Human Sacrifice

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
The Self ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
The West ◽  
Southeastern Nigeria ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This chapter recounts the broader Akan world's or Asante's human sacrifice. It notes that the practice, as established by Law, was widespread in those parts of the West African coastal and forest zones largely untouched by Islam, both in powerful states such Benin, Dahomey and Asante and among non-centralized peoples such as the Igbo in present-day southeastern Nigeria. The chapter presents evidence suggesting that human sacrifice may well have increased in magnitude in the era of the Atlantic slave trade, as increasing levels of militarization and accumulation generated new forms of violence, predation and consumption. The earliest evidence for human sacrifice in the region, however, came from the Gold Coast itself, where, as elsewhere in West Africa, it was identified as an integral part of mortuary customs for the wealthy and powerful. The chapter then shows seventeenth-century accounts about the slaves who composed the majority of those immolated at royal funerals. It also explores how the self-sacrifice of certain individuals served on the early Akan states.

The Original Manuscript Version of William Snelgrave's New Account of Some Parts of Guinea

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 367-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
The West ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Principal Subject

Captain William Snelgrave's A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, and the Slave Trade, first published in 1734, is a work well known to historians of West Africa. The largest and most valuable section of it comprises a detailed account of voyages by the author in 1727 and 1730 to the ports of Whydah and Jakin on the Slave Coast, then recently conquered by Dahomey, and offers the earliest extended account of the latter kingdom to be published. The information in Snelgrave's book can also be supplemented by records of testimony which he provided on two occasions, in 1726 and 1731, before the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in London.Snelgrave was a slave-trading captain with, at the time of his book's publication, some thirty years' experience of the West African trade. The details of his career are documented principally from his book, which in addition to the voyages of 1727 and 1730 (which form its principal subject), also alludes to several earlier slave-trading voyages undertaken by him. Snelgrave's first voyage to Africa, in which he served as purser on a ship commanded by his father, was to Old Calabar in 1704; a second voyage to Old Calabar was undertaken in 1713, a voyage to Sierra Leone (on which Snelgrave was captured by pirates) in 1719, and a voyage to the Gold Coast in 1721-22. This is not, however, a comprehensive catalog of Snelgrave's voyages, since he also alludes to having visited Whydah on “several voyages” before 1727. Other evidence documents two such earlier voyages by Snelgrave to Whydah, in 1717 and 1725. He was apparently still alive in 1735, the year after the publication of his book, when he is mentioned among a group of people involved in legal proceedings to press claims on the estate of Patrick West, a recently deceased merchant of Antigua.

The Slave Trade and Coastal West Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth G. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Heritage Tourism ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Archaeological Work

The Atlantic slave trade has been the focus of archaeological work in a number of West African countries. Much of the work has emphasized the impressive trade castles of the Ghana coast, where extensive European constructions demonstrate the importance of the slave trade in the regions’ history. Work has also been conducted on other settings, including in Bénin, where African agency manifested itself differently than on the Gold Coast of modern Ghana; Sierra Leone and Gambia, where European trading establishments were typically smaller; and Guinea, where the ‘illegal’ slave trade of the nineteenth century blossomed. Many of these sites of enslavement have become important parts of local heritage, as well as a global heritage of African-descended people and the heritage tourism associated with the African Diaspora.

The Financing of the Ashanti Expansion (1700–1820)

Africa ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwame Arhin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Coastal Areas ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe arrival of Europeans, and the introduction of guns, first in the coastal areas JL and then into the interior of West Africa, altered the nature of warfare. Already in the seventeenth century, the Akan-Fanti, Akim, Akwamu, and other peoples on the Gold Coast no longer relied entirely on bows and arrows, spears, and javelins which were the traditional weapons but used guns and even a few cannon. Besides the change in weapons, wars were undertaken on a larger scale than ever before—a situation which was aggravated by participation in the slave trade. Among the peoples of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, none excelled the Ashanti in either the scale or intensity of their fighting. From the turn of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, they fought major wars of conquest and minor ones of consolidation throughout the area of present-day Ghana, and after 1820 they were involved in four major clashes with the British until the latter dissolved their kingdom in 1900.

scholarly journals Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of “Mina” (Again)

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 247-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Published Paper

