Scholarly publications on the role of the Atlantic slave trade in connecting Atlantic Africa and the Americas before 1850 have experienced a veritable renaissance during the last two decades. For Portuguese-speaking Atlantic Africa, studies by Peter A. Mark, Linda Heywood and John Thornton, Walter Hawthorne, Toby Green, Roquinaldo Ferreira and Peter Mark among othersFootnote ¹ have shifted the focus from the economic and demographic impact of the trade to the social and cultural dynamics that emerged as a result of the trade. These scholars have also provided new insights into the connections between developments in Africa and the plantation societies in the Americas. Their knowledge of Portuguese, Italian and other European languages has allowed them to peruse official collections in Europe, Africa and the Americas as well as innumerable published primary sources to reinterpret and enrich our understanding of the trade and its impact in Atlantic Africa and the Americas. Their publications have offered bold and innovative insights which are generating new debates and refining questions that scholars are asking about this formative period in African history.

Mariana Candido's An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and its Hinterland is a welcome addition to the list. Published in 2013, the book is the first English-language monograph on Benguela during the early phase of Portuguese colonial expansion in Angola.

Candido sees African Slaving Port as a corrective to the earlier studies of the Atlantic which she contends have largely looked at areas of Atlantic Africa north of the Equator. Shifting to the South Atlantic, she examines the history of Benguela and its hinterland during the first 200 years of the region's integration in the Atlantic world. She argues that the study breaks away from the earlier demographic emphasis that has dominated the history of the slave trade and instead interrogates a wide range of topics including identity, gender, climate, disease, colonialism and the like. This approach, she suggests, provides a deeper understanding of the rich and complex history of Benguela and of its centrality to the Atlantic slave trade.

The book begins with a lengthy introduction which serves as the methodological overview for the concepts and issues that inform the study. The rest of the book contains five chapters and a conclusion. Chapter one details how the coastal region of Angola located south of Kwanza River changed from a place where the local Ndombe population and neighbouring peoples from the interior and elsewhere met to trade and instead became the administrative centre of a new Portuguese settlement called the Reino de Benguela (Kingdom of Angola) from 1546 to 1710. In Chapter two the author continues the chronological focus by detailing how Benguela became an Atlantic slave port from 1710 to 1850. Chapters three and four shift from chronology, wars, raids and insecurity to examining Benguela's place in the South Atlantic system. The chapters also analyse the mechanisms that the Portuguese used to transform Benguela into one of the most important export centres for slaves in Angola. In Chapter five, Benguela's relation to its larger hinterland takes centre stage. The chapter surveys Portuguese colonial policies and illustrates how Portuguese economic and political reach eventually led to the emergence of the Benguela region as the second most important slave-trading region in Angola. In the conclusion, the author reiterates her assertion that the study contributes to the analysis of the slave trade in Africa by shifting from the demographic and quantitative approach to its political and social consequences.

The study relies on a plethora of primary and secondary sources and makes a strong case for Benguela's transformation from a weak Portuguese outpost to a vital slave port during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Candido's novel reconstruction of how low-level warfare allowed the Portuguese to seize and bring Benguela under their control is insightful and should be welcomed by scholars of early Angolan history. The major contribution that her study makes, however, is demonstrating that these developments are central to understanding the political and social impact that the Atlantic slave trade had on the Benguela region. Particularly important is the attention Candido gives to the social interactions between Portuguese officers, convicts and merchants and the local African population. Her reflections on the social group called filhos da terra and their role in facilitating Portuguese commercial and administrative penetration of the Benguela region expands our knowledge of the social history of Angola.

The book is a welcome addition to the field of Angolan and Atlantic history.