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A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution

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Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019
An Observer and Wall Street Journal Book of the Year 2019

By the time of the 'Scramble for Africa' in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for many centuries. Its gold had fuelled the economies of Europe and Islamic world since around 1000, and its sophisticated kingdoms had traded with Europeans along the coasts from Senegal down to Angola since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies - most importantly shells: the cowrie shells imported from the Maldives, and the nzimbu shells imported from Brazil.

Toby Green's groundbreaking new book transforms our view of West and West-Central Africa. It reconstructs the world of kingdoms whose existence (like those of Europe) revolved around warfare, taxation, trade, diplomacy, complex religious beliefs, royal display and extravagance, and the production of art.

Over time, the relationship between Africa and Europe revolved ever more around the trade in slaves, damaging Africa's relative political and economic power as the terms of monetary exchange shifted drastically in Europe's favour. In spite of these growing capital imbalances, longstanding contacts ensured remarkable connections between the Age of Revolution in Europe and America and the birth of a revolutionary nineteenth century in Africa.

A Fistful of Shells draws not just on written histories, but on archival research in nine countries, on art, praise-singers, oral history, archaeology, letters, and the author's personal experience to create a new perspective on the history of one of the world's most important regions.

656 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

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About the author

Toby Green

23 books16 followers
Toby Green is the author of five previous works of non-fiction, and his work has been translated into ten languages. He teaches the history and culture of Portuguese-speaking Africa at King’s College London.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
Profile Image for Andrew.
656 reviews206 followers
October 21, 2020
A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution, by Toby Green, is a fascinating book on the history of Western Africa from about the 14th century to the 19th century. This book focuses not on cut or dry events, or even the specific events as they happened chronologically, but instead breaks down these regions into three main areas: Senegambia, Western Africa, and the Kongo area. Each of these regions is then examined in its earliest geopolitical format, focusing on early economics, the stirrings of globalization, and the composition of fiscal and economic forces in each discussed nation, and the social consequences of these forces. This book was more of a long duree style history - looking at the evolving processes at stake in each area, and how they effected each other, lead to changes elsewhere, and were tacked more closely into global events. Hegel once stated that "Africa has no history" and thus Africans themselves are not rooted in history. This statement has been used destructively through time to justify the Eurocentric view of the world and the subsequent colonialism, enslavement, and economic exploitation that followed. However, Green sets out to authoritatively disprove these theories, and instead root Western Africa firmly in global history, with influences far beyond the borders of the continent itself.

The first part of this book looks closely at Western Africa's trade in gold. Mansu Musa, a legendary king of Mali in the 14th century, went on the Haj, bringing and spending so much gold that it ahs gone down in history as an amazing event. This gold was mined locally by tributaries to the Malian state, and attracted all sorts of attention at the time. Western Africa for centuries had been trading gold through Saharan trade routes, engaging in exchanges of cloth, copper, iron, cowries, slaves and other products as well. At the time, powerful and quite sophisticated kingdoms sprawled across these trade routes - Mali, Songhay, and so on, all with centralized political systems, and fiscal-political forces that at the time would have been comparable to other European and Asian political entities. This abundance to gold was sought after, so much so that it was one of the main catalysts for Portuguese voyages to Africa, and the beginnings of the Atlantic Oceanic voyages themselves. Clearly then, Africa did have history, and history that would kick off events of global importance. Green looks at the effects this early trade had on states in Senegambia and Africa, and the difference monetary systems in place, noting a form of currency depreciation where African states traded gold for cloth, copper, cowrie and iron, among other trade goods. These goods were often used as currencies of value within the states themselves. Green notes that gold in Western Africa was undervalued as the supply was so high, and other items, like shells, cloth, copper and iron had more of a status in each state, due to their utility in farming equipment, weapons, clothing and religious/cultural objects. Shells were built into powerful fetishes in Sengambia, and cloth was a status symbol in the Kingdoms of Benin, for example. This trade meant that an object with globally accepted value - gold, was often traded at a loss by these kingdoms, not because they were savage or uneducated but because gold had less value in these areas.

Later on, the object of value would become slaves. Western Africa and the Congo became rooted in systems of transatlantic slavery, with slave traders form Europe now hauling gold, cowries, copper and iron over to Western Africa in exchange for enslaved persons. This obviously had a massive social effect, where the object of value became a human being. Human life began to be measured against other goods ("the man rode off with boots worth 3 slaves..."). Social systems crumbled or were transformed, for example, the pawn system, where young men would go to work for elders and powerful people as pawns - doing labour, being soldiers and so on. Being a pawn used to be the first step to a higher statues - possibly akin to being an intern in modern times, but with debt and credit implications (a son would go into service to pay a debt, usually). If these debts were not paid, then the son would be sold off into certain death. Raiders marauded across the region, destabilizing established communities, and leading to social strife that would destroy kingdoms. Indeed, Green notes that states that traded in gold, like Oyo and Assante, for example, were often much more politically stable, and lasted longer, than states like Dahomey and Nupe that were heavily involved with the slave trade.

In the Kongo region, this area did remain largely out of the Eurocentric trading sphere until the Atlantic trade began, although the Kongo was tacked into a Indian Ocean trading circle that saw goods traded from there into the interior, and out of ports in Eastern Africa. That is until the Portuguese arrived. Originally, the Portuguese were close allies of the Kingdom of the Kongo, and arrived as this Kingdom was engaging in expansionist moves against its neighbours. The Portuguese would settles in Luanda (now in Angola). The Kongo was much too powerful for the Portuguese to defeat in war, as would be shown in the mid-17th century when the Kongo fought against Portugal with the backing of the Dutch. This situation would last until toward the 18th century, when Portugal defeated the Dutch in Brazil and Africa, and installed a puppet government in a Kingdom of the Kongo that was a shade of its former self. This destruction came from internal strife over the slave trade. The Kongo's expansionist measures lead to the capture of numerous enslaved persons, culminating in the creation of a fiscal-military state, where profits from the Atlantic slave trade led to the funding of the army and fueling of new raids and conquests, a self fulfilling cycle. Similar systems were set up in West Africa - Senegambia and the Gold Coast area, where internecine social strife and the creation of new states like Asante - meaning literally "of war" were created through warfare, and captives sold on to fund further wars of conquest. These issues led both to massive social change, and massive disruptions of the regions, as new peoples migrated to avoid the trade, banded together, raided and founded nations.

