This volume presents a selection of papers from a conference held at the German Historical Institute London (GHIL), in September 2010, on the topic of ‘Commercial Agriculture in Africa as an Alternative to the Slave Trade’. This Introduction begins by situating this topic in its context within the history and historiography of western Africa.

The idea of ‘legitimate commerce’

The idea of promoting the export of agricultural produce from Africa first became central to European thought in the context of the campaign to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the late eighteenth century onwards, with actual projects on the ground in West Africa beginning with Danish attempts to establish plantations on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) from 1788, followed by the British colony of Sierra Leone, after it was taken over by the Sierra Leone Company in 1791. After the legal abolition of the slave trade in the early nineteenth century, proposed commercial alternatives to it became known in contradistinction as ‘legitimate’ (or ‘legal’ or ‘lawful’) commerce (or trade). Strictly, the term ‘legitimate commerce’ designated trade in anything other than slaves, including non-agricultural commodities such as gold and ivory, but in practice interest was mainly concentrated on the promotion of commercial agriculture.