Gift - How Objects of Prestige Shaped Atlantic Slave Trade Colonialism

The Gift explores how objects of prestige contributed to cross-cultural exchanges between Africans and Europeans during the Atlantic slave trade. An eighteenth-century silver ceremonial sword, commissioned in the port of La Rochelle by French traders, was offered as a gift to an African commercial agent in the port of Cabinda (Kingdom of Ngoyo), in twenty-first century Angola. Slave traders carried this object from Cabinda to Abomey, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey in twenty-first century's Republic of Benin, from where French officers looted the item in the late nineteenth century. Drawing on a rich set of sources in French, English, and Portuguese, as well as artifacts housed in museums across Europe and the Americas, Ana Lucia Araujo illuminates how luxury objects impacted European-African relations, and how these economic, cultural, and social interactions paved the way for the European conquest and colonization of West Africa and West Central Africa.

Sommario

Acknowledgments; Introduction: On Gifts and the Atlantic Slave Trade; 1. The Loango Coast and the Rise of the Atlantic Slave Trade; 2. La Rochelle and Atlantic Africa; 3. Slave Traders Turned Pirates; 4. Deciphering the Gift; 5. A Displaced Gift; 6. Ngoyo Meets Dahomey; Conclusion: Objects that Shaped the Slave Trade and Colonialism; Bibliography; Index.

Info autore

Ana Lucia Araujo is a Professor of History at Howard University. A specialist on the history and memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, she has authored and edited thirteen books.

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Ana Lucia Araujo, Ana Lucia (Howard University Araujo, Araujo Ana Lucia
• Editore: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 16.11.2023
• EAN: 9781108839297
• ISBN: 978-1-108-83929-7
• Pagine: 307
• Dimensioni: 160 mm x 235 mm x 20 mm
• Serie: Print on Demand; Cambridge Studies on the African Diaspora
• Categorie: Libri scolastici > Didattica > Formazione professionale; Europe, HISTORY / General, Africa, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, General & world history, Material Culture, Social and cultural anthropology, Colonialism and imperialism, African History, Slavery and abolition of slavery, Later 18th century c 1750 to c 1799