Each student is responsible for submitting a 2-3 page reflection paper as an assignment for the reading. The reason why your reflection paper is a minimum of 2-3 paragraphs on each page I want you to be straightforward and concise. Think about the role and functions of the African state and its absolute monarchies to their European counterparts. What does the exchange of goods and services tell us about the Trans -Atlantic Slave Trade and its social and political implications?The format for your assignment must be double spaced 12” font Times New Roman.
See the attached material then follow the prompt.
West Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast West Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast Author(s): Robin Law and Kristin Mann Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, African and American Atlantic Worlds (Apr., 1999), pp. 307-334 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674121 Accessed: 25-07-2019 18:15 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674121?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly This content downloaded from 128.104.46.196 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:15:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms West Africa in the Atlantic Community: The Case of the Slave Coast Robin Law and Kristin Mann T SHE section of the West African coast known to Europeans as the "Slave Coast" was, as the name implies, a major source for the transatlantic slave trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth cen- turies. The two principal ports of embarkation for slaves in the region were Ouidah and Lagos.1 The history of Slave Coast ports such as Ouidah and Lagos cannot be understood or adequately represented in isolation, since they were involved in wider regional and transatlantic networks. Within Africa, the operation of the slave trade linked the coastal ports not only to the countries in the interior that supplied slaves to the coast but also to one another, especially through the coastal lagoon system, along which slaves were commonly moved from port to port prior to embarkation.2 Across the Atlantic, the commercial links established by the slave trade among ports in West Africa, America, and Europe are well known, but the trade also gener- ated transatlantic social and cultural connections whose importance has been commonly underestimated. The scale and intensity of these bonds were such that the coastal communities of the Slave Coast, or at least their commercial and ruling elites, may be considered as participating in what can reasonably be termed an "Atlantic community." The degree of involvement in this Robin Law is professor of African history at the University of Stirling, and Kristin Mann is associate professor of history at Emory University. An earlier version of this article was pre- sented at the conference "West Africa and the Americas: Repercussions of the Slave Trade," University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, February I997. It builds upon a paper by Kristin Mann, "The Origins of the Diaspora between the Bight of Benin and Bahia during the Era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade," Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, San Francisco, November i996, and incorporates material from a paper by Robin Law, "The Evolution of the Brazilian Community in Ouidah," Symposium on "Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil," Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., April i998. The authors' thanks are due, for their constructive com- ments and criticisms, to Ira Berlin, Alberto da Costa e Silva, Robert A. Hill, J. Lorand Matory, and Joe Miller. The authors thank Jewell Green, Jamie Martin, and Sarah Zingarelli at Emory University for their help with preparing the map. 1 The "Slave Coast" was conventionally defined as extending from the River Volta to Lagos (or, sometimes, further east), corresponding roughly to the Bight of Benin (or, in terms of modern political geography, the coast of Togo, Benin, and western Nigeria). 2 For connections along the lagoon, see Robin Law, "Trade and Politics behind the Slave Coast: The Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, I500-1800," Journal of African History, 24 (I983), 32I-38; Law, "Between the Sea and the Lagoons: The Interaction of Maritime and Inland Navigation on the Precolonial Slave Coast," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 29 (I989), 209-37. William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LVI, Number 2, April i999 This content downloaded from 128.104.46.196 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:15:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 308 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY wider community varied from case to case and from period to period. The wider Atlantic community itself was also subject to transformation, with the importance of links specifically to Brazil increasing over time. The basis for this interpretation is primarily empirical, that is, it derives from the specific character of the evidence relating to the Slave Coast, which in turn reflects the exceptional scale of that region's integration into the Atlantic commercial system, and especially the intensity of its