Green's book is fascinating - it utilizes both written sources and oral sources, noting that written sources are often of the Eurocentric tradition. Oral sources are past down through generations in many West African communities, and these stories and histories, although lacking in technical detail, are nonetheless enlightening and prescient, as they contain information and perspective not contained in the European written accounts. Green has brought this are of the world fully into perspective, looking at the economic, social and political traditions and history of an area of the world largely ignored in global history, or largely marginalized as "Africa" - where the traditions of Senegambia, West Africa, and the Congo regions are varied, intricate and detailed, and can be further broken down into more and more fascinating pieces of history. Wholly and fully recommended to anyone looking for a good book on the time period of 1400-1800 with a perspective on Western Africa.
913 reviews7 followers
October 14, 2019
This is the best single history of any part of Africa I've ever read and should honestly be taught in all schools. I picked it up because my knowledge of African history and cultures is so severely lacking - the only region we ever learned about in school was Egypt and even that was almost remedial - and I needed to have a more well rounded understanding of the world. This was the perfect book to pick up. It's impeccably sourced and researched but remains quite readable and includes lots of maps, charts and photos to help visualize the information. The author provides highly nuanced approaches towards gender history and politics, the true impact of colonialism and religious influence, and embraces a complexity that dazzled me. I wish more history books were this thorough and honest; there is no cover up or one-sided perspective here. The insistence on depth enriches every chapter and leave you with a full 360 degree view of life in West Africa in the period of transition around the 18th century. I haven't read a book this deep in quite some time and it took a long time to finish but it was immensely worth the effort. Toby Green's approach to history by using currency to explain how slavery started and true impact it had in this region and globally is a brilliant idea, and I think this information should be taught in all American classrooms as a mandatory part of understanding why chattel slavery was different and how deeply it robbed an entire continent of its potential. If I could give this more than 5 stars I would. Highly, highly recommend.
Profile Image for Wim.
307 reviews35 followers
February 10, 2021
This book is mind-blowing. It is truly wonderful. The book I really needed to read.

Of course I knew that there were many African empires before and after European "discoveries" and I was well aware of the rich and diverse African cultures, but this book just filled so many blank spots of my understanding of precolonial history in West Africa and West Central Africa and how this distant past still shapes these regions today.

Whereas historical ethnographies and anthropology focused on single cultures and histories, this book does the contrary: it examines the linkages within West Africa and West Central Africa and even more importantly, with the rest of the world. Green shows how well connected and integrated these parts of Africa were in the global economy, even long before the arrival of the Europeans, and how Africa contributed largely to world history. Many other myths about the African precolonial past are expertly being refuted and replaced by a much better understanding of historical events, explaining not only why Africa did not take part in capital accumulation in spite of participating heavily in global trade and how this lead to an impoverishment of the continent, but also why there still is a deep distrust towards the state until today.

A Fistful of Shells is not the easiest read. The author focuses on patterns and general evolution, so the book hops from empire to empire, establishing links and combining evidence. It is full of anecdotes and historical evidence from a wide range of sources. Fun to read but at the same time very dense. It took me almost a month to finish it.
Profile Image for Carolien.
891 reviews141 followers
February 28, 2021
This is an absolutely fascinating book about precolonial West Africa that upended many of my preconceptions of the situation in that part of the continent. It is also changing my understanding of South African history and querying a few facts that I have been taught over many years of history lessons. Cannot recommend this enough.
Profile Image for Bart.
22 reviews
July 17, 2019
This is a history of West Africa that is centered around the main theme that the involvement of the continent into global trade did not lead to economic prosperity, but instead to deep (cultural) change and upheaval. Much of the argument is related to the point that African exports (including mainly slave labour and gold) could be used for accumulation (and hence the creation of new wealth) by their importers, while African imports (cowries, cloth, iron) provided much less opportunities to do that. Green is not an economist, and the book suffers from this, although he himself would see this very much differently. In his view, economists are all "disciples" of Adam Smith, believing that trade benefits all involved. While I agree that African history speaks against such a view, it is also true that many economists would not be surprised by this. The Latin American structuralist tradition (as well as related Marxist views), for example, makes very much the same point about the continent of South America (which, ironically, was a main trading partner of West Africa). Equally based in historial analysis, its main point is that the terms of trade has moved against Latin American exporters, leading to uneven development. This is obviously much related to Green's point about Africa, but he seems to be unaware of this.

Green seems to fit much better in a sociological view of history, which leads to a thematic rather than geographical or time-linear approach to the subject. This may well be suit those who are well aware of West African history, but it makes this volume (especially Part 2) utterly unsuitable as an introduction to the subject. I am reading Fage's introductory history of West Africa (a somewhat dated but consequently much more well-organized approach) on the side of this book, and this is what I would recommend to all who are looking for a comfortable way into African history.
Profile Image for Tinea.
568 reviews277 followers
August 12, 2022
A monumental work of Marxist-influenced economic history that I climbed too slowly and with too many distractions to honor with the "book report" form of review it deserves. I can feel the thesis and the history in this work pouring out of me, guiding and contextualizing it all, as I read other books about West Africa or about the pre-colonial and trans-Atlantic slave trade time period. I'm a shifted person. I didn't do the book justice and nor will my review-- but take the time and at least, if you can, read the introduction and Chapter 1. Green, citing scholars who came before, shifts an entire historiography.
Profile Image for Valerie.
195 reviews
April 10, 2021
This is a truly impressive book of economic history that examines the origins of the economic inequalities between Africa and Europe. Through this, the book also shows how deeply intertwined Africa has been with processes of globalization in Europe and the Americas for centuries, thereby offering a convincing debunking of the view that precolonial Africa existed 'outside of history'. It also shows how complex and, for a long time, bi-directional the relations of dependence and exchange were between Africa, Europe and the Americans. From my own disciplinary perspective, I was particularly interested to learn more about the deep historic roots of, on the one hand, the role of Islam as an actor of political revolution in the broader Sahel region and, on the other hand, the deep suspicion African peoples have towards the state. There is really much material to chew on here and to feed my reflection on present day developments in Africa. I wouldn't say the book is an easy read as it is fairly academic and economics-focused, but it was absolutely worth the effort.
Profile Image for Jaryl.
39 reviews25 followers
August 30, 2023
As an African in the diaspora I've been paying a lot of attention to what is currently happening in the motherland (to me, the entire African continent is motherland). The recent events in West Africa, particularly the coup in Niger, prompted me to start reading this book which I acquired at the beginning of 2020. I in fact met the author at the end of an evening at the British Academy where he was discussing this book with Zeinab Badawi. He has a lot of respect for Africans and Africa, which comes through in this book that I appreciate him for writing. He also acknowledges his privilege in being able to carry out the research that culminated in this book. It's quite a scholarly achievement and I now see why it was nominated for and won numerous awards.

