Cacheu: A microhistorical approach for West African history in the 17th century

This paper explores the challenges of taking a microhistorical approach to the 17th-century West African past. Such an approach has almost exclusively been used for 18th and 19th-century Atlantic history so far, although José Lingna Nafafé’s 2022 book on Abolitionism in the Black Atlantic in the 17thcentury has challenged establish practice. Looking at new sources for Cacheu, a key commercial hub in modern Guinea-Bissau, the paper asks how microhistorical approaches can bring new questions to the existing historical frameworks for West Africa.

Toby Green is Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King’s College London. His 2019 book A Fistful of Shells was awarded the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rohdan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. In his work on West Africa, he seeks actively to reorient the privileges of academic power through collaborating with colleagues in the "Global South".