Brokers of Change
Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:16th Aug '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The Atlantic Ocean, transcending national boundaries as it does, has long been seen as a pivotal site for understanding the way in which local and regional economies and cultural frameworks gradually became integrated into a global system during the early modern era. A key concept that has brought new insight to the study of transnationalism is that of brokerage. Brokers are people who link up different worlds and are at ease in a variety of cultural settings; they have flexibility of outlook and cultural identification. Brokerage can explain and add nuance to the multiple cultural worlds and intense trade characteristics of regions of West Africa. The essays collected here are by leading scholars in the field of the pre-colonial history of Western Africa (the region between Senegal and Sierra Leone). They span the whole pre-colonial period between the first Portuguese voyages of discovery and the transition to legitimate commerce. The volume offers the first real synthesis of the importance of this region of Africa in the emergence of the Atlantic world between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has sections on African-European relations; the Cape Verde islands and wider Atlantic trade; trade in slaves and commodities; and the transition to 'legitimate' commerce. Thus the essays here offer scholars and general readers a real chance to engage with an important part of Africa.
Overall, the collection successfully engages with important themes concerning the creation and maintenance of intercontinental exchanges, and the development of Creole communities. It is possible to overdo concepts such as the Black Atlantic, suggesting a false unity through a perceived shared geography; this book wisely avoids that trap, by gathering particularistic, detailed studies with rich individual biographies, and giving them cohesion through the overarching theme of brokers. * Anne Haour, English Historical Review *
Historians of coastal West African societies, of the slave trade, and of transnational interchange within the Atlantic commercial world will find solid evidence and interesting interpretations in these essays. It is clear that the contributors have read each other's work from the intelligent cross-referencing included ... well worth reading. * Kenneth Morgan, The Economic History Review *
This is an important volume, bringing together junior and senior scholars who use new data to bring the debate on brokerage and its cultural and economic relevance into the pre-twentieth-century period...Scholars interested in African, Atlantic, and early modern history must read this significant volume. * Mariana Candido, Luso-Brazillian Review *
Brokers of Change is a welcome addition to the under-represented field of pre-colonial Africa that presents Western Africa as a coherent space of insular and riverine connectivity. * Ghislaine Lydon, Early Modern History *
ISBN: 9780197265208
Dimensions: 241mm x 167mm x 28mm
Weight: 896g
320 pages