Making Money - Colleen E. Kriger Africa in World History

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Royal African Company trading zone, Upper Guinea Coast, seventeenth c.

       3.1. Landlords in the Lower Gambia River

       3.2. Bence Island and York Island landlords

      Tables

       4.1. Estimated annual mortality rates for captives

       4.2. James Island comparative estimated annual mortality rates

       4.3. James Island provisions loaded on slave ships

       5.1. Locations of RAC employees in Gambia trading sphere

      Transcriptions

       3.1. Death of Zachary Rogers: “Cry” and burial expenses

       3.2. Goods expended at Sherbro to load redwood

       4.1. Cotton cloth currency transactions, James Island

       4.2. Slave purchases, James Island

       4.3. Grometos at James Island

       5.1. RAC currency of account on Upper Guinea Coast

       5.2. From RAC London to the governor of Cacheu

       5.3. Thomas Corker ordered to London

       5.4. RAC servants on York Island, River of Sherbro

      SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

      The field of African history has developed considerably since it first emerged in the 1960s, coinciding with the independence that African nations were gaining from their European colonial overlords. An enormous literature has been generated over the ensuing decades, yet Africa’s past remains largely unknown to nonspecialists. Consequently, myths and stereotypes persist unchallenged, continuing to help produce profound misunderstandings of the continent. In order to engage these misperceptions and bring knowledge about Africa to a wider audience, students and instructors need accessible points of entry into the continent’s past.

      To this end, Ohio University Press and the editors of this series seek to generate books for college and university instructors, and for undergraduate students, to bring the fruits of professional research on Africa to the attention of well-intentioned but often unaware readers in intriguing ways. The resulting books are intended to be both accessible and readily integrated into courses in world history, the history of the Americas, diasporic history, and the histories of other world regions.

      In modern settings still rife with the residue of centuries of slaving and racial stereotyping, these books show Africans at work and at home, engaged in sport and a variety of other daily activities, and highlight the myriad ways that Africans have shaped the human experience throughout history. Although popular media focus on disease, political disorder, and destitution, the richness of the African experience, as showcased in the books in the series, suggests that the peoples of the continent, through their histories and cultures, bring great diversity to the human experience and enrich all of us. It is this enrichment that this series strives to offer.

      The volumes in the series have displayed this diversity. Jim McCann’s Stirring the Pot, Peter Alegi’s Soccerscapes, and Todd Cleveland’s Stones of Contention have each featured insights into Africa’s past, plowing new ground on subjects seemingly familiar—cuisine, sport, and diamond mining—but largely misunderstood beyond the continent’s borders. More recently, John Mugane’s Story of Swahili traces the origins and myriad contributors to Africa’s best-known language, and Laura Lee Huttenbach’s The Boy Is Gone uses extensive interviews to paint a compelling picture of a Kenyan freedom fighter who became a tea farmer in the last decades of his life.

      This volume, authored by Colleen Kriger, extends these efforts by working a cache of recondite archival materials from the Royal African Company in London, bringing to life the Europeans, Africans, and Euro-Africans who together traded slaves—and so much else—on the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa at the end of the seventeenth century.

      Books currently in preparation will continue to provide readers with intriguing, relevant, and accessible points of entry into Africa’s complex past and present. They will provide further opportunities for teachers and students to incorporate the continent into their courses and interests.

      We invite readers of the series to call our attention to other topics they find promising for treatment along these lines, and we invite authors with themes that they are interested in developing to contact us about their projects.

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I will always be grateful to Gillian Berchowitz, Joseph Miller, and David Robinson for making it possible for me to embark on the adventure of writing this book and seeing it through to publication. Gillian shepherded me through the initial stages of the project with grace and aplomb, providing just the kind of responsiveness and patience that I needed. Her encouragement gave me the fortitude I needed to keep plowing on. When at last I entered the writing phase, Joe and Dave were stalwart readers and supporters, offering up all sorts of suggestions, options, and fruitful comments and questions. Together, these three editors and their commitment to the highest professional standards have energized and inspired me throughout.

      Once again I must acknowledge York University’s Department of History for supporting and training me in precolonial African history at the doctoral level. My isolation as their first Africanist PhD candidate turned out in my favor as Leslie Howsam, Lynn MacKay, and Susan Foote invited me into their British history circle. I remember fondly our many discussion meetings and meals together. Paul Lovejoy has been an important support and role model all these years and a continuing inspiration as he led the founding and development of The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and Its Diasporas. Its international network of scholars stands now as a global treasure of historical inquiry.

      In years leading up to this project, I was fortunate to participate in a number of conferences devoted to world history, which enabled me to see my work and interests from other angles and in much broader and longer-term frameworks. Thank you to the Global Economic History Network, London School of Economics, for organizing conferences on cotton textiles as a global industry in 2005. Many thanks as well to Beverly Lemire for including me on her panel for the XIV World Economic History Congress in 2006, and also to Joseph Inikori for inviting me to contribute to his panel at the XV World Economic History Congress in 2009. An especially stimulating conference held in Stirling, Scotland, in 2009, called “Rethinking Africa and the Atlantic World,” was where I first began to think deliberately about writing a book along the lines of this one. Thank you to the Department of History at University of Stirling for bringing together scholars of African and American Atlantic history. Another inspiring conference, organized by Robin Law, Suzanne Schwarz, and Silke Strickrodt, addressed the complex interrelationships of commercial agriculture and slavery in Africa (sixteenth to twentieth c.). I am indebted to all the organizers of these conferences and fellow participants for their commitment to world history.

      At a crucial time when I was designing this project and preparing a proposal to the press, four special colleagues generously offered comments and support. My most sincere thanks to Ralph Austen, Pat Manning, Peter Mark, and Don Wright.

      I gratefully acknowledge assistance my university has given me by providing funds and release time for carrying out this research. I thank the provost of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) for a research assignment awarded to me in the fall of 2012, and to the Kohler Fund, the International Programs Center, and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for providing international travel support. Thank you also to the Lloyd International Honors College at UNCG for a Chancellor’s Resident Fellowship and research stipend in 2013/14. A Faculty First grant from the provost at UNCG provided me with much-needed funding for travel and time spent in the United Kingdom in 2015 as I was completing my work in The National Archives and The London Metropolitan Archives.

      A very deeply felt thank you goes to everyone involved with The National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North

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