated fishing industry at Velddrif, St Helena Bay and Elands Bay, and archaeological discoveries in the area. DIAMOND COAST spans Doringbaai, Vredendal, Port Nolloth, Kleinzee and Alexander Bay. Framed by the Atlantic in the west and the winding N7 highway in the east, the West Coast is a place of varied landscapes and vast contrasts: from moody and at times tempestuous seas and windswept beaches, to verdant vineyards and kaleidoscopic swathes of wildflowers in spring. Wild yet tranquil, playful yet contemplative, dramatic yet understated – its eclectic offering beckons residents and travellers alike. Sales points: An absorbing portrayal of this characterful coastline; wide appeal for travellers and residents; evocative full-colour photographs; detailed map; highly regarded travel writer and photographer.

For centuries, Africa’s Upper Guinea Coast region has been the site of regional and global interactions, with societies from different parts of the African continent and beyond engaging in economic trade, cultural exchange and various forms of conflict. This book provides a wide-ranging look at how such encounters have continued into the present day, identifying the disruptions and continuities in religion, language, economics and various other social phenomena. These accounts show a region that, while still grappling with the legacies of colonialism and the slave trade, is both shaped by and an important actor within ever-denser global networks, exhibiting consistent transformation and creative adaptation.

This book charts the convergence of science, culture, and politics across Portugal's empire, showing how a global geographical concept was born. In accessible, narrative prose, this book explores the unexpected forms that science took in the early modern world. It highlights little-known linkages between Asia and the Atlantic world.

By the time the “Scramble for Africa” among European colonial powers began in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for centuries. Its gold had fueled the economies of Europe and the Islamic world for nearly a millennium, and the sophisticated kingdoms spanning its west coast had traded with Europeans since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies—most importantly, cowrie shells imported from the Maldives and nzimbu shells imported from Brazil. But, as the slave trade grew, African kingdoms began to lose prominence in the growing global economy. We have been living with the effects of this shift ever since. With A Fistful of Shells, Toby Green transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa by reconstructing the world of these kingdoms, which revolved around trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, and the production of art. Green shows how the slave trade led to economic disparities that caused African kingdoms to lose relative political and economic power. The concentration of money in the hands of Atlantic elites in and outside these kingdoms brought about a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa, parallel to the upheavals then taking place in Europe and America. Yet political fragmentation following the fall of African aristocracies produced radically different results as European colonization took hold. Drawing not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, art, oral history, archaeology, and letters, Green lays bare the transformations that have shaped world politics and the global economy since the fifteenth century and paints a new and masterful portrait of West Africa, past and present.

Mangrove rice farming on West Africa's Rice Coast was the mirror image of tidewater rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans in 18th-century South Carolina and Georgia. This book reconstructs the development of rice-growing technology among the Baga and Nalu of coastal Guinea, beginning more than a millennium before the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals a picture of dynamic pre-colonial coastal societies, quite unlike the static, homogenous pre-modern Africa of previous scholarship. From its examination of inheritance, innovation, and borrowing, Deep Roots fashions a theory of cultural change that encompasses the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African diaspora.

This book studies the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the 'Slave Coast' of West Africa, an area covering modern south-eastern Ghana, Togo, Benin, and south-western Nigeria. This region was one of the most important sources of slaves for the Atlantic slave trade, and its history providesan exceptionally well-documented illustration of the effect of the trade on the indigenous African societies involved in it. The expansion of slave exports during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries coincided with a period of political disorder, which ended with the rise of the newkingdom of Dahomey. Dahomey was a more militarized and more politically centralized state than those which preceded it in the region, and its distinctive character reflected the impact of the slave trade. This is the first detailed study of the early history of the Slave Coast for over twenty years. Robin Law examines the events which preceded the rise of Dahomey, the organization of the slave trade and its impact on the domestic economy, and the social and political structures of Dahomey and itspredecessors. This is a meticulously researched, lucid, and scholarly analysis which makes an important contribution to the history of both early modern European expansion and pre-colonial West Africa.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the world. But its current status has skewed our understanding of the economy before colonization. Rönnbäck reconstructs the living standards of the population at a time when the Atlantic slave trade brought money and men into the area, enriching our understanding of West African economic development.