Description: "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"--Publisher marketing.
Brief description: Toby Green is professor of precolonial and Lusophone African history and culture at King's College, London. A Fellow of the British Academy, he is the author of The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 and, most recently, A Fistful of Shells, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Review Quotes: "This impressive and welcome book engages with the new wave of studies on African economic history and places African societies at the center of global events. Green interrogates and historicizes state failure, violence, corruption, military ideologies, commodification, and globalization, convincingly arguing that roots of many of the current political and economic problems in Africa lie in the past. It is timely, relevant, and necessary in today's political and economic environment."--Mariana Candido, University of Notre Dame