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Finn Fuglestad. 2018. Slave Traders by Invitation: West Africa’s Slave Coast in the Precolonial Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 500 pp.
In a commandingly researched book that successfully integrates the political, social and economic history of the west African slave coast, Fuglestad argues that the Slave Coast was an epicenter of the slave trade with special reference to the towns of Ouidah and Offra, which were central to the trade in the precolonial era. He contends that this area exported a majority of enslaved Africans while the western zone known as the peripheral played a marginal role. The author shows how this area was very vital due to its significant material enrichment and how both Europeans and locals sustained themselves in the trade. The book could have depended on the broad literature on slave chronicles, as a genre, from the Atlantic world. Inside such exacting accounts, a keynote that repeats is the role played by the locals of the Slave Coast which is quite evident and undeniable in the trade. The heart of the book links these developments to how the locals attracted Europeans to trade in slaves even when their (Europeans) interests were in gold trade. As the author shows how this trade was facilitated by locals and the circumstances that led to the slave trade, he divides the book into three parts. The first section discusses the structures and trends. Here, Fuglestad gives an overview of the Slave Coast, its economic, political, and social structures, the data base, and the slave trade. The second part details a chronological overview from the early days to the 1720s. This portion focuses on the side of both the Europeans and Africans, the polities of Allada and Dahomey, recounting the slave trade further west, and giving an overview from the 1680s to the 1720s. The final part that incorporates the narratives from the 1720s to 1850/51 examines the dramatic and decisive 1720 and its aftermath, the Tegbesu era, and the abolition of the slave trade and slavery.
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