What Toby Green has effectively done here is place Africa, and particularly West Africa, in it's correct position in global history in terms of the globalization, since he observed that historians conveniently like to omit Africa's contribution to the economic development of the world as we know it today. He even quoted Hegel as saying that Africa has no history. Green is saying actually, Africa has quite a rich history and played a major role in the shaping of the global economy. As the title suggests, economics is really the focus of this book and refers to a form of currency used in West and West-Central Africa — cowrie shells which had a number of uses in African society and therefore having value. These, alongside other forms of soft currency (whose value depreciates over time) were traded with African rulers between the 15th and 19th centuries for hard currency (whose value remains over time or produces surplus value) like gold, and, unfortunately, enslaved persons. Green shows how Africa was already connected to global trade before the Portuguese arrived in the 15th century, and details the sophistication of West African kingdoms, and it's political and religious systems, including secret societies. He even gives attention to the concepts of sacred geography and the connection between African religions (heathens and pagans to the Muslims) and the production of gold, which even Mansa Musa (a Muslim) refused to interfere with. Eventually the differences in the perception of value between the Europeans and Africans is what created the accumulation of capital in the West, and the loss of the same in West Africa as the world moved to global capitalism in the 20th century, paving the way for the colonialism and the Western exploitation of [West] Africa which continues to this day. Green shows in great detail how these economic imbalances gradually occurred from which started off as an equal exchange, while also considering other dynamics such as religion, gender, and geopolitics and its effect on this economic process which left West Africa economically underdeveloped and people of African descent all around the world continuously disrespected by other people groups.

It's very masterfully written, because this is an extremely complex and sensitive subject, but Green has the subtlety to pull it off by weaving together threads of various strands of knowledge and academic disciplines combined with the genuine respect that he has for Africa and her children. Some have said that it's too academic, but I disagree. It is academic but it has to be given the nature of the topic — the work has to be thoroughly supported with evidence and referencing to secure its credibility. It reads easily and fluidly anyway; it's not really 'heavy' reading. Reading it was somewhat of a time travel, because he's written it in a style that mentally took me back to that time in history, but maybe it's easier for me to visualise since I'm a product of this economic exchange between Europe and Africa those hundreds of years ago. As he pointed out in the conclusion, the theory underpinning the Western economic systems (which should apparently be desirable globally and were emulated around the world) ought to be rethought if it leads to the destruction of the planet! Green also points out how this important history is ommitted even in some West African universities, preferring to concentrate on contemporary problems. The issue though, is that this history is precisely the root cause of what is currently happening in West Africa and must be more widely taught. That, I suppose, is why Toby Green is here and why he wrote this book.

On a personal note, as someone who is genetically African, I found reading this work to be somewhat healing, because Green has tied up a lot of loose ends which creates the sensation of closure. As indigenous African religions feature strongly in this work, it seemed to me that my ancestors wanted me to read this book, perhaps for the reason I just mentioned. Green has presented the history of West Africa objectively, without the lens of eurocentrism or any traces of racist, colonial or imperialist "energy". This is hard to find in the work of any non-African regarding the African continent. Even though there's indescribable trauma in it's history, Africans do have something to be proud of. That is the silver lining that Green subtly communicates amid the horrors of this time in human history.

Amazing work. Highly recommended.
161 reviews2 followers
May 17, 2020
Unbearable

- Crazy structure which leads to repetion after repetition after repetition, and info going all over the place, through geographies, time, cultures and everything else... I am just not smart enough to follow

- Author's tone becomes tedious over time and one really wonders how objective his 'facts' are, considering his strong personal biases

It's a shame because I would have loved to learn more about the region's history
Profile Image for Zidane.
58 reviews1 follower
April 7, 2020
The best overall history of West Africa I've ever read. It is rich in the what and the how and references great archival material to give an account that has been rarely given. Great. Why 3 stars? well because he delves into the murky waters of explaining why the history played out as it did, finding causal links where none exist and coming off as trying to convince you of something he already believes; that the tragedies that occurred there between 1300 and 1800 have way more say on the realities of W. Africa today than any other factors. Read it for the what and the how, ignore the why.
Profile Image for Sincerae  Smith.
223 reviews85 followers
Read
January 28, 2021
I did not finish this book because I had to return it to the public library. I might go back to it and complete it at a later date this year.
Profile Image for Debbie.
209 reviews12 followers
January 14, 2021
About once a decade a history book comes along that is considered so important, so ground-breaking, that it wins scores of awards, sells millions of copies, and has everyone talking about it. Then, over the next few years, people slowly start to admit that it was dull, badly written, and that they couldn't actually finish it. This is such a book. No doubt it provides a reasonably new way of looking at the subject, and it probably is important, but it is written in such a tedious, repetitive manner that it is a struggle to get through. And the author's approach is patronising, with the author believing that everything he has to say is a revelation to our deeply blinkered, narrow little minds.
I also believe the author's approach is flawed. He tries to make an argument for oral history, and I will admit that there is a place for it in the study of history. But I can't see how oral history can be reliable when looking at events that happened hundreds of years ago. The eye witnesses have gone, all that has been left behind are Chinese whispers, myth, and rumour. Yes, written history also changes with time, and to suit the current fashion, but the key thing is that is doesn't destroy what went before and (hopefully) the original sources are still there. Green does use a variety of other sources to support the narrative - although there are a number of points he makes that really could do with some sort of supporting reference - but the use of 'evidence' has me questioning much of what he has to say.
Profile Image for Martin King.
14 reviews3 followers
June 20, 2021
I did not finish reading this book. I could not overcome the endless repetitions and digressions found in a Fistfull of Shells. I know that many have posted positive reviews but those readers must possess far greater patience and intelligence than I to achieve such a result.
The author mentions Henry Louis Gates’ documentary series, Africa’s Great Civilizations, in his opening chapter. It is unfortunate the author does not follow a similar format in his work. Gates looked at specific area over a specific time period and successfully integrated topics such as Islam and money into his narrative. Toby Green in A Fistfull of Shells is determined to include every bit of information gleaned from his obviously extensive research. Unfortunately he is unable to go more than a page without adding lengthy and often extraneous information that detracts from his narrative.
A Fistfull of Shells could be of interest to a reader who has some knowledge of West African History and the time and patience to wade through the book. For me the old saying, it is not a question whether one is well read, bur whether one has read well, comes to mind. A Fistfull of Shells is bursting with proof that the author is well read but offers the reader little opportunity to determine if he has read well.
44 reviews
February 9, 2020
I didn’t realize this book would be so focused on currency and trade. If someone is particularly fascinated by those topics they may like this book more than I did...but I can’t believe this book has so many raving reviews.
Profile Image for Wiom biom.
60 reviews8 followers
January 1, 2021
A Fistful of Shells is unquestionably a revelatory, well-researched, and captivating book on West Africa. Throughout both the 'Causes' and 'Consequences' sections, Green continually reminds us of a few themes that, admittedly, gets repetitive at times; for instance, that economic imbalance between the region and the West emerged following the beginning of Atlantic trade, that the people of West Africa "rose up" against the warrior aristocracies due to the stark rise in inequality between ruler and subject. The book reads like a comprehensive collection of the histories of various empires (Mali, Songhay) and states (Asante, Dahomey, etc.) from the 1300s to 1800s, tightly woven together by central themes like those I've mentioned above. But perhaps, most importantly, A Fistful of Shells seeks to challenge Western notions of (West) African history (e.g. Hegel's proposition that "Africa has no history", or the paternalistic attitudes stemming from the Abolitionist debates of the early 1800s); Green also critically and sensitively navigates the enormous topic that is the Atlantic trade of enslaved persons without falling into a reductive focus on it in in the narrativisation of West African history. Within these pages, one learns so much about the political systems of West African nations, how they interacted proactively with the first Portuguese traders, how they were proponents of free trade before the Europeans were, the West Africans' perception of material value, their interaction with Christianity and Islam, and last but not least, their influence on and their being influenced by the transnational revolutions and reform movements during the Age of Revolution. It is an eye-opener.

