Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure (St Antony’s Series) 1st ed. 2006 Edition

Overexploitation of natural resources is often associated with poverty among local populations. A multi-disciplinary team studied artisanal fishers along the Kenyan coast on the Indian Ocean. The main focus of the research was on income diversification of fishers, the pressure on marine resources and the relation between the two. Income diversification did not reduce the pressure on the marine environment. Rather, indications are that many part-time fishers are entering the profession. Moreover, fishers with alternative employment stayed in-shore and used damaging gear more often. Policies to stimulate employment opportunities for coastal communities cannot be expected to lessen the pressure on marine resources and need to be planned carefully in terms of industry location, labour requirements and degree of coastal pollution.

The history of Ghana attracts popular interest out of proportion to its small size and marginal importance to the global economy. Ghana is the land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 1960s; it has been a temporary home to famous African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois and Maya Angelou; and its Asante Kingdom and signature kente cloth—global symbols of African culture and pride—are well known. Ghana also attracts a continuous flow of international tourists because of two historical sites that are among the most notorious monuments of the transatlantic slave trade: Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. These looming structures are a vivid reminder of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of the Americas.

The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana’s coast between 1700 and 1807. Author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807.

Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society is an academic journal on African literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences, and cultural anthropology.