Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa [Paperback]

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 Afro-European maritime trade in the fifteenth century to the early stages of colonial rule in the twentieth century. For Europeans, the export of agricultural produce represented a potential alternative to the slave trade from the outset and there was recurrent interest in establishing plantations in Africa or in purchasing crops from African producers. This idea 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. Robin Law is Emeritus Professor of African History, University of Stirling; Suzanne Schwarz is Professor of History, University of Worcester; Silke Strickrodt is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham.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.IntroductionThe slave trade and commercial agriculture in an African context - David EltisS?o Tom? and Pr?ncipe: The first plantation economy in the tropics - Gerhard SeibertThe export of rice and millet from Upper Guinea into the 16th-century Atlantic trade - Toby Green'Our indico designe': Planting and processing indigo for export, Upper Guinea coast, 1684-1702 - Colleen E Kriger'There's nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here': European projects of plantation agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s-1780s - Robin LawThe origins of 'legitimate commerce' - Christopher BrownFriederichsnopel: A Danish project of commercial agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1788-1793 - Per Hernaes'The Colony has made no progress in agriclã'