Primary Sources for Early African Colonization
BLAKE, John William editor and translator.
Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560: Documents to illustrate the nature and scope of Portuguese enterprise in West Africa, the abortive attempt of Castilians to create an empire there, and the early English voyages to Barbary and Guinea.
London, printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1942.
2 vols, 8vo, I: pp. xxxvi, 246; II: pp. xi, [3], 249-461, [1]; with 3 folding maps; occasional light foxing to edges; very good in publisher’s blind panelled blue cloth with gilt vignette to upper and lower covers, gilt lettering to spines; a little wear to extremities and a few spots to covers.
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Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560: Documents to illustrate the nature and scope of Portuguese enterprise in West Africa, the abortive attempt of Castilians to create an empire there, and the early English voyages to Barbary and Guinea.
First edition of a collection of documents pertaining to the early history of West African exploration, translated into English by John William Blake. The documents enclosed pertain to three avenues of exploration in West Africa: Portuguese discovery and occupation of West Africa in the last quarter of the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries; the efforts of Andalusian seamen and the Kingdom of Castille to establish trade and colonize Guinea in the second half of the fifteenth century; and the efforts of British explorers to establish trade routes to Africa between 1480 and 1560.
Blake is particularly concerned with highlighting the extent of Spanish interest in Africa, given that histories of the period often tended to make West African exploration and colonization a purely Portuguese affair. The documents included here range from royal decrees to traveller’s accounts and government grants: all are vital primary sources for understanding the early history of European involvement in West Africa. They are supplemented by the inclusion of three maps: a reproduction of a map of Guinea from Diogo Homem’s 1558 atlas, a map detailing Portuguese settlement in West Africa between 1450 and 1560, and a map detailing contemporary West African land and sea routes.
