Paul E. Lovejoy

Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400-1680

This book shows how important the African role was in shaping the Atlantic world that developed after the navigational breakthroughs of the fifteenth century. The degree of African initiative displayed in this period is stressed, both by African elites in dealing with the new visitors and trading partners and, even by African slaves in the New World. Evenly divided into sections on Africa and Africans in the New World, this study stresses cultural and institutional backgrounds to Africa and African slaves. Although the book is intended to help Africanists understand how Africans fared in the Americas, its main purpose is to give readers familiar with Afro-American history a fuller and more dynamic vision of Africa, so they can see the African slave as an African and not just as a laborer.

The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: a Synthesis

This article provides a synthesis of the various studies which attempt to quantify the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Since the publication of Philip D. Curtins pioneering estimates in 1969 ( The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census ), there have been numerous revisions of different sectors of the trade, and some scholars – notably J. E. Inikori and James Rawley – have argued that Curtins global estimate for imports into the Americas is too low. When the revisions are examined carefully, however, it is apparent that Curtins initial tabulation was remarkably accurate. The volume of exports from Africa across the Atlantic is here calculated at 11,698,000 slaves, while imports into the Americas and most other parts of the Atlantic basin are estimated to have been 9·8–9·9 million slaves – well within range of Curtins original Census . Many of the revisions are based on shipping data by national carrier, rather than on series derived from estimated imports into different colonies in the Americas. Hence it is possible to substitute new data for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for many of the import-derived series used by Curtin. The results of these substitutions shift the distribution of slave exports over time but do not affect estimates of the relative scale of the trade by more than 2–3 per cent – hardly significant considering the quality of the data. Inikori and Rawley have failed to distinguish clearly between imports by colony and exports by national carrier; hence their global estimates have resulted in double counting. Further revisions are likely, nonetheless, but until the completion of detailed research comparable to the studies of David Eltis, Roger Anstey, Johannes Postma, and a dozen other scholars it is not possible to estimate the extent of future modifications. In the meantime, the current state of research on the volume of the Atlantic slave trade is summarized in a series of tables which analyse the export trade by time period, national carrier, and coastal origin. It is expected that the present synthesis will challenge historians to examine the impact of the slave trade on different parts of Africa, both to test the regional breakdown of slave exports and to assess the demographic, political, economic and social repercussions on Africa.

Plantations in the Economy of the Sokoto Caliphate

At a time when coastal West Africa was responding to the growth of ‘legitimate’ trade, the Sokoto Caliphate was experiencing dramatic expansion in the plantation sector. Plantations ( gandu, rinji, tungazi ), which used slaves captured by the Caliphate armies, were established near all the major towns and were particularly important around Sokoto, Kano, Zaria and other capitals. Plantation development originated with the policies of Muhammad Bello, first Caliph and successor to Uthman dan Fodio, who was concerned with the consolidation and defence of the empire. Besides promoting the economic growth of the capital districts of Sokoto and Gwandu, Bellos policy encouraged the expansion of the textile belt in southern Kano and northern Zaria. Similarly, the desert-side market in grain also benefited from the emphasis on plantations. The result was the greater integration of the Central Sudan region into a single economic zone. The role of plantations in the economy differed from that of plantations elsewhere in the world. Market forces tended to be weaker, and no single export crop dominated production. Rather, the orientation towards the desert-side sector indicates that opportunities for expansion were limited, while the importance of textile manufacturing reflects the relatively weak links with European and other textile production. Other differences included a system of Islamic slavery which encouraged emancipation, a close connexion with slave raiding and distribution, and a system of land tenure which often resulted in fragmented holdings. Stronger links with the world economy did develop in parts of the Caliphate towards the end of the nineteenth century. Nupe and Yola were drawn more closely into the world market through the greater use of the Niger and Benue rivers, but these changes only marginally affected the wider Caliphate economy.

‘THIS HORRID HOLE’: ROYAL AUTHORITY, COMMERCE AND CREDIT AT BONNY, 1690–1840

This article suggests that differences in local political structures and credit protection regimes largely account for Bonnys displacement of Old Calabar as the principal slave port of the Bight of Biafra in the eighteenth century, despite Bonnys reputation for being particularly unhealthy for Europeans. We argue that this displacement occurred in the 1730s, several decades earlier than previously thought. We suggest that this was made possible by the early growth and consolidation of royal authority at Bonny. The use of state authority to enforce credit arrangements in Bonny proved more effective than the mechanisms adopted at its closest rival, Old Calabar, where, in the absence of a centralized political authority similar to the monarchy at Bonny, credit protection before 1807 was based on pawnship.

