Where the Negroes Are Masters: An African Port in the Era of the Slave Trade

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 professor Sparks, “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. Sparks takes the West African coastal town of Annamaboe (now a small city in Ghana) as his setting and smoothly progresses through his narrative—which is difficult given the subject’s complexity—with a scrupulous eye for detail and intersecting storylines. A “relatively sleepy fishing village” at the beginning of the early 1700s, Annamaboe rapidly transformed into one of the most active Atlantic trade ports, exporting hundreds of thousands of slaves before its sudden demise following the abolition of the slave trade by Great Britain in 1807 and the United States in 1808. Nonetheless, at the height of its power, the local tribes of Annamaboe traded gold and slaves with some of the greatest powers in Europe, including France and Great Britain, as well as Rhode Island’s Rum Men. And what Sparks finds is that the merchants in Annamaboe often set the rules of that trade. Maps & illus. (Jan.)