The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750

This book studies the impact of the Atlantic slave trade on the `Slave Coast' of West Africa, an area covering modern south-eastern Ghana, Togo, Benin, and south-western Nigeria. This region was one of the most important sources of slaves for the Atlantic slave trade, and its history provides an exceptionally well-documented illustration of the effect of the trade on the indigenous African societies involved in it. The expansion of slave exports during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries coincided with a period of political disorder, which ended with the rise of the new kingdom of Dahomey. Dahomey was a more militarized and more politically centralized state than those which preceded it in the region, and its distinctive character reflected the impact of the slave trade. This is the first detailed study of the early history of the Slave Coast for over twenty years. Robin Law examines the events which preceded the rise of Dahomey, the organization of the slave trade and its impact on the domestic economy, and the social and political structures of Dahomey and its predecessors. This is a meticulously researched, lucid, and scholarly analysis which makes an important contribution to the history of both early modern European expansion and pre-colonial West Africa.