A ground-breaking history that revolutionizes our view of West Africa.
Toby Green has worked widely with colleagues across Africa, organising events in collaboration with institutions in Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique Sierra Leone and the Gambia. His books have been translated into twelve languages and include the award-winning A Fistful of Shells and (as co-editor) Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to 'Narco-State'. He writes extensively for the media, including in recent years London Review of Books, New Statesman, Prospect, and UnHerd. He has worked on curriculum change in the teaching of African history both in the UK and in West Africa, and has been a member of the UK government's Model History Curriculum Advisory Group. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King's College, London.
A Fistful of Shells is the fruit of research conducted in the
archives of nine nations and required the author to undertake
fieldwork across eight West African states. It shows. [...] This is
a stunning work of research and argumentation. It has the potential
to become a landmark in our understanding of the most misunderstood
of continents.
*New Statesman*
Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells uses a global archive - in Africa,
the Americas and Europe - to explore the complex, flourishing and
connected economy of West Africa existing long before a European
capitalist system established itself on the continent.
Extraordinarily written and researched, the book paints a huge,
complex canvas, filled with individual detail.
*Observer Books of the Year 2019*
A Fistful of Shells is exemplary: scholarly, sensitive,
enlightening and often vivid. The author does much more than make
Africa seem normal. He proclaims a daunting ambition: to explore
the local and global implications of West Africa's economies during
the age of slavery. He succeeds.
*Wall Street Journal*
A work of staggering scholarship, drawing on previously untapped
sources locked away in European vaults and historical records
which, taken as a whole, contradict the age-old perceptions foisted
on Africa ... peppered with astonishing facts ... polyphonic,
detailed and vast.
*Daily Telegraph*
Dismantles the racist myth of west African "backwardness" ... The
19th-century imperial vision of Africa as somehow outside of
history continues to mark even "world" histories, which often
privilege the global north. A Fistful of Shells is an antidote to
these histories, and to the master narrative of Africa as
historical object, rather than subject.
*The Guardian*
A rich and insightful work ... What emerges is a radically
different view of the region from the one that has been generally
available. Green concludes by pointing to the lack of history being
taught in schools and universities in West Africa and elsewhere; if
it is taught at all, it tends to focus on the slave trade. A
Fistful of Shells shows that there was so much more, and of so much
relevance when looking at the issues of our own time.
*Spectator*
This original and thoughtful work is based on detailed first-hand
knowledge of and collaboration with the cultures and peoples it
depicts ... For all its impressive scholarship A Fistful of Shells
is notably readable, supported by great illustrations and a
stunning cover - and, in the best sense, personal.
*Times Higher Education*
A sprawling and nuanced look at the steady depletion of a continent
with a powerful lament about the lack of academic interest in
Africa's precolonial eras.
*New York Review of Books*
A multifaceted history of West Africa which turns many old
assumptions on their heads. Green utterly demolishes the tired
Western view that Africa had no history before the arrival of the
Europeans, and that they naively ceded power in the region to the
newcomers by exchanging valuable goods for baubles. A magisterial,
extensive and fresh account of the history of West Africa that
rewrites the region and its peoples back into World History, where
they belong.
*Miranda Kaufmann, Author of BLACK TUDORS*
Toby Green's book restores the rich African history which she had
been denied for too long. Here the author reveals that Africa was
never at the margins of global commerce but was in fact a decisive
player with the prowess to negotiate and also the goods - ivory,
gum, gold - to supply.
*Hassoum Ceesay, National Museum, The Gambia*
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