Abstract
Several contributors analyze the pursuit and distribution of lucrative commodities—cod, cochineal, tobacco, hides, wax and wood—that drove trade on the West African coast, across the Americas and to European ports. Originally the dominant European power from Goa to Bombay, Portuguese merchants brought "rhubarb, wildebeest hooves, ground pearls, and powdered human skull" in addition to tea and drugs to markets in Europe (65). With the rise of US power playing a role in international relations after 1783, politics and diplomacy had changed in meaningful ways. [...]Chapters 6 and 7, with a biographical focus on individuals that straddled different states during a period of turmoil and warfare, might have served more effectively as a conclusion, thoughtful examinations of the revolutionary age that could have followed Kristie Flannery's analysis of the Seven Years' War and Anglo-Spanish rivalries in the Pacific.