Tracing the reciprocal relationship between Africa and North America from the seventeenth-century slave trade onwards, two leading authorities in the field provide a major revision to traditional colonial African history as well as to US history. Departing from prior accounts that tended to emphasise only the role of the colonial metropoles in developing Africa, the authors show how American pioneers - missionaries, traders, prospectors, miners, engineers, scientists, and others - have helped to shape Africa. They also point to the equally important impact made by Africa on the United States through trade and immigration, and through the influence of Africans on the arts and agriculture, among other facets of American life. In a study of exceptionally broad scope, the authors devote particular attention to the development of United States policy regarding Africa, the impact of private enterprise, the operation of governmental lobbies, the administration of foreign aid, and the involvement of Africa in the Cold War.

Western Africa and Cabo Verde, 1790s-1830s; Symbiosis of Slave and Legitimate Trades addresses the collaboration of slave traders and shipmasters engaged in legitimate commerce. This monograph is the third volume of a trilogy treating the history of western Africa from the 11th to the 19th centuries. It follows Landlords and Strangers; Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000-1630 (Westview Press 1993) and Eurafricans in Western Africa; Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Ohio University Press, 2003). All three monographs describe commercial, social, and cultural links between the Cape Verde archipelago, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, and Sierra Leone.

It's an awful story. It's an awful story. Why do you want to bring this up now?--Chief Awusa of Atorkor For centuries, the story of the Atlantic slave trade has been filtered through the eyes and records of white Europeans. In this watershed book, historian Anne C. Bailey focuses on memories of the trade from the African perspective. African chiefs and other elders in an area of southeastern Ghana-once famously called "the Old Slave Coast"-share stories that reveal that Africans were traders as well as victims of the trade. Bailey argues that, like victims of trauma, many African societies now experience a fragmented view of their past that partially explains the blanket of silence and shame around the slave trade. Capturing scores of oral histories that were handed down through generations, Bailey finds that, although Africans were not equal partners with Europeans, even their partial involvement in the slave trade had devastating consequences on their history and identity. In this unprecedented and revelatory book, Bailey explores the delicate and fragmented nature of historical memory.

Guinea-Bissau is a small country in West Africa, and yet it managed to wrest its independence from Portugal back in 1973, at the cost of a long and bitter struggle against seemingly implacable odds. This was a time to be proud of, and there was also a moment about two decades ago, when it looked like a trendsetter for democracy. Since then things have gone seriously wrong, with a collapsing infrastructure, a dilapidated economy and a political stage prone to military coups d’etats. This fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Guinea-Bissau tells the long and sometimes unpleasant story. However, like all the country historical dictionaries, it tells it several times and in several ways. First, the chronology traces the history of what became Guinea-Bissau, and this over a period of centuries and not just decades. Then the introduction recounts that history again, providing more insight and understanding, and conveys a good idea of how things are going now. The details follow in the dictionary section with entries on important persons, places, institutions, and events among other things. And the bibliography points to further reading.

The slave trade to the United States after the Revolutionary War until 1810 is covered in this book and CD-ROM.

The classic history of copper working and use throughout Africa. Researched with a depth of scholarship that will leave future historians green with envy.

In nineteenth-century America, the belief that blacks and whites could not live in social harmony and political equality in the same country led to a movement to relocate African Americans to Liberia, a West African colony established by the United States government and the American Colonization Society in 1822. In The Price of Liberty, Claude Clegg accounts for 2,030 North Carolina blacks who left the state and took up residence in Liberia between 1825 and 1893. By examining both the American and African sides of this experience, Clegg produces a textured account of an important chapter in the historical evolution of the Atlantic world. For almost a century, Liberian emigration connected African Americans to the broader cultures, commerce, communication networks, and epidemiological patterns of the Afro-Atlantic region. But for many individuals, dreams of a Pan-African utopia in Liberia were tempered by complicated relationships with the Africans, whom they dispossessed of land. Liberia soon became a politically unstable mix of newcomers, indigenous peoples, and "recaptured" Africans from westbound slave ships. Ultimately, Clegg argues, in the process of forging the world's second black-ruled republic, the emigrants constructed a settler society marred by many of the same exclusionary, oppressive characteristics common to modern colonial regimes.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Antislavery on a Slave Coast -- 2. Let That Heart Be English -- 3. The Vice- Admiralty Court -- 4. The Absolute Disposal of the Crown -- 5. The Liberated African Department -- Epilogue: MacCarthy's Skull -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y

Imported schnapps gin has a remarkable history in West Africa. Gin was imported in great quantities between 1880 and World War I, when its consumption showed access to the modern, international world. Subsequently schnapps was transformed into a good that signified traditional, local culture. Today, imported schnapps has high status because of its importance for African ritual and as symbol of the status of chiefs and elders, but actual consumption is limited. This book explores this unexpected trajectory of commoditisation to investigate how imported goods acquire specific local meanings. This analysis of consumption and marketing of gin contributes to our understanding of patterns of consumption, rejection and appropriation within processes of identity formation, elite formation, and the redefinition of community in colonial and postcolonial West Africa.

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.