Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade
If you want to know how the slave trade worked on Africa's west coast, there is no better starting point thanRandy Sparks's brilliant urban biography of the Gold Coast port of Annamaboe. It elevates our understanding of the Atlantic in the age of the transatlantic slave trade to new heights. (Ira Berlin, author ofMany Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America)Randy Sparkstakes what might appear to be a minor port on the Gold Coast and gives us a history of the whole Atlantic Basin, through the history of one carefully defined branch of the slave trade. He shows us how multiple actors from different cultures speaking a number of different languages managed to cooperate, argue, compete, and finally succeed in knitting a transatlantic community together. This is a masterpiece of turning micro-history, with its fine detail, into mega-history of the first magnitude.(John Thornton, author ofA Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820)This well-written and altogether gripping story is Atlantic history at its best.Randy Sparksdemonstrates the complexity of enslavement itself, examining the multiple processes by which persons came to be construed as property, both on the coast of Africa and in the Atlantic trade.(Rebecca J. Scott, co-author ofFreedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation)Randy Sparks's well-illustrated study of this Gold Coast port expands and deepens our understanding of African middlemen's importance in the Atlantic economy before 1800 and of the operations of the transatlantic slave trade.(David Northrup, author ofAfrica’s Discovery of Europe, 1450–1850)This persuasive, well-researched study of the 18th-century Atlantic slave trade takes the unique approach of examining ‘the African merchant elites who facilitated that trade,’ who, according to Tulane University history professorSparks, ‘were as essential to the Atlantic economy as the merchants of Liverpool, Nantes, or Middleburg.’ That premise may be somewhat surprising, if not outright provocative, but he delivers proof. (Publishers Weekly2013-10-28)Africans entered the trans-Atlantic slave trade as more than cargo; many operated as wily merchants integral to the far-reaching Atlantic commerce that began with European contact and the search for gold in the 1430s and shifted to traffic in humans…Unveiling African merchant elites functioning as cultural brokers, literate in English and traveled in Europe and the Americas, and operating as major forces responding to 18th-century market opportunities,Sparksexpands our understanding of the Atlantic connections of West Africa’s coastal trading communities. (Thomas J. DavisLibrary Journal (starred review)2013-12-15)Where the Negroes Are Mastersis a pathfinding work that surely will have great influence on our understanding of ‘the largest forced migration in history.’Sparksis a diligent researcher who shows the many ways in which the Fante leadership entrenched its position in the trade…An interesting and important book. (Jonathan YardleyWashington Post2014-01-31)Carefully researched, completely engaging…Sparksrecounts a story that is so telling, and so profound in its implications, that it should be explored in every school in the land--and used as a touchstone for a new way of describing the birth of America. (Marc AronsonSchool Library Journal2014-05-08)