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

"A Fistful of Shells is groundbreaking. The author, Toby Green, draws on years of work in the archives—consulting written and oral histories, art, maps, and artefacts—to tell a completely different story of pre-slave and pre-colonial Western Africa. It is an eye-opener for anyone who thinks that the coastal regions of North and West Africa were closed, sedentary or “backward” prior to the 18th and the 19th centuries. Green shows, through the extraordinary research he has done, that these West African kingdoms were confident, cosmopolitan, economically advanced, trading far and wide—with the West and beyond—and culturally sophisticated (hence his interest in looking at artworks and the archaeological archive as well). Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . What he argues is that the two-way connections between this region and Europe were immensely strong, worked to mutual benefit, and were reflective of the sophistication of the West African economy around copper, gold, cowrie shells, and all forms of industry and manufacture. But all of this begins to fracture and come apart—very much to the detriment of the West African kingdoms—as a result of the imbalances of slavery and colonial extraction. It’s at that point when the kingdoms are selling slaves instead of selling gold that the imbalances in trade and in the balance of payments arise, because what the West is getting is far more valuable than what the West African kingdoms are receiving in return. It has become a skewed trading system. He also shows that later on, as we enter into the colonial period, much of that very rich, secular history of civilization—of trade, of confidence—comes apart. It begins to be undermined. How brightly, how wonderfully this book dispels myths about the so-called ‘Dark Continent’ and its ‘enlightenment’ from the West! It’s not an argument against globalisation, if we take globalisation to mean international connections and engaging in global trade. It’s an argument against the terms on which globalisation unfolds, who sets the rules and to whose advantage. It’s a defence of global trade, but a rejection of the skew and hidden power plays behind global trade that end up rewarding the rich and powerful and not others."

"Yes. It’s another example of how broad the scope of historical research and writing in the UK is. It’s by Toby Green, who is at King’s College London, and it’s a history of West Africa before its colonisation by Europe—beginning with the Portuguese and going on to the French and the British and the Germans. The author looks at these very advanced, powerful, prosperous kingdoms in West Africa—like Oyo or Benin or Dahomey—and argues that until the rise of the slave trade disturbed the economic equilibrium, they traded on equal terms with the Islamic world to the north. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . So, it’s mainly an economic history, or perhaps you can call it a political history with the economy as its centre. It’s called A Fistful of Shells because cowrie shells were the main medium of the exchange until the Portuguese arrived with their coins. It’s a very important book. It sums up a whole range of historical research of a very specialized kind and establishes West Africa as an important part of the world before the brief period of European colonization. Yes, it does. These were complex political systems. They were powerful empires. You can see that in the process of colonization in the 19th century. When the British tried to conquer the Ashanti, for example, it took them eight or nine wars to do so. They couldn’t understand why the Africans kept on resisting them and refused to be defeated. These were economically prosperous and sophisticated states. The book really does establish their equality with other parts of the world."