You are invited to attend Professor Robin Law's talk on Tuesday 7th December,
Time: 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Venue: Archives Teaching Room, School of History, University of Liverpool, 9 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7WZ
“There's nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here": English and Dutch projects of plantation agriculture in West Africa, 1650s-1750s
One of the puzzles about the trans-Atlantic slave trade is that most if not all of the crops which were grown by enslaved Africans in the Americas could also be grown in West Africa: why, then, were these slaves not employed in cultivation in West Africa, rather than being transported to the Americas? This is not merely a hypothetical question, since both the English and the Dutch did in fact experiment with the establishment of plantations in mainland West Africa, to produce crops such as indigo, cotton and sugar, from the 17th century onwards. This paper will survey these experiments, their motivation, and the reasons for their failure.
Robin Law, Honorary Visiting Professor at the School of History of the University of Liverpool and Emeritus Professor of African History (University of Stirling) is the author of The Oyo Empire, c.1600-1836 (1977), The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750 (1991), The Kingdom of Allada (1997) and Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'Port', 1727-1892 (2004); and the editor of From Slave Trade to 'Legitimate' Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth Century West Afria (2002). In September 2010 Professor Law was recognized for his outstanding contribution to the field of African Studies and presented the Distinguished Africanist Award at the Biennial Conference of the African Studies Association of the UK at Oxford.
As usual after the talk we shall take Professor Law for drinks at the Cambridge and dinner at a restaurant near the School of History. If you plan to join for dinner, please send me an email by Tuesday at noon.
Dr. Benedetta Rossi
School of History
University of Liverpool
9 Abercromby Square
Liverpool L69 7WZ
Te. 0151-7942367
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