The term “Mina,” when encountered as an ethnic designation of enslaved Africans in the Americas in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, has commonly been interpreted as referring to persons brought from the area of the “Gold Coast” (“Costa da Mina” in Portuguese usage), corresponding roughly to modern Ghana, who are further commonly presumed to have been mainly speakers of the Akan languages (Fante, Twi, etc.) dominant on that section of the coast and its immediate hinterland. In a recently published paper, however, Gwendolyn Hall has questioned this conventional interpretation, and suggested instead that most of those called “Mina” in the Americas were actually from the “Slave Coast” to the east (modern southeastern Ghana, Togo, and Bénin), and hence speakers of the languages nowadays generally termed “Gbe” (though formerly more commonly “Ewe”), including Ewe, Adja, and Fon. Given the numerical strength of the “Mina” presence in the Americas, as Hall rightly notes, this revision would substantially alter our understanding of ethnic formation in the Americas.In further discussion of these issues, this paper considers in greater detail than was possible in Hall's treatment: first, the application of the name “Mina” in European usage on the West African coast itself, and second, the range of meanings attached to it in the Americas. This separation of African and American data, it should be stressed, is adopted only for convenience of exposition, since it is very likely that ethnic terminology on the two sides of the Atlantic in fact evolved in a process of mutual interaction. In particular, the settlement of large numbers of returned exslaves from Brazil on the Slave Coast from the 1830s onwards very probably fed Brazilian usage back into west Africa, as I have argued earlier with respect to the use of the name “Nago” as a generic term for the Yoruba-speaking peoples.

A Naval Compromise, 1830-1842

2008 ◽  
pp. 105-132
Author(s):  
Mark C. Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Economic Interest ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
Anglo American

This chapter concerns the Anglo-American efforts to reach an agreement regarding their colonial activities on the West African coast. It discusses Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy in relation to the slave trade; America’s economic interest in West Africa; escalating difficulties in Anglo-American diplomacy; the Webster-Ashburn treaty, Quintuple treaty, and the Tucker-Paine agreement. Rather than escalate confrontation over disagreements, both Britain and America used their navies to further their goals peacefully, proving sea power to be a useful mechanism in international diplomacy.

PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Congo River

AbstractA reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

scholarly journals Promoting research to improve maternal, neonatal, infant and adolescent health in West Africa: the role of the West African Health Organisation

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (S1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Issiaka Sombie ◽  
Aissa Bouwayé ◽  
Yves Mongbo ◽  
Namoudou Keita ◽  
Virgil Lokossou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Adolescent Health ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
African Health

A curious case of nematode parasitism in a West African Hadada, Gevonticus hagedash

1945 ◽  
Vol 21 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 99-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis A. Clapham
Keyword(s):  
Small Intestine ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
The Family ◽  
Nematode Parasitism

In the following article is described an interesting parasitic condition which is difficult to interpret. The small intestine of an Hadada, Geronticus hagedash, was brought back from the West Coast of Africa by Major T. A. Cockburn, M.D., R.A.M.C, who kindly passed it to me for further examination. The bird is a member of the family Plataleidae, living in wooded districts in West Africa in the neighbourhood of water and feeding on invertebrates, mainly annelids and small crustaceans which it finds at the bottom of ponds and streams in the mud.

scholarly journals On What Scale Can We Predict the Agronomic Onset of the West African Monsoon?

2016 ◽  
Vol 144 (4) ◽  
pp. 1571-1589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rory G. J. Fitzpatrick ◽  
Caroline L. Bain ◽  
Peter Knippertz ◽  
John H. Marsham ◽  
Douglas J. Parker
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Noise Analysis ◽  
West African Monsoon ◽  
West African ◽  
New Method ◽  
The West ◽  
African Monsoon ◽  
Spatial Consistency ◽  
Local Stakeholders ◽  
Local Rainfall

Abstract Accurate prediction of the commencement of local rainfall over West Africa can provide vital information for local stakeholders and regional planners. However, in comparison with analysis of the regional onset of the West African monsoon, the spatial variability of the local monsoon onset has not been extensively explored. One of the main reasons behind the lack of local onset forecast analysis is the spatial noisiness of local rainfall. A new method that evaluates the spatial scale at which local onsets are coherent across West Africa is presented. This new method can be thought of as analogous to a regional signal against local noise analysis of onset. This method highlights regions where local onsets exhibit a quantifiable degree of spatial consistency (denoted local onset regions or LORs). It is found that local onsets exhibit a useful amount of spatial agreement, with LORs apparent across the entire studied domain; this is in contrast to previously found results. Identifying local onset regions and understanding their variability can provide important insight into the spatial limit of monsoon predictability. While local onset regions can be found over West Africa, their size is much smaller than the scale found for seasonal rainfall homogeneity. A potential use of local onset regions is presented that shows the link between the annual intertropical front progression and local agronomic onset.

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