Fuglestad Finn - Slave Traders by Invitation

SLAVE TRADERS BY INVITATION

FINN FUGLESTAD

Slave Traders by Invitation

West Africas Slave Coast in the Precolonial Era

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Copyright Finn Fuglestad, 2018

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN: 9780190876104 (Print)

ISBN: 9780190934750 (updf)

ISBN: 9780190934972 (epub)

Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Ellis (19532015)

Y para Elisa Prez-Gonzlez de la Barreda

CONTENTS

PART A
STRUCTURES AND TRENDS

PART B
CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW: EARLY DAYS TO THE 1720s

PART C
CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW: THE 1720s 1850/51

The author of the present manuscript written in English is a Norwegian whose first foreign language is French, and who took up residence in Spain many years ago. The implication is that if the manuscript has become at all readable, it is thanks to the toiling of my good friend Ms Juliet Wrightson who has done a tremendous job in correcting my English. My debt and gratitude to her are beyond words. Juliet agreed to take over after her sister, the late Penelope Wrightson, who had offered to help me out with my English, was struck down by a terminal disease.

Another friend of mine who has left us is Selena Axelrod Winsnes, with whom I have had many inspiring conversations, and who provided me with many hints and suggestions with regard to the Danish sources especially.

After completing the first version of the present manuscript, I most fortunately succeeded in persuading fellow-Africanists Adam Jones and Edna G. Bay into reading parts of it: the former read the Introduction, the latter the Introduction and Part A. Those two sections contain the ideas and viewpoints developed in the rest of the manuscript. Ms Bay in particular has saved me from some embarrassing misinterpretations, plus a number of errors. Her endeavour is all the more admirable since she and I continue to part company on certain fundamental matters, as will become clear later on.

I have also had the honour and pleasure to discuss some of the ideas expressed in the following with the legendary Professor John Donnelly Fage (19212002). I still hear his voice.

I would like finally to express my gratitude to all those archivists and librarians in many countries and on three continents who assisted me during my research, which I initiated, if my memory does not fail me, nearly forty years ago.

If these acknowledgements are unusually short, it is because the present manuscript belongs, for many reasons, to the in-spite-of category, rather than the thanks-to one.

As for the rest, the usual disclaimers pertain.