Some problems I had with this work: demands sustained concentration (so many different histories!), personal inability to understand economic ideas (especially concepts to do with currency).
254 reviews1 follower
August 20, 2022
This is a very good, but challenging exploration of West Africa's place in the global economy from the 15th Century to the early 19th C. Green sets out to refute once and for all that notion that Africa has no history before the arrival of the European and use West Africa's as evidence against the narrowly materialistic rationality of "economic man" and the broader claims that globalization will inevitably benefit all if we give it a chance. As someone who teaches global history and the place of the slave trade in that story for some time, I personally didn't need to be convinced that Hegel's now nearly two centuries old assessment of Africa lacking history was just plain long. Yet, I suspect Dr. Green runs into far more prejudices along those lines than I see, so I will take it on good faith that the repeated arguments against Hegel remain necessary and have not yet become a straw man, though I hope after this book that canard no longer needs to be addressed. He also successfully makes a good case for how free-trade and globalization underdeveloped West Africa in a far more complex way than Walter Rodney's argument made decades ago.

In the process, I learned a lot. Green's detailed discussions of varies African diplomatic missions to Brazil and Portugal can't help but change how one thinks of Africa in the 16th and 17th C especially. Also eye-opening is his discussion of the continuing exchange going on between African polities and the African Diaspora, especially maroons, throughout the period discussed in the book. The discussion of the varieties of currency operating in Africa, and how these became devalued as slavery became the primary commodity Africans traded with the Europeans. As such, it is not a happy story, even if he concludes with the revolutions against the military-slave harvesting states in the late 18th and early 18th C as offering a hopeful note.

It is not an easy read though. While Green can tell a good story, something that initially led me to flirt with the idea of assigning this book -- a normal reaction to any book relevant to my courses that excites me -- he pitches the analysis at a higher level, so fairly early in the book he starts speaking about "surplus value" as if this concept, and its relevant implications to the situation described are immediately clear to everyone. Since this comes up again and again, if one feels unsure about this concept, one runs the risk of being unsure about the argument multiple times in the course of the reading.

Further, while the evidence Green presents about Africa's connections with the economies of Europe and the New World is unsurmountable, the arguments he makes about parallel social/cultural developments were not convincing to this reader well versed in 18th and 19th C. The notion that the Fiscal-Military states that emerged in Africa to profit from the slave trade should be seen as comparable to European states at the same period seemed a stretch. For while the comparison is on the face of it justifiable, Green missed an opportunity to note, what strikes me as the key difference between developments in Europe and Africa. In Europe, the trend is every more towards de-personalization of the state. Yes, in absolutist European states the monarch becomes the ubiquitous symbol of the state's authority, but personal relationships play a declining role in government decisions. Thus, in Louis XIV's France, while the nobles come to Versailles to demonstrate and cultivate their personal relationship with the King, the King is selling offices to people, often commoners, with whom the King has no personal connection, who go on to run state affairs, development that is central to the modern state. Contrast this with Fiscal-Military states in Africa Green describes, where personal connections remain key, for example human pawns (i.e. hostages) remain an important part of the slave trade with African slave-traders using them as security for short-term loans of consumer goods that will be traded to those selling slaves further inland. Further, one's best security against enslavement is to be a participant in the warfare waged to capture slaves, which of course also involves personal relationships with ones fighting comrades, and those most in danger were those with no personal relationships. Indeed, Green even details the extraordinary story of a young man caught and ultimately sold to a landholder in South Carolina, who facilitated his newly purchased slave's communications with his native peoples that demonstrated his ties to the elite ultimately allowing him to return home a free man. This strikes me as the very opposite of European developments. Perhaps my skepticism just reflects Eurocentrism on my part, but Green could have worked harder to win this reader over. Similarly, I would have liked to have seen more discussion of how revolutions challenging the Military-elite in African states connected with events outside of Africa. While Green notes that the military strategy used by slave insurgents in the Haitian revolution can be linked to African strategies, this is relatively limited. Green does not offer examples of the revolutions in Africa affecting the debate on the slave trade, suggesting the extent to which the globalization of this era was first and foremost one of economic trade and not shaped by globalizing culture, beyond African elites adopting European dress in certain contexts.

That, however, is a relatively small quibble in the face of the massive research that went into this project that unquestionably succeeds in its main goals.
Profile Image for Anna.
154 reviews
June 18, 2023
And by five stars I mean, five stars to me for finishing this. I started this on the back porch at Monrovia Christian Fellowship in April 2020 and finished it this morning on my front porch in Cleveland. This book was my white whale. Who will I be when I am not reading it?

Overall, this was totally fascinating and I learned so much (even if by now I've forgotten what I learned back in 2020). My main critique is that the book included a lot of statements like "Social, political, and economic changes were sweeping Senegambia," which are then illustrated with a passage from someone's diary or logbook. I wanted a bit more connective tissue between the high-level and the granular - like can you explain a bit more about what those changes entailed because I am not smart enough to infer it from the primary source evidence myself.

The organization of this book was a little hard to follow at points- I often felt a little bit lost in time and in cause/effect. In general I preferred the second half, which is organized thematically, whereas the first half focuses on chronology in different geographies across the region. There was a LOT of stuff on currencies - I kept thinking Green had made his point and then there would be another section on currency conversions. But there were also some sections that were so fascinating that I could have read an entire book on them.
28 reviews
January 24, 2021
The book was very interesting and informative for example I liked how it recontextualized ideas such as “cannibalism” as a widely used metaphor for people being eaten up by the slave trade. It provides a broad narrative which brought together the seemingly disperate facts I knew about West Africa.

