The Portuguese produced the earliest records for regions in West Africa, none more important than the Gold Coast. This edited volume provides a unique collection of sources written in Portuguese, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish for Africa’s Gold Coast, from the late 15th to 17th century. Students, scholars, and professionals with an avid interest in early modern African, Atlantic, and world history will benefit from the English translations, many appearing for the first time. These sources add to the handful of existing translations, but especially illuminate the late 15th to 17th century relations between the Portuguese empire and the Gold Coast and offer comparative materials for other European interlocutors―Spanish, French, English, and Dutch―garrisoned on the coast or offshore in their vessels. Over that concentrated period, and especially where no other European-supplied records exist, these uncomprehending Portuguese outsiders archived important local ideas, personalities, polities, and cultural forms animating Gold Coast-Portuguese relations.
Provides readers with context for the historic relations between Portugal and the Gold Coast; Overview of the sources, illustrated by in-text reference to one or more connected to a theme, matching specific themes to specific document(s) in the volume; Detailed footnotes, bibliography, and glossary helps to clarify new terms or phrases or individuals in the text. The bibliography pulls all secondary and non-Portuguese archival sources, while the glossary explains Portuguese terms relevant to the sources. – Oxford University Press
About the Author
Kwasi Konadu is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Endowed Chair and Professor at Colgate University. He teaches courses in African history and on worldwide African histories. With extensive archival and field research in West Africa, Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America, his writings focus on African and African diasporic histories, as well as major themes in world history.
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Book Details
Title: Africa’s Gold Coast Through Portuguese Sources, 1469-1680
Author: Kwasi Konadu (Editor)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Series: Fontes Historiae Africanae
Publication Date: December 19, 2022
Language: English
Hardcover: 550 pp
