This collection brings together the key essays on the economic and social history of West Africa of Paul E. Lovejoy, Distinguished Research Professor of History at York University and holder of the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History. Lovejoy’s work explores the organization of trade and production in the interior of West Africa, and specifically in the regions of modern Nigeria, Niger, Benin, and Ghana in the pre-colonial era before c. 1900, when Muslim merchants and entrepreneurs dominated economy and society. The essays are essential reading for those interested in the functioning of the internal social and economic structures of African countries during the era of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Saharan slave trades. Lovejoy pays particular attention to the interrelationship between ethnicity and ecology in the structure of trade and production.

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