This latest addition to the study of the trans-Atlantic slave trade proposes a fresh approach to the ongoing debate over the role of its West African connections. Toby Green not only takes the reader through the genesis of trans-Atlantic human trafficking but also takes a closer look at pre-contact exchanges between the West African trade networks and the trans-Saharan slave trade. The book opens with the Mandé incursions into the hinterland of the Upper Guinea coast in the early 1300 s that established exchange networks linking the Mediterranean with the Upper Niger region and Upper Guinea. The book then moves on to the arrival of European traders on the coast in the mid-1400 s and the emergence of trans-Atlantic space in the early 1500s. The book links the two phenomena by skillfully weaving two different narratives: the formation of a trade diaspora, and the process of creolization. Green's hypothesis is built round the links between these dynamics; he argues that both the trans-Saharan and the trans-Atlantic slave trades fostered cross-cultural trade and interaction in West Africa. Indeed, he holds that the formation of the Mandé trade diaspora paved the way for creolization by triggering a notable measure of cultural accommodation of West African populations to Mandé hegemony, which operated not only through violence (occupation, raids, and enslavement) but also through ‘mandinguization’ by means of (political) alliances, intermarriage, settlement, and conversion to Islam.

Similar processes would take place in the course of the (violent) encounter between European traders and African societies, which from the early 1500s also operated through parallel processes of negotiation, miscegenation, and conversion to Christianity. Thus, the spread of Mandé-speaking diasporas was followed by the appearance of a rival – and complementary – European trade diaspora that was largely Sephardi. The European trade diaspora operated from the Cape Verde islands and coastal locations – as interlopers or lançados – and in the emerging Atlantic. Green's book sees this second trade diaspora as being responsible for the rapid rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as well as for laying the foundations for the emergence of Creole communities in the Cape Verde islands and the Upper Guinea coast in the 1500s.

The book is divided into two parts and nine chapters. The first part focuses on regional West African history, contextualizing the formation of the Kaabú confederation (an offshoot of the Mali empire that became independent in the 1400s), the expansion of trans-Atlantic networks, and the respective impact of slaving and cross-cultural interaction on local populations such as the Wolof, Sereer, Kassanké, Kaabunké, and Mane. Armed conflict, political upheavals, and ethnic fragmentation would be accompanied by a growing ‘extraversion’ of the region fed by the increasing demand for slaves and an intensification of mutual cultural borrowing between outsider and local groups.

The second part explores the formation of what the author calls a ‘pan-Atlantic space’ (p. 19) in the early 1500s when the violent exploration of the Caribbean and Middle America along with the Columbian exchange decimated native American populations, and Africans were first taken across to replace them to work the mines and plantations. The formation of Creole groups occurring in the New World was then ‘transmuted’ in the opposite direction to West Africa, where it took root in Cape Verde, which in the meantime had become the hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade from West Africa. West African societies primed by ‘mandinguization’ also took the initiative by accommodating outsiders into their midst, incorporating them into kinship groups, while using their networks to obtain certain commodities (iron, arms, and textiles).

The book also traces the various reversals of the Portuguese Crown, which first forcibly converted Sephardi, then encouraged them to settle Cape Verde, only to prohibit trading and settlement on the coast in an effort to consolidate its royal trading monopoly in the region. These reversals inadvertently also contributed to the process of cultural creolization on the Upper Guinea coast. The persecution by the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions completes the picture. Persecution induced ‘New Christians’ and conversos to expand the contraband trade in slaves in West Africa and the Atlantic. A transnational diaspora resulted, alternately described as a ‘merchant class’ or a ‘caste’, developing its own plural identities in the process.

Green's attempt to rewrite, at least in part, Atlantic history from a West African perspective is based on the analysis of archival data – above all inquisitorial – hitherto neglected and underused for this purpose, culled from Spanish and Portuguese documents found in Madrid, Seville, Lisbon, Praia (Cape Verde), and Bogotá. Determined to break down barriers, Green makes a point of crossing boundaries and combining information from both sides of the Atlantic, claiming to present the ‘first full analysis’ of the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (p. 3) based on a qualitative rather than a quantitative assessment. The result is an eloquent and erudite interdisciplinary study.

Nevertheless, in order to argue his case, he makes a number of unconvincing leaps. The correlation between trade diasporas and creolization may apply to Cape Verde, but not necessarily to the coast, where a few hundred lançados and ‘Caboverdeans’ living in segregated settlements can hardly be responsible for a hypothetical emerging ‘Creole society’ there or for that matter for a ‘pan-regional Atlantic culture’ (p. 152). The idea that a Creole language based on a Portuguese lexicon on the mainland originated in Cape Verde (p. 275) is by no means proven, nor is the existence of a ‘ghetto mentality’ (p. 268), a ‘religio-racial ideology’ on the islands (p. 229), or a ‘new legitimating ideology’ based on race in the early Atlantic (p. 273). The abundant use of the term ‘lineage’, which covers kinship and entire ethnic groups, is doubtful, as is the notable elasticity of ‘caste’ and ‘Caboverdeans’. Finally, the notion that change was externally induced, a key thread of the study, needs to be reconsidered.

Given that the study essentially centers upon the ‘Sephardi connection’ – while neglecting other diasporas – with the trans-Atlantic slave trade figuring as a haunting backdrop, flag and cargo do not quite match. Nevertheless, Green's book is a welcome and valuable contribution to Atlantic history and fills a lacuna with regard to the early period of its evolution. It will no doubt enliven and encourage the debate on West Africa's position in the trans-Atlantic context and on the agency of different social groups in the making of Afro-Atlantic cultures based on the ignominious trade in humans.