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 European maritime trade in the fifteenth century to theearly stages of colonial rule in the twentieth century. From the outset, the export of agricultural produce from Africa represented a potential alternative to the slave trade: although the predominant trend was to transport enslaved Africans to the Americas to cultivate crops, there was recurrent interest in the possibility of establishing plantations in Africa to produce such crops, or to purchase them from independent African producers. Thisidea 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. At the same time, the slave trade itself stimulated commercial agriculture in Africa, to supply provisions for slave-ships in the Middle Passage. Commercial agriculture was also linked to slavery within Africa, since slaves were widely employed there in agricultural production. Although Abolitionists hoped that production of export crops in Africa would be based on free labour, in practice it often employed enslaved labour, so that slaveryin Africa persisted into the colonial period. Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University of Worcester; Silke Strickrodt is Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham.

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Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Western Africa Series, 4)

Robin Law; Bronwen Everill; Christopher Brown; Colleen E Kriger; David Eltis; Gareth Austin; Gerhard Seibert; Kehinde Olabimtan; Per Hernaes; Roquinaldo Ferreira; Toby Green; Suzanne Schwarz; Silke Strickrodt

Robin C. Law, Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, Silke Strickrodt

Boydell et Brewer

BOYE6

Western Africa series, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2013

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY, 2013

PT, 2013

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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 European maritime trade in the fifteenth century to theearly stages of colonial rule in the twentieth century.
From the outset, the export of agricultural produce from Africa represented a potential alternative to the slave although the predominant trend was to transport enslaved Africans to the Americas to cultivate crops, there was recurrent interest in the possibility of establishing plantations in Africa to produce such crops, or to purchase them from independent African producers. Thisidea 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. At the same time, the slave trade itself stimulated commercial agriculture in Africa, to supply provisions for slave-ships in the Middle Passage. Commercial agriculture was also linked to slavery within Africa, since slaves were widely employed there in agricultural production. Although Abolitionists hoped that production of export crops in Africa would be based on free labour, in practice it often employed enslaved labour, so that slaveryin Africa persisted into the colonial period.
Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University of Worcester; Silke Strickrodt is Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham.

This book presents a new perspective on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in Western Africa itself, through its examination of the role of commercial agriculture. The idea of promoting the export of agricultural produce from Africa first became central to European thought in the context of the campaign to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the late eighteenth century. The eleven essays in this book explore this issue, re-appraising the links between slavery and colonialism and the rise of 'legitimate commerce' which marked the beginnings of economic 'modernity' in West Africa. The development of commercial agriculture in West Africa began with Danish attempts to establish plantations on the Gold Coast (Ghana) from 1788, followed by the British colony of Sierra Leone, after it was taken over by the Sierra Leone Company in 1791. The slave trade itself is also seen to have stimulated commercial agriculture in West Africa, to supply provisions for slave ships in the Middle Passage, and the experience of this trade in provisions may have facilitated the development of other export crops from the nineteenth century onwards. Commercial agriculture was also linked to slavery within Africa, since slaves were widely employed there in agricultural production. Although Abolitionists expected or hoped production of export crops in Africa would be based on free labour, in practice it often tended to promote more extensive and intensive use of slave labour, so that the institution of slavery in Africa persisted into the early colonial period. Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University of Worcester; Silke Strickrodt is Research Fellow in Colonial History, German Institute of Historical Research, London

Frontcover
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
List of Maps, Tables & Figures
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The slave trade and commercial agriculture in an African context
2 São Tomé and Príncipe: The first plantation economy in the tropics
3 The export of rice and millet from Upper Guinea into the sixteenth-century Atlantic trade
4 ‘Our indico designe’: Planting and processing indigo for export, Upper Guinea Coast, 1684–1702
5 ‘There’s nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here’: Dutch and English projects of plantation agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s–1780s
6 The origins of ‘legitimate commerce’
7 A Danish experiment in commercial agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1788–93
8 ‘The Colony has made no progress in agriculture’: Contested perceptions of agriculture in the colonies of Sierra Leone and Liberia
9 Church Missionary Society projects of agricultural improvement in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone and Yorubaland
10 Agricultural enterprise and
unfree labour in nineteenth-century Angola
Commercial agriculture and the ending of slave-trading and slavery in West Africa, 1780s–1920s
Index
Backcover

Edited By Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz And Silke Strickrodt. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.

2024-01-03