People in Motion : Flexible States and Porous Boundaries in the History of Coastal West Africa

Beginning in the late fifteenth century, more than two million people were taken from areas that lay behind the Bight of Benin, enslaved, and forced into the perilous Middle Passage bound for the New World. While a vast swath of scholarly work on this region has explored the relationships among the ruling elites and overseas traders that facilitated the transatlantic slave trade, the practices that shaped the region’s political and cultural dynamics, especially those that dealt with other kinds of trade, have yet to be thoroughly examined.

In People in Motion, Sandra T. Barnes offers a history focused on the Benin Region’s patchwork of small states and ports that saw a constant movement of people and goods for centuries. As such, this book widens the lens of scholarship, formerly limited to kings and elite merchants, to include people of all social levels who provided the dynamism behind the political rivalries and changes that marked the period. Barnes concentrates on protective relationships and the violence people were forced to endure during a fast-moving, tumultuous period of history, examining how they organized their lives and why this mattered. The result is a refreshingly original work that challenges long-held assumptions about West Africa’s past, explaining what life was like for people on the coast during the transatlantic slave trade.