Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Maps, Tables and Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The slave trade and commercial agriculture in an African context
- 2 São Tomé and Príncipe: The first plantation economy in the tropics
- 3 The export of rice and millet from Upper Guinea into the sixteenth-century Atlantic trade
- 4 ‘Our indico designe’: Planting and processing indigo for export, Upper Guinea Coast, 1684–1702
- 5 ‘There's nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here’: Dutch and English projects of plantation agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s–1780s
- 6 The origins of ‘legitimate commerce’
- 7 A Danish experiment in commercial agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1788–93
- 8 ‘The colony has made no progress in agriculture’: Contested perceptions of agriculture in the colonies of Sierra Leone and Liberia
- 9 Church Missionary Society projects of agricultural improvement in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone and Yorubaland
- 10 Agricultural enterprise and unfree labour in nineteenth-century Angola
- 11 Commercial agriculture and the ending of slave-trading and slavery in West Africa, 1780s–1920s
- Index
5 - ‘There's nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here’: Dutch and English projects of plantation agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s–1780s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Maps, Tables and Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The slave trade and commercial agriculture in an African context
- 2 São Tomé and Príncipe: The first plantation economy in the tropics
- 3 The export of rice and millet from Upper Guinea into the sixteenth-century Atlantic trade
- 4 ‘Our indico designe’: Planting and processing indigo for export, Upper Guinea Coast, 1684–1702
- 5 ‘There's nothing grows in the West Indies but will grow here’: Dutch and English projects of plantation agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1650s–1780s
- 6 The origins of ‘legitimate commerce’
- 7 A Danish experiment in commercial agriculture on the Gold Coast, 1788–93
- 8 ‘The colony has made no progress in agriculture’: Contested perceptions of agriculture in the colonies of Sierra Leone and Liberia
- 9 Church Missionary Society projects of agricultural improvement in nineteenth-century Sierra Leone and Yorubaland
- 10 Agricultural enterprise and unfree labour in nineteenth-century Angola
- 11 Commercial agriculture and the ending of slave-trading and slavery in West Africa, 1780s–1920s
- Index
Summary
The idea of the promotion of commercial agriculture in West Africa as a substitute for the export of slaves is familiar in the context of the Abolitionist movement, from the late eighteenth century onwards. But the alternative of employing slaves in cultivation in Africa, rather than transporting them to the Americas, existed from the beginning of maritime contacts between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Most if not all of the crops enslaved Africans were employed to cultivate in the Americas could also be grown in West Africa. Of the crops grown on American plantations, some were not introduced into West Africa until relatively late — notably coffee. But others were either already established in West Africa when European traders first arrived in the fifteenth century, or were introduced there soon afterwards.
Consider, first, rice, which became a major export from South Carolina — a variety of rice (oryza glaberrima) was indigenous to West Africa, and indeed was purchased by European traders for provisions for the Middle Passage. Admittedly it was Asian rice (oryza sativa) which was cultivated for export in Carolina; although ‘Guinea rice’ was also introduced there, it was grown by slaves only for their own subsistence. It might be supposed that African rice, although acceptable for slaves' provisions, was not saleable in Europe. However, Asian rice seems to have been introduced, presumably by Europeans, into West Africa by the 1570s, when a white form of rice was reported being cultivated in Sierra Leone.
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- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013