The issues I had was that I would have liked a definition for certain terms I was unaware of and that popped up a lot, mainly “surplus value”, and that I came out the other end feeling like the way history played out was inevitable which leads me to believe I did not get a thorough enough understanding of the different factors that shaped the history to understand how events might have played out differently.
Profile Image for Nathan Albright.
4,488 reviews126 followers
August 30, 2023
A Fistful Of Shells: West Africa From The Rise Of The Slave Trade To The Age Of Revolution, by Toby Green

Writing about West Africa during the period of the slave trade, especially when one wishes, as the author does, to integrate the history of West Africa within its larger history as well as the history of the Atlantic world, is a minefield that most people would likely wish to avoid. If this author is somewhat too interested in writing about problems of intersectionality and clearly has some negative thoughts about Europeans and settler colonists--we get the familiar canards about slaves being mere commodities to Europeans and European-Americans while slaves were supposedly embedded in family and social contexts in the African and generally indigenous world here, which is completely bogus--the author is at least an honest enough historian to wrestle with the complexities of social change over time, noting that those who are against one form of oppression are not consistent in their opposition nor are they immune from being in favor of other forms of injustice. Justice is hard to manage, and the author's honest wrestling with this question over centuries of the history of West Africa demonstrates an honest man facing a challenging historical record with considerable honesty, if not perfectly.

This book is an ambitious single-volume work of a bit less than 500 pages of core material. The book begins with a list of maps, foreword, note on spellings/names, glossary, and an introduction. After this, the book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book contains five chapters that deal with the causes of economic divergence in West and West-Central Africa from Senegambia to northern Angola. Included in this part of the book is a timeline for the fifteenth, sixteenth, and some of the seventeenth centuries, the rise and fall of the great empires of the Sahel like Mali and Songhai (1), the trade routes from Senegambia to Sierra Leone (2), the gold trade of the gold coast (3), the rivers of cloth and masks of bronze of the bights of Benin and Biafra (4), and the kingdom of Kongo from majesty to revolt (5), closed with a coda. The second part of the book looks at the consequences of politics, belief systems, and revolutions from below, starting with a timeline for West African political history from 1680 to 1850 or so. This part of the book contains chapters about slavery and value in the eighteenth century (6), the fiscal-military state in West African politics (7), new societies and worldviews relating to the Atlantic and West African worlds (8), the transnational Africa and the struggle and rise of modernity (9), warrior aristocracies and pushback from below (10), and the complicated history of Islam, revolution, and aristocracy in the region (11). The book then ends with a conclusion, bibliography, notes, list of illustrations, and an index.

Ultimately, if the history of West Africa during this period looks pretty bleak, it looks bleak for pretty obvious reasons. West Africa did have a history, and the author demonstrates the relationship of historians like himself to the biased griots who served as the official historians of West African states who had the power to shape how rulers were viewed and how they attained legitimacy, while being despised for their lack of integrity as many contemporary historians are. Similarly, the author notes the problems that West African states had in managing the tensions of their position, seeking to profit off of the power of statehood, gaining luxury goods for themselves and other members of the elite, managing the demands of European trading partners and foreign and domestic markets, handling the cultural influence of Christianity and Islam from outside, and dealing with social pressures from within their nations. If many of the nations discussed here ranging from the Mali and Songhai and Kongo empires at the start of the period explored to the Hausa kingdoms, Oyo, Borno, and Fulu states towards the end of the time period this book explores, did not do a great job in handling these challenges, the author demonstrates that West African nations had their own distinct cultures as well as integration with the Atlantic and Middle Eastern worlds, not only through religion and trade (including the trade of slaves, palm oil, gold, cloth, and other materials like cowrie shells and iron bars), but also in views of authority and power. People, trade goods, and ideas managed to travel by land and by sea, in ways that continue to shape life in the Atlantic world to this day.
Profile Image for David.
30 reviews5 followers
February 28, 2021
This book changed my understanding of the slave trade and its impact on Africa's economic, social and political development. Green argues that the forms of currency employed by West Africans and their many trading partners profoundly shaped the trajectory of that development. The use of the titular cowrie shells as well as iron bars, copper bracelets and various types of cloth as money made good sense in economies where the currency carried not only economic, but also moral value. The export of first gold and then enslaved persons in exchange for such "commodity monies" left West Africa vulnerable to outside forces that used specie and slave labor to accumulate "universal value" while shells and such (perhaps inevitably) depreciated. Strong African states like Asante and Dahomey eventually proved incapable of navigating these external pressures as well as the internal tensions between their warrior-aristocrat elites and rebellious middle classes. Interestingly, Islam, which in pre-modern times was the religion of the upper classes in places like Mali and Songhay, became one instrument through which merchants and others resisted the tyranny of the "obas." Green's research and storytelling are exceptional. He seems to have visited every relevant archive, and makes clever use of oral tradition to support his thesis. I'll make much use of his work when teaching this history.
Profile Image for Domhnall.
455 reviews351 followers
September 1, 2020
Toby Green offers an analytical history of Western Africa from 1,000 CE to the mid 19th century, the pre-colonial era, though mostly focused on the latter three centuries. This is an immense region between modern day Angola and Senegal, within which a great diversity of states has contributed to a complex story of trade, warfare and cultural exchange. From the outset the region has been connected with networks of trade and exchange to the North and East, primarily with the Islamic world of North Africa, but through that to India and Europe. Over time, alternative trade networks developed using Atlantic shipping routes to provide direct links with Europe and the Americas. The African states were not restricted to primitive systems of barter, as often suggested, but took a full and active part in commercial trading through the medium of a range of different types of currency, including gold, shells, cloth, nuts, and others, all serving their function effectively, alongside well developed systems of commercial credit.

African states were caught up in changes and developments not dissimilar to those in Europe and Islamic states, bearing in mind that in the early part of this history Europe was convulsed by its own religious wars and progression from feudalism to the evolution of early modern states. Engaging in trade enabled African rulers to secure growing tax revenues, from which to fund the administrative and military basis for stable and growing states, while increased access to currency supported growth in their domestic economies to serve new types of demand, such as provisions for the Atlantic shipping. Africa, like Europe, was adapting to climate change in the period of the Little Ice Age, leading to diversification of crops and adopting new foods, often introduced from America. Trade introduced Africans to new technologies, especially for military use; Europeans were keen to supply new weapons, including guns and gunpowder, though excellent swords and later muskets were also manufactured by Africans. Over time, trade also exposed African producers to intensifying competition and indeed dumping of Europe’s over production in important markets, especially textiles, ruining some African industries and forcing change in others.

Trade was especially important to Africa’s emerging elites, providing the impetus and the resources to support a warrior aristocracy, increasingly remote from and oppressive towards the general population. This process was vastly intensified by the trade in captive humans across the Atlantic, which many African rulers became increasingly dependent upon as demand fell for other African products in the face of European competition, while the demand for commercial products of farms and plantations within Africa (cotton, palm-oil, nuts) was to create a comparable local demand for captive labour, which was met by continuous warfare and raiding between neighbouring states. By the mid 18th Century, extreme social divisions were leading to revolutionary movements from below, not dissimilar to events in Europe and the Americas, and in large swathes of Western Africa people regarded conversion to Islam, and religious reforms within Islam, as a viable path to liberation, though the results in the pre-colonial era of the 19th Century were not radically dissimilar to the preceding arrangements. The model for precolonial West African states is summed up by Green in one word – predatory – and this in turn has influenced attitudes and values in the post-colonial era, both among elites and among the people.

