On a Fistful of Shells

This was a hard book for me to great through, in large part because there are a lot of names, societies, etc. that are wholly unfamiliar to me. That said, Green offers an interesting story.

Essentially, the author’s argument is that “the reason Africa fell behind economically” (whatever this might mean—this sort of thinking is intrinsically teleological) is because its pre-modern currency system. We generally make fun of peoples for accepting colored beads, iron nails, etc. as valuable objects, but most West African societies had many currencies—iron, gold, silver, beads, cloth, salt, cowries, and more. Europeans who arrived, on the other hand, only accepted silver or gold. As the rest of the world came to accept gold/silver as the exclusive economy, African societies had lost all of their value bc that was the only currency that they were giving away.

Because of this, all economic value became held in the form of slaves in order to continue competing on Atlantic markets, but this was obviously devastating. As a result, many West Africans increasingly turned to Islam as a leveling force and it resulted in the fundamental transformation of West Africa along Islamic terms. Rulers who followed traditional African faiths were overthrown (which the author connects to the age of Atlantic Revolutions) and slavery within West Africa became significantly weaker bc Muslims can’t enslave Muslims.

To me, at least, this makes a lot of sense. However, this is one that I’m going to have to come back to after I’ve studied more, as the information can at times be bewildering.