The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade * by John Wright

This is a well-written and well-documented book on a crucial aspect, period and region of Africa closely associated with, and directly and actively involved in, the slave trade. Based on the author's doctoral thesis submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1998, it offers a new perspective and hitherto untapped data on the slave traffic from the Sudanic belt across the Sahara Desert to North Africa and the Mediterranean world. It is also full of insights into the complex nature of the trade, and into the social and economic organization of the communities from which the slaves originated and of those in the Sahara. Through an intelligent and judicious use of a wide variety of relevant sources, Wright has produced a fine work of scholarly synthesis that constitutes a solid contribution to the literature on the rise and demise of the slave trade in a part of Africa that has long been neglected by specialists in the field. Thus he has successfully—and literally—breached the world of the Sahara as an ecological and academic terra incognita. The Saharan slave trade forms one side of what can be termed the quadrilateral trade connecting West Africa, the Sahara, North Africa and the Ottoman/Mediterranean world

Demise · Desert (philosophy · Geography · Insider · Political science · Variety (cybernetics · Wright · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law