Concubinage and the Status of Women Slaves in Early Colonial Northern Nigeria

Court records from 1905–6 offer a rare view of the status of women slaves in early colonial Northern Nigeria. It is shown that British officials found it easy to accommodate the aristocracy of the Sokoto Caliphate on the status of these women, despite British efforts to reform slavery. Those members of the aristocracy and merchant class who could afford to do so were able to acquire concubines through the courts, which allowed the transfer of women under the guise that they were being emancipated. British views of slave women attempted to blur the distinction between concubinage and marriage, thereby reaffirming patriarchal Islamic attitudes. The court records not only confirm this interpretation but also provide extensive information on the ethnic origins of slave women, the price of transfer, age at time of transfer, and other data. It is shown that the slave women of the 1905–6 sample came from over 100 different ethnic groups and the price of transfer, which ranged between 200,000 and 300,000 cowries, was roughly comparable to the price of females slaves in the years immediately preceding the conquest. Most of the slaves were in their teens or early twenties. The use of the courts to transfer women for purposes of concubinage continued until at least the early 1920s.

Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria

Only recently have historians devoted much attention to monetary developments in African history, primarily because the substantivist school of economic anthropology, which has argued that so-called western economic theory does not apply to African situations, has dominated the field. This view has been increasingly under attack in recent years, particularly by a new group of economic historians who have found many aspects of formal economic theory useful in the reconstruction of Africas past. Marion Johnsons pioneering work on the gold mithqal and cowrie shell, for example, has documented the spread of a common currency over much of West Africa, throughout an area encompassed by Lake Chad in the east, the upper reaches of the Senegambia in the west, the southern Sahara in the north, and the region between the Volta basin and the Niger Delta in the south. The study of other currencies, including the copper rod standard of the Cross River basin in Nigeria and Cameroons, and the cloth money of the Senegambia, has demonstrated the importance of other standards besides cowries and gold, so that it is now known that virtually all of precolonial West Africa had economies sufficiently developed to require the use of circulating mediums of exchange and units of account. This breakthrough raises a number of important questions which seriously challenge, if not completely undermine, the predominant view that Africas past, down to very recent times, has been subsistence oriented, non-market directed, and basically static.

Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African

Recent scholarship has raised doubts about whether or not abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was known in his own lifetime as Gustavus Vassa, was born in Africa. While baptismal and naval documents indicate that he was born in South Carolina, it is argued here that his autobiographical account is nonetheless accurate, although allowing for reflection and information that was learned later in life. Information on facial markings (ichi) and other cultural features that are recounted in Vassas account indicate that he had first hand experience of his Igbo homeland and that he was about the age he thought he was at the time of his forced departure from the Bight of Biafra on a slave ship in 1754.

British Abolition and its Impact on Slave Prices Along the Atlantic Coast of Africa, 1783–1850

This article challenges the widely held view that slave prices in Africa fell substantially and permanently after Britain abolished its slave trade in 1807. Examination of slave-price data shows that, when allowance is made for movements in prices of trade goods bartered for slaves, real slave prices fell sharply between 1807 and 1820 but that the fall was confined to West Africa. In West Central Africa prices remained steady before 1820. Thereafter, prices rose strongly in both areas, and between 1830 and 1850 prices were generally close to the levels reached between 1783 and 1807, the height of the Atlantic slave trade.

The biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua : his passage from slavery to freedom in Africa and America

This is the only biography of an American slave who was born in Africa. Baquaqua was enslaved in northern Benin in the early 1840s when he was about 20. At the time he was a devout Muslim and worked as a bodyguard for the ruler of a small town. He was abducted and taken south to Togo and sold to a slave merchant who shipped him to Rio de Janeiro, then the worlds largest slave market. Here he was sold again and brought to New York where he was convinced to jump ship by a little-known black group called the New York Vigilance Society. He escaped to Boston and later traveled to Haiti, the only free Black state, where he was picked up by the Free Baptist Mission and converted to Christianity. He later returned to the U.S. and attended college in Cortland, New York. Later Baquaqua moved to England.

Salt of the desert sun : a history of salt production and trade in the Central Sudan

List of tables List of maps, figures and illustrations Preface 1. Salt in the history of the central Sudan 2. Consumption of the central Sudan salts 3. The chemistry and geology of the central Sudan salts 4. The technology of production 5. The volume of salt production 6. The mobilisation of labour 7. Proprietorship: the rights to salt and natron 8. Salt marketing networks 9. The trade and politics of salt 10. The social organisation of trade and production 11. Conclusion Notes Glossary Bibliography Index.