Overview

This volume deals with imported alcohol at Luanda and its hinterland, where it was heavily used to acquire captives for the Atlantic slave trade. Aside from highlighting the complexities of this singular economic component of Atlantic slaving, its focus on changing West -Central African alcohol consumption patterns through the importation of foreign intoxicants reveals an important element of the social history of African societies before the modern colonial period.

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9789004131750

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Reviews

Thus, with cautions reference to numerical data, Curto not only brings to life the shift in commercial ascendancy to Brazil-based merchants, but tempers claims of the impact of alcohol on Angolan society in a measured assessment of the levels of imports in relationship to local population..Curto provides fascinating information on the ways that various kinds of alcohol became deeply embedded in commercial relationships. Charles Ambler, African History, 2005. At first blush, alcohol would seem an unlikely commodity linking three locations, each on a different continent, on the Atlantic seaboard. Jose C. Curto's story of one of avarice, greed, cruelty, and inhumanity; of political manoeuvring for comparative advantage; and of expolitation. The setting is West Central Africa and, in particular, Luanda and its hinterland. And the time-frame is almost three hundred years that witnessed periods of intermittent calm but also of political, social, and economic upheaval, not only in West Central Africa but also in Portugal and Brazil with each of which Africa became inextricably linked by a vicious supply-and-demand cycle for labour. This multi-continental dimension, coupled with its revisionist approach and scholarship based on extensive research, makes the book required reading for those interested in the history of Portugal, Africa, and Brazil and in the field of Atlantic history. A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The International History Review, 2005. ...an important contribution to the history of the alcohol trade in Africa. Linda M. Heywood.

Thus, with cautions reference to numerical data, Curto not only brings to life the shift in commercial ascendancy to Brazil-based merchants, but tempers claims of the impact of alcohol on Angolan society in a measured assessment of the levels of imports in relationship to local population..Curto provides fascinating information on the ways that various kinds of alcohol became deeply embedded in commercial relationships. Charles Ambler, African History, 2005. At first blush, alcohol would seem an unlikely commodity linking three locations, each on a different continent, on the Atlantic seaboard. Jose C. Curto's story of one of avarice, greed, cruelty, and inhumanity; of political manoeuvring for comparative advantage; and of expolitation. The setting is West Central Africa and, in particular, Luanda and its hinterland. And the time-frame is almost three hundred years that witnessed periods of intermittent calm but also of political, social, and economic upheaval, not only in West Central Africa but also in Portugal and Brazil with each of which Africa became inextricably linked by a vicious supply-and-demand cycle for labour. This multi-continental dimension, coupled with its revisionist approach and scholarship based on extensive research, makes the book required reading for those interested in the history of Portugal, Africa, and Brazil and in the field of Atlantic history. A.J.R. Russell-Wood, The International History Review, 2005. ...an important contribution to the history of the alcohol trade in Africa. Linda M. Heywood.

Author Information

José C. Curto, Ph.D. (1996) in History, University of California at Los Angeles, is Assistant Professor of History at York University (Toronto, Canada). He has published extensively on demography, slavery, and slave trading in Angola, including The Story of Nbena, 1817-1820: Unlawful Enslavement and the Concept of 'Original Freedom' in Angola, in Paul E. Lovejoy and David V. Trotman, eds. Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora (Continuum, 2004).

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