Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History
About this ebook
A stunning work of popular history—the story of how a crop transformed the history of slavery
“A complex story crossing time and oceans” (National Public Radio), Jori Lewis’s prizewinning Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. “With elegant prose and engaging details” (National Book Award–winner Imani Perry), Lewis reveals how demand for peanut oil in Europe ensured that slavery in Africa would persist well into the twentieth century, long after the European powers had officially banned it in the territories they controlled.
“This informative and compassionate account unearths a little-known chapter in the history of slavery and European imperialism” (Publishers Weekly), recreating a world on the coast of Africa that is breathtakingly real and unlike anything modern readers have experienced. Slaves for Peanuts is “told in rich detail through the eyes of West African men and women” (Civil Eats)—from an African-born French missionary harboring runaway slaves, to the leader of a Wolof state navigating the politics of French imperialism—who challenge our most basic assumptions of the motives and people who supported human bondage.
At a time when Americans are grappling with the enduring consequences of slavery, here is a new and revealing chapter in its global history.
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About the author
Jori Lewis writes narrative nonfiction that explores how people interact with their environments. Her reports and essays have been published in The Atlantic, Orion Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, among others, and she is the editor in chief of Adi Magazine, a literary magazine of global politics. The author of Slaves for Peanuts (winner of a Whiting Award, a Silvers Grant, a James Beard Award, and the Harriet Tubman Prize), Lewis splits her time between Illinois and Senegal.