Despite participating energetically in a global trading network, and in the process of modernisation, West African states were at an increasing disadvantage compared to the European experience and the key differences identified by Toby Green arise from the characteristics of European capitalism. In very simple terms, capitalism engages in production – whether agricultural or manufacturing – and trade as a path to ongoing capital accumulation, whereas other traditions have effectively consumed the wealth created. The same contrast has been made between the Spanish and French states of the 16th and 17th centuries - whose aristocracies and monarchies wasted the wealth of their economies for displays of extravagance and for wars of religion or just succession - and the “prudent” behaviour of Dutch or English capitalists, who encouraged trade and 'improvement' as a path to create new wealth. The outcome was to establish profound inequality in the terms of trade between West Africans and Europeans in particular. That structural inequality persists today, both in terms of global trade and local social and political structures, continually changing in its specific manifestations but nonetheless reflecting many common features with the history described in this book.

This is a book in which Africans are given a full, active part to play in their own history as agents and participants, not simply as silent victims. There are many indications, too, of substantial ways in which Africans have shaped developments across the Americas and continue to participate in a transatlantic cultural network. The Atlantic slave trade is hugely important throughout, but it is not by any means the only theme, or even the most important one.
Profile Image for Joanna.
862 reviews
September 30, 2023
An eye-opening examination of trade (including but not limited to the slave trade) in West Africa before the establishment of full-scale European colonies. Green pays close attention to the interplay between and among trade, material culture, religion, and grassroots resistance to local power structures makes this interesting even for the non-economics-minded.
28 reviews1 follower
December 20, 2022
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The author provides superb analysis about how key international trade trends impacted West African societies and economies.
73 reviews4 followers
May 20, 2020
It's been a while since a book significantly changed the way I think about either a region of the world or an entire epoch of world history, and this book did both. Aside from providing an extremely convincing and well-argued thesis about the causes of the economic divergence between West Africa and Europe that I won't try to summarize here, the author does a great job of re-centering West Africa in the last millennium of world history and exploding Hegel's (widely-subscribed) notion that "Africa has no history." You absolutely do not have to have an especially strong interest in the particulars of West African history to get a lot out of this book. An interest in any of the following will do:

"What are the historic origins of African 'underdevelopment'? How did African states change during this era, and how were these changes connected to early globalization? What are the implications of one of the findings of this book: that broadly analogous historical processes took place simultaneously in Africa, Europe and the Americas at this time, especially during the age of revolution? On my reading, one conclusion is that these histories did not somehow evolve separately until the rise of colonialism in the nineteenth century, but rather always grew together."

Economics aside, the book's initial focus on the centuries prior to and during the early stages of the growth of the Atlantic slave trade are actually surprisingly interesting and thought-provoking. For example: depictions of medieval Europe being influenced in a big way by changes in West Africa, vignettes of all the many ambassadors stationed at European courts (and Brazil) by African kingdoms starting in the 15th century, and the narration of Kongo as a significant diplomatic player in European affairs in the 17th century - among other things, really changed the way I think about pre-colonial Euro-African relations.

One minor fault: in Part 2 of the book, while there's nothing wrong with the thematic focus/organization of the chapters (as opposed to geographic, as in Part 1), I did find that the narrative got a bit convoluted and lost among a deluge of rapidly changing people, places and times - sometimes all within a single page. Judging by the amount of notes and underlines I made, I was considerably less engaged with some sections of Part 2.

In sum, if you're even a little interested in world history and issues of development, this book will nicely round out your understanding of the subject.
249 reviews
July 6, 2020
This is one of the most thought-provoking and insightful works of history that I have read for some time. Green connects pre-colonial West African history to wider global trends as a robust rebuttal to the notion that "Africa has no history", or had an economic history rooted in barter - notions which still have surprising currency.
Speaking of currency, Green anchors much of this superb study in patterns of trade and foreign exchange between West Africa and the wider Atlantic economy. "For several centuries, Western African societies exported what might be called 'hard currencies', especially gold; these were currencies that, on a global scale, retained their value over time. For the first two centuries of Atlantic (slave) trade, these societies also imported large amounts of goods that were used as currencies: cowries, copper, cloth and iron. However, these were what we might call 'soft currencies', which were losing their relative value over time. By 1700, therefore, centuries of trade had been grounded in inequalities of the exchange of economic value ..."
Among other things, this would lead to what economists might today call a "terms of trade shock" which weakened West African states and economies ahead of the late 19th century colonisation scramble.
The net cast by the book is wide. Who knew that West African demand for iron ore helped to facilitate early industrialisation in Eurpe? Then there is the "Age of Revolution" in the book's title, the age that began with the American, French and Haitian Revolutions and Britain's Industrial Revolution. Green reclaims West Africa's place in this history: the peoples of the region overthrew aristocracies that had emerged to prey on them, including literally in the case of enslavement. There were echoes of this around the Atlantic which have since largely been lost to history.
When political analysts today speak of "state failure" or "failed states" in Africa, they are often detached from the deep historical roots of these trends. The same might be said about the inequalities that have helped to give rise to 21st century Islamist militancy on the continent, which is also in some ways an echo of past movements that flourished against the backdrop of increasing inequities.
One hopes to some day see similar histories of east and Southern Africa.
Profile Image for Tom.
480 reviews12 followers
November 16, 2020
An ambitious project to marshal the cultural, military, religious and, above all, economic history of West Africa (and to a lesser extent Central Africa) into a cohesive narrative that connects the region's past with its present.

The research and knowledge that has gone into this book is incredible, which makes me feel even guiltier about saying that it is a mess. As a resource for information on the subject of West African history, it is very informative; it is not, however, well structured or well edited.

My top three criticisms:
- Repetitiveness. I do not have the greatest memory known to mankind, but even I don't need the same arguments repeated every 10 pages. This should have been edited out before the book was sent to print.
- Lack of clarity. I think it's fair to say the book's topic is not well known to a Western audience - surely part of the point of this book is to make the subject more familiar? Then why is there not some very clearly explained section about the various kingdoms that came and went? Yes, there have been quite a few of them over 500 years, and it would always have been confusing, but the author seems to have abdicated all responsibility for trying to make it clearer.
- Unwieldy structure. To give Toby Green his due, in the introduction he acknowledges the challenges of trying to create a framework for presenting his bounty of information. I just don't think he's lighted on an elegant solution. It's chaotic and hard to follow, which obscures the logic of his arguments.