links with Brazil. In stressing the latter, we do not claim absolute originality but acknowledge in particular the late Pierre Verger's pioneering work on Afro- Brazilian interconnections.3 Beyond that, however, this article engages a growing body of literature concerned with the formation of Atlantic history and culture and, especially, the role of Africans and African Americans within it. Bernard Bailyn has recently drawn attention to the current popularity of the idea of "Atlantic history." He documents a growing trend toward studying the Atlantic world as a historical unit, as historians of Europe and of North and South America have broadened their focus to include "the entire Atlantic basin, not simply descriptively but conceptually." But, although Bailyn brings Africa into the discussion briefly through a treatment of the Atlantic slave trade, his refer- ences are primarily to works that equate Atlantic history with European civi- lization. In his conception, Africa has played a very limited role in shaping the history and culture of the Atlantic basin.4 In another recent contribution to this debate, Paul Gilroy has pro- pounded the idea of a "black Atlantic" identity, which also treats the Atlantic as "one single, complex unit of analysis," but one in which blacks are "perceived as agents" equally with whites.5 He conceives the Atlantic as "continually crisscrossed by the movements of black people-not only as commodities but engaged in various struggles towards emancipation, auton- omy, and citizenship." Formally, our approach has similarities to Gilroy's, but the focus and content of our analysis are significantly different. These differences are partly chronological and geographical: whereas Gilroy deals with the period from the mid-nineteenth century onward and with the Anglophone world, we are concerned with the earlier period of the slave trade and, given the specific region of Africa on which we focus, with links to the Lusophone world. More critical, Gilroy approaches the Atlantic com- munity from the perspective of the North Atlantic diaspora (and, more espe- 3 See, especially, Pierre Verger, Flux et reflux de la traite des negres entre Ie Golfe de Benin et Bahia de todos os Santos, du XVIIe au XIXe si'cle (Paris, i968) (translated as Trade Relations between the Bight of Benin and Bahia from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century [Ibadan, I976]). Verger was not, of course, the first scholar to emphasize African-American links; we believe, however, that he was the first to conceive of these links in interactive terms, involving reciprocal rather than unidirectional (Africa to America) links. 4 Bernard Bailyn, "The Idea of Atlantic History," Itinerario, 20, no. I (i996), 38-44. Bailyn takes no account of the important revisionist work of John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-i680 (Cambridge, i992). 5 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London, I993), 6, I5-i6. This content downloaded from 128.104.46.196 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:15:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms WEST AFRICA IN THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 309 be ~g) oSt Afrc Ash ~ ~ s _4 _ ~~~C8 aPic Wet Afric Prsnantco SOlO ,~~~~~ The Slave Coast Mahi ( Dahomcy Ak~lada FIGUUR I The South Atlantic and the Slave Coast This content downloaded from 128.104.46.196 on Thu, 25 Jul 2019 18:15:07 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 3IO WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY cially, of its intellectuals), in which Africa figures as an object of retrospec- tive rediscovery, rather than as an active agent; our starting point is in Africa itself, and our theme is the development and maintenance of continuous commercial, social, and cultural links across the Atlantic. Moreover, we con- ceive of the Atlantic community as transracial, rather than specifically "black." More directly relevant to our own concerns is a recent article in this journal by Ira Berlin on the early stages of the creation of African-American societies in mainland North America that stresses the role played by "Atlantic creoles," Africans who had acquired European languages and cul- ture on the coast of West Africa and who crossed the Atlantic as freemen (in the service of European traders, for education, or as official emissaries of African rulers) as well as slaves. Berlin's analysis arguably exaggerates both the extent of cultural "creolization" in West African coastal communities in early times and the numerical significance of such "creoles" among exported slaves. Even though the argument may be empirically problematic for the seventeenth century, the conceptual framework that Berlin develops, of a cosmopolitan culture linking seaports on all sides of the Atlantic littoral, can be fruitfully applied to later periods.6 Our perspective has been influenced, however, not only by modern scholarship but also by our understanding of the perceptions of history cur- rent among members of West African coastal communities themselves. A recently published history of the da Silva family of Benin serves as an exam- ple. The earliest member of this family who can be unproblematically docu- mented is Francisco Rodrigues da Silva (d. i9ii)