The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 13001589 [Paperback]

Toby Green describes the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest.Toby Green has written the first full and the best-documented account of the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His book shows which African peoples suffered most and why, as well as the effect this had on societies both in Africa and in the colonies of the New World. Green explains how and why new ideologies emerged with the birth of the modern world.Toby Green has written the first full and the best-documented account of the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His book shows which African peoples suffered most and why, as well as the effect this had on societies both in Africa and in the colonies of the New World. Green explains how and why new ideologies emerged with the birth of the modern world.The region between the river Senegal and Sierra Leone saw the first trans-Atlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century. Drawing on many new sources, Toby Green challenges current quantitative approaches to the history of the slave trade. New data on slave origins can show how and why Western African societies responded to Atlantic pressures. Green argues that answering these questions requires a cultural framework and uses the idea of creolization  the formation of mixed cultural communities in the era of plantation societies  to argue that preceding social patterns in both Africa and Europe were crucial. Major impacts of the sixteenth-century slave trade included political fragmentation, changes in identity, and the reorganization of ritual and social patterns. The book shows which peoples were enslaved, why they were vulnerable, and the consequences in Africa and beyond.Part I. The Development of an Atlantic Creole Culture in Western Africa, c.13001500: 1. Culture, trade, and diaspora in pre-Atlantic West Africa; 2. The formation of early Atlantic societies in Senegambia and Upper Guinea; 3. The settlement of Cabo Verde and early signs of Creolization iló#