I probably could have given this book four stars and just posted the first two paragraphs of this review, but then I thought about all the other non-fiction books on historical subjects that have been carefully composed to deliver their information, and it seemed a kind of literary blasphemy not to acknowledge that there is an art to creating the shape of a non-fiction book - an art that is lacking here.

I would still wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in West African history - and in particular how its economic past impacts its economic present - but I would do so with the caveat that they will have to wade through a morass of words.
Profile Image for Stuart.
Author 1 book7 followers
October 27, 2022
All too often African history is treated as a topic either entirely divorced from the rest of global history or one that is entirely determined by forces beyond the continent. Older scholarship notoriously labeled Africa a continent “without history” and even more recent studies have at times viewed it entirely through the lens of colonialism and the slave trade - not allowing for any agency on the part of Africans themselves. Obviously this is a very limited way of viewing an entire continent’s history - lots happened in Africa before the arrival of Europeans and plenty happened there besides exploitative actions taken by those Europeans once they arrived. I found Toby Green’s book an engaging antidote to old fashioned views of African history that still persist in popular understanding of the continent.

A Fistful of Shells is primarily an economic history of West Africa from c.1450 until c.1800. It covers a period dominated by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade but does not limit itself just to discussions of that topic. Instead the book takes an African-centric perspective, examining how African powers and individuals were instrumental in shaping the political and economic changes that West Africa experienced during this period. Green’s primary argument is that far from being passive victims of European exploitation, Africans were instrumental in shaping their own environment.

Effectively making this argument requires Green to thread a delicate needle. Pushing it too far would risk arguing that African’s were primarily responsible for the slave trade and later colonial exploitation, absolving the Europeans of responsibility for their actions. Thankfully, I think Green does an excellent job at showing how Africans were actors in their own history, not strictly victims, but not freeing the Europeans for their exploitation of the continent. I think a key part of this is the level of detail Green engages with, showing that West Africa was a complex place with many individual actors some of whom benefited from trade with Europeans, including most notoriously the trade in humans, while others were victims. A more class based perspective allows Green to show how African rulers in particular participated in exploitation along with the Europeans while many other people suffered. He also discusses the differences between African states that participated in the slave trade and those that, even if only for a time, refused to sell slaves to outsiders. Green also makes the decision to not go into great detail about the horrors of the slave trade or what happened to African slaves once they reached America - he is content that we understand the horrors of this practice and chooses to focus on Africa and the people who remained on the continent for the most part. That is not to say that the enslaved experience is absent, just that if you are looking for a detailed study of Trans-Atlantic Slavery this is not that book.

Green’s interest range much further and in many ways it was his handling of other trades, such as in gold or cloth, that I found even more interesting. This is because while I was obviously aware of the slave trade and the greater nuance that Green provided was interesting, I was almost entirely ignorant of these other trades. A key theme of Green’s book is how the trade with West Africa was primarily extractive - it removed resources of long term value such as gold or humans from the continent in exchange for resources that had shorter value, such as cloth or other materials that would decay. This line of argument while interesting is harder to follow I think and is one of Green’s weaker points. I’m far from a specialist and wouldn’t be comfortable critiquing the overall argument, but I just found it hard to fully understand the details.

This argument is interconnected with broader points about how in West Africa multiple types of currency were often in use simultaneously. Green uses this argument to show the economic complexity of the region and to push back against older histories that saw Africa as a “barter economy” without real understanding of money. Green provides very valuable nuance to our understanding of the complex economics of West African trade, but I think it also complicates his other argument about the role of extractive trade imbalance between Africa and the rest of the world. It doesn’t undermine it so much as make it harder to follow and after finishing I felt that there was much greater depth to this line of thinking that I just didn’t fully grasp.

Instead, what I found most revelatory about A Fistful of Shells was how it showed the interconnectedness of West Africa, Europe, and North America in this period. Green shows how material trade was an important linking factor, but he doesn’t limit himself to just that. Instead he covers the transmission of ideas, perhaps most intriguingly in how the Haitian Revolution potentially inspired popular revolts in West Africa against an increasingly unpopular aristocracy made wealthy off the slave trade, and the sustained diplomatic connections between West African political entities and European powers. The role of African embassies to Europe and Brazil are particularly interesting and show a very different perspective on African-European relations than we usually see in popular discussions of this period.

Far from being isolated from the rest of the world, Green shows that Africa was deeply connected to European and North American trends - and not just as a receiver but also as an influencer. As a result I think A Fistful of Shells shows the flaws in approaching a history of Europe during this period without considering the role Africa and African powers played in culture and trade. It was African gold that sustained many European monarchies and wars, for example. History books often emphasise the establishing of trade links to India by the Portuguese and the American colonies of the Spanish, but the African trade which was significantly enhanced during this period feels equally important and was integrated with the two, for example Indian cotton was a common trade good in West Africa.

While I found Green’s book to be a little long and in places a bit slow, the content within was absolutely fascinating and did a lot to change my perspective on African history and my broader understanding of global history. I think even just reading part of it could do a lot to expand anyone’s understanding of the development of global trade in the early modern period and I would definitely recommend it as an introduction to the subject.
105 reviews
August 24, 2020
Superb economic(+) history! This is what history is supposed to be like. This is an incredibly dense work so I'll only highlight a few things that interested me. This isn't my first slavery or African history for sure, but there were unique perspectives that aligned with my instincts on the subject. It corrects the false narratives that African history stopped with European slavery (chattel) or that its sub-Saharan people were passive barbarians who were either victimized or uplifted by European colonization. As not every European nation engaged in the slave trade (like most of Central and all of Eastern Europe), Europeans are referred to here generally instead of the main powers involved: Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French. Instead, "Europeans" were mostly powerless outsiders until the 19th century, subjects of local rulers if they wanted to trade, acquire supplies to travel and survive in a hostile tropical climate, and to get slave labor for their growing empires.

Instead of grand unhistorical motivations for white Europeans based simply on skin color, instead they arrived first and foremost interested in gold because of their lack of metal and wealth. They were fueled by glorious tales (that were true) about the region during the Middle Ages, especially geopolitics concerning the trans-Saharan money flow to their arch-enemy, the Ottoman Empire, which was enriched with gold and slave manpower by places like the Kingdom of Mali and later Songhai. Ottoman pressure drove the Portuguese to find wealth around the periphery of the Turks, yet they still utilized North African information about slavery transmitted through Spain and Morocco as they expanded around the world.

So, Europeans were trade guests in West Africa until the 18-19th centuries draining humanity from the area with mostly willing trade partners. Africans were active participants in a global economy where longstanding, domestic, nonracial slavery spiraled out of control, then mixed with mostly Spanish racial "blood" categorizations (later the English Barbados Code) as they tried to distinguish themselves from their "chattel" that they often intermixed with.

