Please recommend a good book on 18th-century West Africa

I summon the wise and irascible Collounsbury! And anyone else who knows a lot about Africa.

I need to read a book that will give me a good picture of what everyday life was like in the approximate vicinity of the Gold Coast around the time 1690-1720, particularly amongst the Ashanti and their neighbors. Such a book should, of course, include the impact of the slave trade, but should not be exclusively devoted to it. Narrative political history is not the main thing I’m looking for; what I really need is material on marriage, religion, education, clothing, and suchlike cultural/atmospheric background. My objective is to be able to invent plausible fictional characters who were born and raised on the Gold Coast.

Many thanks to all who can recommend such a book (or combination of books) to me.

Not that I could even pretend to be particularly helpful, Danimal, but I immediately thought of Alex Haley’s Roots. I wonder what his source materials were? The Africa section of the book was rich with detail about village life.

Black Like Me
John H. Griffin

While Griffin’s Black Like Me was a good book, it really won’t give you much information about the 18th century Ashanti.

(bump)

Thanks for the recommendation, Ellen. Haley’s ancestor Kunta Kinte was from the Gambia, a good distance from the region I’m looking for, but I’ll look at his sources and see if any of them cover an area wide enough to include the Guinea Coast.

I read Black Like Me many years ago. As *Captain Amazing says, it is a good book, but quite useless for my current project. Black life in America in the 1950s had about as much to do with the 18th-century Ashanti as white life at the same time had to do with the Vikings.

Danimal: The only thing I have that comes close ( at least on my own shelves ) is The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast by Robert B. Edgerton ( 1995, The Free Press, A Division of Simon & Schuster Inc. ). It’s essentially a military history of British/Asante relations between 1807 and 1900. But it does go into a little bit ( one of 10 chapters ) of Asante history, society, et al .

Going through his bibliography yielded up a couple of possibilities:

Fynn, J.K. ( 1971 ) Asante and its Neighbors 1700-1807. Evanston: North-Western University Press.

Schildekrout, E., ed. ( 1987 ) The Golden Stool: Studies of the Asante Center and Periphery. Washington, D.C.: American Museum of Natural History.

Their are others, but these two looked modern enough to be findable. The second one, in particular, looked like it had a couple of articles related to what you seem to be interested in. You might also try searching Amazon or other resources for keywords like “Dahomey” and the like, to get a better coverage. I don’t off the top of my head know of any general histories of West Africa in that specific period. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t one.

  • Tamerlane

I remember reading a great novelization set in this time period - Segu or Segou is the name, had to read it for a class. It won’t give you close to what you need but might be fun and give you some further ideas for research.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Danimal *
I summon the wise and irascible Collounsbury!

He is irascible isn’t he? I like to think of Collie as the “intellectual hyena” of the Boards. Or maybe a jackal, if that pleases him more.

BTW, Basil Davidson has written many excellent books about West African societies. None will disappoint.

Thank each of you, Magdalene and tsunamisurfer and especially Tamerlane, who came through as he so often does. I am disappointed that I couldn’t obtain Collounsbury’s opinion (his e-mail address does not appear to be publicly available, or else I would have invited him personally to the thread), but this should be enough to get me started.

It was meant as a joke butt I’m quickly starting to see how a lot of people here prefer to pounce instead of smile. Please strike above reply.

Sorry folks, I’m on vac for the moment and thus away from my feeding ground. Jackal I do prefer.

As far as references, well, I shall have to root around in old files but generally do NOT depend on Roots for gods sake. Romantic claptrap. If you’re looking for something popular then Basil Davidson is a good choice although he is not a terribly good historian, in fact he’s a journalist with a tendency to credulity in re the more extreme claims made by the looney fringe. However he’s basically reliable and an easier read. Otherwise I would recommend the sober Cambridge series on African history as a place to start with citations galore to the real deal. Rather how I started out. Something like J. F. Ade Ajayi,
_History of West Africa _ would prob be a good start although a little dated. Also something by Fage also> In general post 1980 works I think will prove more useful.

Hope this helps.

By the way lieu, as this is a board dedicated to fighting ignorance (albeit IMHO) stupid replies tend to get jumped on. Especially ones that really don’t bring a smile at all. Stop whinging.

Moderator’s note:

I’m guessing the literary types over in Cafe Society will salivate over this question. Movin’ it on over…

TVeblen,
for IMHO

Thanks for the tip, Collounsbury. I’ll be taking a look at vol. 4 of the Cambridge history and at Ajayi’s book as soon as I’m done with Fynn’s book on the Asante and their neighbors.

($160 for the Cambridge volume?! I’ll definitely be doing interlibrary loan on that one!)

Not at all, and if I decide to do less drinking and more rummaging I shall try to provide more citations. But I am on vac you know.