West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s
The importance of Africa and African agency in the formation of the Atlantic world is now widely acknowledged by historians, but Africa has drawn less attention than other regions in analyses of the British Atlantic. Drawing upon the nascent methodology of global microhistory, this article contribut...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Cambridge University Press
2015
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| _version_ | 1797086634613669888 |
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| author | Blakemore, R |
| author_facet | Blakemore, R |
| author_sort | Blakemore, R |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | The importance of Africa and African agency in the formation of the Atlantic world is now widely acknowledged by historians, but Africa has drawn less attention than other regions in analyses of the British Atlantic. Drawing upon the nascent methodology of global microhistory, this article contributes to a scholarly rebalancing by examining two maritime lawsuits from the 1640s concerning British voyages to Senegambia and Sierra Leone, both of which resulted in conflict between British seafarers and with their African trading partners. A close study of the documents surviving from these lawsuits provides an unusually detailed glimpse of these particular moments of contact and violence across cultures. More fundamentally, such an approach illuminates the ocean-spanning networks within which these ventures took place, and reveals the ways in which British traders and sailors perceived trade in Africa within their own legal frameworks. This article argues that by the middle of the seventeenth century, as merchants and politicians in Britain began to imagine an Atlantic empire, trade in West Africa was an important part of their vision of the Atlantic world |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:24:42Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:a5318de8-8fd8-4989-b420-36222cac4769 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:24:42Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:a5318de8-8fd8-4989-b420-36222cac47692022-03-27T02:38:43ZWest Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640sJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:a5318de8-8fd8-4989-b420-36222cac4769Symplectic Elements at OxfordCambridge University Press2015Blakemore, RThe importance of Africa and African agency in the formation of the Atlantic world is now widely acknowledged by historians, but Africa has drawn less attention than other regions in analyses of the British Atlantic. Drawing upon the nascent methodology of global microhistory, this article contributes to a scholarly rebalancing by examining two maritime lawsuits from the 1640s concerning British voyages to Senegambia and Sierra Leone, both of which resulted in conflict between British seafarers and with their African trading partners. A close study of the documents surviving from these lawsuits provides an unusually detailed glimpse of these particular moments of contact and violence across cultures. More fundamentally, such an approach illuminates the ocean-spanning networks within which these ventures took place, and reveals the ways in which British traders and sailors perceived trade in Africa within their own legal frameworks. This article argues that by the middle of the seventeenth century, as merchants and politicians in Britain began to imagine an Atlantic empire, trade in West Africa was an important part of their vision of the Atlantic world |
| spellingShingle | Blakemore, R West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title | West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title_full | West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title_fullStr | West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title_full_unstemmed | West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title_short | West Africa in the British Atlantic: trade, violence, and Empire in the 1640s |
| title_sort | west africa in the british atlantic trade violence and empire in the 1640s |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT blakemorer westafricainthebritishatlantictradeviolenceandempireinthe1640s |