What local leaders valued put them at a disadvantage in comparison with the Europeans, which grew as the Europeans industrialized and formalized their colonial grip on much of the world in the 19th century. That is why some of the richest places in the world of the past, like the nation of Mali, are now some of the world's poorest. As guests of the multitude of kingdoms like Benin, Europeans slowly gained advantage in trade based on cultural differences of what was valued: gold, supplies, and slaves versus bronze, non-African alcohol, weapons, and cowry shells (a global currency accepted from the Americas, Africa, to China). Powerful African leaders valued many different things, but primarily weapons to defeat their enemies and most importantly to provide humans to sell.

Initially, most enslaved persons were criminals, war captives, or internal enemies of the king until that system could no longer meet the demand, leading to larger wars among African kingdoms, treating with European enemies of the prevailing power to gain advantage (choosing Dutch or English allies over the Portuguese), or resisting when their own subjects were threatened with enslavement (Kongo). Toby Green makes it clear that Europeans had little chance in enslaving Africans without the expressed permission of kingdoms like Benin or the Ashante Empire.

"Maroon community" is a fascinating concept as the escaped enslaved persons transferred everything from religion (Islam, spirit worship, and witch-women found in South America for example), to music, to a warrior lifestyle (transferred from W. Africa to Haiti by slaves who used jungle warfare techniques during the Haitian Revolution). They were forcibly taken, brutally forced to suffer the horrific Middle Passage, and spread throughout the world. That doesn't mean they lost their identity.

Finally, Islam and Christianity had complex relationships with the region, but the latter was much less accessible because of European involvement in slavery. There are many instances throughout history where the religion of trade becomes the religion of rulers (Buddhism in East Asia, Hinduism in South East Asia, etc.). Islam arrived first and mostly avoided harsh oppression of native religious practices like animal worship (Snake temples in Dahomey were so influential that chieftains wouldn't dare etc.). Some rulers tried to impose Islam and usually it didn't go over very well. The status quo returned to indigenous religions either remaining distinct or morphing with the outside ones (like the independent African Christian bishops). Other kings chose Christianity and even adopted Portuguese culture like in the Kong Kingdom. However, it was very interesting that there was a renewed acceptance of Islam as a religion, with jihad (struggle), and how some adopted the religion in order to resist a greater European presence in the 19th century. It took hundreds of years of European slavery for Islam to make inroads in many of the most stubborn regions of West Africa.

(An interesting tidbit that I can't place anywhere else is that ineffective Oyo kings past their prime were strangled to death by their wives as a form of regime change. Generally, women in West Africa were more powerful than in much of the world at the time of this work (15th-19th centuries). Until the increased spread of Islam and Christianity into the jungle regions of West Africa, women were often the source for lineage and control over clans. In Oyo and later Dahomey, they were apparently an institutionalized system of murder for weak leaders.)
Profile Image for Erik Champenois.
286 reviews8 followers
October 10, 2021
I grew up on comics/cartoons/stories depicting trade with Africans or Native Americans as the purchasing of valuable metals and other goods with worthless trinkets. The implication of course being that the indigenous peoples didn't have a clue about economic value, whereas the superior Europeans did. "A Fistful of Shells" shows just how completely wrong this picture is by reviewing the actual economic history of currencies traded with the African continent. The book also shows how inequalities in the exchange of economic value (including different inflation rates for different currencies) led to the economic inequality between Europe and West-Central Africa that we still see today.

West-Central Africa used a variety of currencies for several centuries, including gold, cowries, cloth, and manilas. Green shows how these were used as currencies by Europeans as well as Africans, with exchange rates established between them. Cowries, for example, were not considered worthless trinkets but currency with a store of value and an exchange rate . The first part of the book is divided into chapters covering five regions (the Sahel, including Borno, Kano, Mali, and Songhay; the greater Senegambia region; the Gold Coast; the bights of Benin and Biafra; and the Kingdom of Kongo) and particularly focuses on the nature and impact of this trade in currencies. Europe and Africa both started up using currencies for religious (decorative) purposes, but Europe ended up using currencies almost exclusively as a medium of exchange whereas Africa retained the ritual and decorative purposes, resulting in a divergence in the circulation of money: more money circulating in Europe than in Africa. Europe's currencies became focused on precious metals, which had lower inflation rates than the currencies used most commonly in Africa, particularly cowry shells but also cloth, with the different inflation rates resulting in divergent economic trajectories for the two continents.

The second part of the book covers the rising growth in another kind of currency: humans, or enslaved people. The reliance on European credit along with the growth in captives resulted in further economic divergence, and the trade in slaves changed the trajectory of African polities, leading to revolts against African slave-based aristocracies and to religious awakenings and wars in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Through the whole book Green shows how West-Central African history interacted with European and global history, showing that continent often criticized as being "without history" was itself a vital part of world history. He lists, for example, the several African kingdoms that had ambassadors sent to European countries, especially to Portugal, as well as to Brazil. I found the history of Kongo particularly interesting, in its interactions with the Dutch and the Portuguese, and in it becoming a Christian kingdom (at the elite level, at least) that even appealed to the Pope for mediation between itself and the Portuguese.

A historian and not an economist, Green's book could likely be updated and refined with deeper economic analysis in its explanation of the economic divergences between Europe and Africa. But it's a great starting point and one that I'll come back to in thinking through the historical trajectories that led to the inequalities we see between the European and African continents in the world today.
Profile Image for Peter.
597 reviews2 followers
September 27, 2020
The British Historian Toby Green’s monograph A Fistful of Shells is an economic history of Western Africa from the late Medieval West Africa to West Africa in the Age of Revolution mainly focused on the Islamic Jihads in West Africa in the early 19th Century. The book is mainly focused on the economic, social, and cultural impacts of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade on West Africans. The central argument is that trade imbalance in currencies between West Africans and Europeans in the time led to current economic inequality between West Africa and the rest of the Atlantic World. Green believes that the way economic history is taught in most of the world is very heavily Eurocentric at the cost of ignoring the true complexity and global nature of economic history. Green is interested in showing that the economic systems in Western Africa were as developed as the economic system in Europe by the time of the arrivals of the Portuguese traders in the 15th Century, in ways that were similar and different to the economic systems of Europe at that time. Green wants to show that West Africans had agency within the early trans-Atlantic economic system. The Trans-Atlantic economic system for Green created a tax base, an economic system, and a military system to build a collection of early modern states in West Africans similar to European states that developed in the early modern era. West Africans became tired of the corrupting power of the trans-Atlantic trading on the political ruling class of West Africa. During the Age of Revolution, a series of Jihad movements swept through Islamic West Africa. This movement gained popularity by promising to end the direct impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the subjects of these new Islamic Caliphates in West Africa. I was convinced by most of the main arguments of the monograph. I thought the more inclusive economic history of the Atlantic World was very interesting, in part because I never realized the history that they teach in economics class was Eurocentric. Economic history hopefully becomes more global and inclusive in the future.
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