Senior Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture, Departments of History and Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, King's College London
Following the article by Klas Rönnbäck, this article responds by stressing some key elements miss... more Following the article by Klas Rönnbäck, this article responds by stressing some key elements missing from the original article. These include the connection of African economic history to world economic history, the question of periodization and economic change, and the issue of currency devaluation in the period in question. The response concludes by posing several questions of the theoretical assumptions made by economists regarding data, and problematizes the applicability of such models to a distant pre-colonial African past.
The history of Kaabu is among the most significant factors in the pre-colonial history of Upper G... more The history of Kaabu is among the most significant factors in the pre-colonial history of Upper Guinea and yet very little is known about it in detail during the era of its heyday, which appears to have run from approximately the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. In their important recent publication of the Tarikh de Bijini, Giesing and Vydrine summarise the problems: "We emphasise from the beginning that our historical knowledge of kings and the length of their reigns, and of the political structure and organisation of Kaabu remains very limited. For as long as new sources do not appear, and the interpretations of those that are known are not revised, the history of Kaabu will remain virtually unknown." 1 It can be argued, perhaps, that from a general perspective, this lack of sources is not a serious problem. After all the lack of detail does not prevent us from knowing that Kaabu was a very strong force in the region, as the excerpts from the different oral traditions demonstrate. We know that Kaabu was powerful. Many historians have associated the rise of Kaabunké power with the demise of the Mali empire in the late 15 th century and the rise of Atlantic trade, in particular slaving. 2 Thus in general terms we can sketch a correlation between Kaabu's significance and the Atlantic era, and so, some might feel, the lack of detail does not necessarily hamper the articulation of a plausible historicity. Certainly, historians have not rushed to redress this lacuna. In general, the study of pre-colonial Africa has been in decline, although there are some welcome 1 Giesing/Vydrine (2007: 4).
The past decade has seen much ink spilled on global interconnections in the early modern economy,... more The past decade has seen much ink spilled on global interconnections in the early modern economy, especially those linking European and Asian economies. But this Eurasian concentration has excluded Africa from the discussion. This article addresses this absence by showing that West and West-Central Africa were integral to the global price revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considering evidence from West and West-Central Africa reveals how the price revolution was a genuinely global phenomenon, with increasing imports of locally-used currencies that created inflation in line with the inflation of gold and silver in Europe and Asia. The article argues that the coexistence of exchangeable value and other social uses of currencies also contributed to a relative depreciation in Africa's global economic strength. Also related to this phenomenon were the rise of an export slave trade and changes in the production and distribution of West and West-Central African cloth industries.
This paper examines aspects of the political and social functions of the Inquisition in the overs... more This paper examines aspects of the political and social functions of the Inquisition in the overseas colonies of Portugal and Spain as they emerge through archival sources. The discourse of power is of course vital in understanding how the Inquisition operates; and its global expressions of power are also local expressions of power. By understanding how and if the Inquisition was used as a policing mechanism of the political and ideological development of the colonial worlds, we understand not only something of the articulation of power within this institution but also how, if at all, this constituted a modern institution in being both global and local. This paper addresses these vital institutional questions by looking at the Portuguese and Spanish overseas empires in comparative perspective, looking at Latin America in the case of Spain, and Goa and West Africa in the case of Portugal. The key role of the Inquisition in maintaining ideological conformity on both a secular and religious basis emerges in both cases, together with the Inquisition's fundamental connection to non-religious questions of finance and control over trade through which it asserted secular power. Overseas expansion by both Portugal and Spain is a subject of increasing importance to historiographical discourse. As a new wave of historians challenges the traditional Anglo-centric view of the Atlantic world and emphasizes Iberian flows, it is becoming
Following the article by Klas Rönnbäck, this article responds by stressing some key elements miss... more Following the article by Klas Rönnbäck, this article responds by stressing some key elements missing from the original article. These include the connection of African economic history to world economic history, the question of periodization and economic change, and the issue of currency devaluation in the period in question. The response concludes by posing several questions of the theoretical assumptions made by economists regarding data, and problematizes the applicability of such models to a distant pre-colonial African past.
The history of Kaabu is among the most significant factors in the pre-colonial history of Upper G... more The history of Kaabu is among the most significant factors in the pre-colonial history of Upper Guinea and yet very little is known about it in detail during the era of its heyday, which appears to have run from approximately the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. In their important recent publication of the Tarikh de Bijini, Giesing and Vydrine summarise the problems: "We emphasise from the beginning that our historical knowledge of kings and the length of their reigns, and of the political structure and organisation of Kaabu remains very limited. For as long as new sources do not appear, and the interpretations of those that are known are not revised, the history of Kaabu will remain virtually unknown." 1 It can be argued, perhaps, that from a general perspective, this lack of sources is not a serious problem. After all the lack of detail does not prevent us from knowing that Kaabu was a very strong force in the region, as the excerpts from the different oral traditions demonstrate. We know that Kaabu was powerful. Many historians have associated the rise of Kaabunké power with the demise of the Mali empire in the late 15 th century and the rise of Atlantic trade, in particular slaving. 2 Thus in general terms we can sketch a correlation between Kaabu's significance and the Atlantic era, and so, some might feel, the lack of detail does not necessarily hamper the articulation of a plausible historicity. Certainly, historians have not rushed to redress this lacuna. In general, the study of pre-colonial Africa has been in decline, although there are some welcome 1 Giesing/Vydrine (2007: 4).
The past decade has seen much ink spilled on global interconnections in the early modern economy,... more The past decade has seen much ink spilled on global interconnections in the early modern economy, especially those linking European and Asian economies. But this Eurasian concentration has excluded Africa from the discussion. This article addresses this absence by showing that West and West-Central Africa were integral to the global price revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considering evidence from West and West-Central Africa reveals how the price revolution was a genuinely global phenomenon, with increasing imports of locally-used currencies that created inflation in line with the inflation of gold and silver in Europe and Asia. The article argues that the coexistence of exchangeable value and other social uses of currencies also contributed to a relative depreciation in Africa's global economic strength. Also related to this phenomenon were the rise of an export slave trade and changes in the production and distribution of West and West-Central African cloth industries.
This paper examines aspects of the political and social functions of the Inquisition in the overs... more This paper examines aspects of the political and social functions of the Inquisition in the overseas colonies of Portugal and Spain as they emerge through archival sources. The discourse of power is of course vital in understanding how the Inquisition operates; and its global expressions of power are also local expressions of power. By understanding how and if the Inquisition was used as a policing mechanism of the political and ideological development of the colonial worlds, we understand not only something of the articulation of power within this institution but also how, if at all, this constituted a modern institution in being both global and local. This paper addresses these vital institutional questions by looking at the Portuguese and Spanish overseas empires in comparative perspective, looking at Latin America in the case of Spain, and Goa and West Africa in the case of Portugal. The key role of the Inquisition in maintaining ideological conformity on both a secular and religious basis emerges in both cases, together with the Inquisition's fundamental connection to non-religious questions of finance and control over trade through which it asserted secular power. Overseas expansion by both Portugal and Spain is a subject of increasing importance to historiographical discourse. As a new wave of historians challenges the traditional Anglo-centric view of the Atlantic world and emphasizes Iberian flows, it is becoming
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