A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution

Winner of the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2019

Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize and the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award

An Observer and Wall Street Journal Book of the Year 2019

‘Astonishing, staggering’ Ben Okri, Daily Telegraph

A groundbreaking new history that will transform our view of West Africa

By the time of the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the late nineteenth century, Africa had already been globally connected for many centuries. Its gold had fuelled the economies of Europe and Islamic world since around 1000, and its sophisticated kingdoms had traded with Europeans along the coasts from Senegal down to Angola since the fifteenth century. Until at least 1650, this was a trade of equals, using a variety of currencies – most importantly shells: the cowrie shells imported from the Maldives, and the nzimbu shells imported from Brazil.