5. Historiography of the Slave Trade

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we consider how the history of the transatlantic slave trade has traditionally been studied and look at some recent changes in historiographical approaches to this topic. We particularly focus on the development away from quantitative approaches, as represented by the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD), to more qualitative approaches and the increasing popularity of ‘microhistories’ focussing on the specific experiences of individual Africans.

Course

In this course, Dr Toby Green (King’s College, London) explores the history of the transatlantic slave trade, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. We begin by thinking about some of the main characteristics of West African societies prior to European contact, before moving on in the second module to the question why Europeans began a slave trade from Africa instead of a different part of the world. After that, we think about why and how the English became involved in the transatlantic slave trade, focusing particularly on reasons related to their colonial projects in the New World. In the fourth module, we consider the reactions the slave trade provoked within West African societies and how these differed depending on factors such as ethnicity, class and political and cultural practices. Finally, we think about recent changes in the historiography of the transatlantic slave trade. We explore how historians have traditionally studied this topic and how critical approaches to the history of the slave trade have changed over the past three decades.

Lecturer

Toby Green is Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at King's College, London. After studying Philosophy, Toby worked as a writer and editor, publishing various books that have been translated into 12 languages. He then studied for his PhD at the Centre of West African Studies at Birmingham University, working with the Brazilian specialist on Timbuktu and Songhay Paulo de Moraes Farias and completing in 2007, before coming to King's in 2010.

After holding fellowships from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, in 2015 he was recipient of a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, for which he organised an interdisciplinary workshop with the musicologist Lucy Duran of SOAS, bringing musicians and historians from West Africa into dialogue.

His recent publications include Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa (2012), The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (2012), and Guinea-Bissau: From Micro State to ‘Narco State’ (2016),