Ouidah

Ouidah PDF Author: Robin Law
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780852554975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Ouidah, an indigenous African town in the modern Republic of Benin, was the principal pre-colonial commercial centre of its region, and the second most important town of the Dahomey kingdom. It served as a major outlet for the export of slaves for the trans- Atlantic trade. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries Ouidah was the most important embarkation point for slaves in the region of West Africa known to outsiders as the 'Slave Coast'. Exporting over a million slaves, it was second only to Luanda in Angola for the embarkation of slaves in the whole of Africa. The author's central concerns are the organization of the African end of the slave trade, and the impact participation in the trade had on the historical development of the African societies involved. It shifts the focus from the viewpoint of the Dahomian monarchy, represented in previous studies, to the coast. Here is a well documented case study of pre-colonial urbanism, of the evolution of a merchant community, and in particular the growth of a group of private traders whose relations with the Dahomian monarchy grew increasingly problematic over time. North America: Ohio U Press

Ouidah

Ouidah PDF Author: Robin Law
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780852554975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ouidah, an indigenous African town in the modern Republic of Benin, was the principal pre-colonial commercial centre of its region, and the second most important town of the Dahomey kingdom. It served as a major outlet for the export of slaves for the trans- Atlantic trade. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries Ouidah was the most important embarkation point for slaves in the region of West Africa known to outsiders as the 'Slave Coast'. Exporting over a million slaves, it was second only to Luanda in Angola for the embarkation of slaves in the whole of Africa. The author's central concerns are the organization of the African end of the slave trade, and the impact participation in the trade had on the historical development of the African societies involved. It shifts the focus from the viewpoint of the Dahomian monarchy, represented in previous studies, to the coast. Here is a well documented case study of pre-colonial urbanism, of the evolution of a merchant community, and in particular the growth of a group of private traders whose relations with the Dahomian monarchy grew increasingly problematic over time. North America: Ohio U Press

The Viceroy of Ouidah

The Viceroy of Ouidah PDF Author: Bruce Chatwin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101503211
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
Bruce Chatwin’s debut novel: “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness seen through a microscope” (The Atlantic) In this vivid, powerful novel, Chatwin tells of Francisco Manoel de Silva, a poor Brazilian adventurer who sails to Dahomey in West Africa to trade for slaves and amass his fortune. His plans exceed his dreams, and soon he is the Viceroy of Ouidah, master of all slave trading in Dahomey. But the ghastly business of slave trading and the open savagery of life in Dahomey slowly consume Manoel's wealth and sanity.

Dreams of Africa in Alabama

Dreams of Africa in Alabama PDF Author: Sylviane A. Diouf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199723982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
In the summer of 1860, more than fifty years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. Timothy Meaher, an established Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda , to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of niggers right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." He won the bet. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women. After emancipation, the group reunited from various plantations, bought land, and founded their own settlement, known as African Town. They ruled it according to customary African laws, spoke their own regional language and, when giving interviews, insisted that writers use their African names so that their families would know that they were still alive. The last survivor of the Clotilda died in 1935, but African Town is still home to a community of Clotilda descendants. The publication of Dreams of Africa in Alabama marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize of the American Historical Association (2007)

African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources

African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources PDF Author: Alice Bellagamba
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110732808X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
Though the history of slavery is a central topic for African, Atlantic world and world history, most of the sources presenting research in this area are European in origin. To cast light on African perspectives, and on the point of view of enslaved men and women, this group of top Africanist scholars has examined both conventional historical sources (such as European travel accounts, colonial documents, court cases, and missionary records) and less-explored sources of information (such as folklore, oral traditions, songs and proverbs, life histories collected by missionaries and colonial officials, correspondence in Arabic, and consular and admiralty interviews with runaway slaves). Each source has a short introduction highlighting its significance and orienting the reader. This first of two volumes provides students and scholars with a trove of African sources for studying African slavery and the slave trade.

Amazons of Black Sparta, 2nd Edition

Amazons of Black Sparta, 2nd Edition PDF Author: Stanley B. Alpern
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814707726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
The only thoroughly documented Amazons in world history are the women warriors of Dahomey, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western African kingdom. Once dubbed a 'small black Sparta,' residents of Dahomey shared with the Spartans an intense militarism and sense of collectivism. Updated with a new preface by the author, Amazons of Black Sparta is the product of meticulous archival research and Alpern's gift for narrative. It will stand as the most comprehensive and accessible account of the woman warriors of Dahomey.

Abson & Company

Abson & Company PDF Author: Stanley Alpern
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787382346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Yorkshireman Lionel Abson was the longest surviving European stationed in West Africa in the eighteenth century. He reached William's Fort at Ouidah on the Slave Coast as a trader in 1767, took over the English fort in 1770, and remained in charge until his death in 1803. He avoided the 'white man's grave' for thirty-six years. Along the way he had three sons with an African woman, the eldest partly schooled in England, and a bright daughter named Sally. When Abson died, royal lackeys kidnapped his children. Sally was placed in the king's harem and pined away; her brothers vanished. That king became so unpopular as a result that the people of Dahomey disowned him. Abson also mastered the local language and became an historian. After only two years as fort chief, he was part of the king's delegation to make peace with an enemy, a unique event in centuries of Dahomean history. This singular book recounts the remarkable life of this key figure in an ignominious period of European and African history, offering a microcosm of the lives of Europeans in eighteenth-century West Africa, and their relationships with and attitudes towards those they met there.

Public Memory of Slavery

Public Memory of Slavery PDF Author:
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1621968421
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description


Africa's Urban Past

Africa's Urban Past PDF Author: David Anderson
Publisher: James Currey Publishers
ISBN: 0852557612
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A selection of papers first delivered at the conference on Africa's Urban Past, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1996.

Barracoon

Barracoon PDF Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006274822X
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
One of the New York Times' Most Memorable Literary Moments of the Last 25 Years! • New York Times Bestseller • TIME Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 • New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 • NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 • Economist Book of the Year • SELF.com’s Best Books of 2018 • Audible’s Best of the Year • BookRiot’s Best Audio Books of 2018 • The Atlantic’s Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered • Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 • The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Books 2018 • “A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times “One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison “Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

What Am I Doing Here

What Am I Doing Here PDF Author: Bruce Chatwin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101503203
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In this text, Bruce Chatwin writes of his father, of his friend Howard Hodgkin, and of his talks with Andre Malraux and Nadezhda Mandelstram. He also follows unholy grails on his travels, such as the rumour of a "wolf-boy" in India, or the idea of looking for a Yeti.