4th Edition
The World and a Very Small Place in Africa A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia
List of illustrations
List of maps
List of perspectives
Preface to the fourth edition
Introduction
A very small place in Africa
Globalization
PART I
Archaic globalization: before 1600 CE
1 The global setting for Niumi’s history: early archaic globalization
Western Europe’s strengthening connections
Fourteenth-century setback
The lure to expand
Portuguese expansion into the Atlantic
West Africa’s strengthening connections
Islam’s movement into West Africa
State-building in West Africa
The Mali Empire
Mali’s decline
2 Niumi during early archaic globalization: before 1450 CE
The physical setting
The cultural setting
Niumi’s early residents, their commercial milieu, and the Niumi state
3 Niumi during late-archaic globalization, 1450–1600: waxing Atlantic trade, enduring Sudanic trade
Western Europe and the rise of the Atlantic plantation complex
Early Atlantic trade and political change in Niumi
Trade diasporas and new identities
Muslim traders
Christian (and "New Christian") Portuguese and Luso-Africans
New ways of life
PART II
Proto-globalization: 1600–1800
4 Niumi during proto-globalization: the height of the Atlantic complex
Niumi’s expanding world
The ecological base
The growth of mercantile capitalism and expanding Atlantic complex
The long march of Islam
The Niumi polity
State structures
Court officials
State administration
Dependent territories
State revenues
A wider world at home
Niumi’s changing material world
Niumi’s changing social and intellectual world
Luso-Africans
Muslims
Soninke
The changing nature of dependence
PART III
Modern globalization: 1800–1950s
5 Niumi in a time of transition: 1816–1897
Revolutionary change in the West
Islam’s militant strain
Weakening of the Niumi state
New systems of production and exchange: the peanut revolution
The Soninke-Marabout Wars
Formal British takeover
A deepening dependence
6 Niumi as part of the Gambia Colony and Protectorate: 1897–1965
The unsettled twentieth-century world
Establishment of colonial rule
The world of peanuts
Development
A quiet broadening and deepening of Islam
Niumi in a world at war
World War I
World War II
Postwar malaise
Toward independence
PART IV
Post-colonial globalization, 1950s
7 Independent Niumi in the First Republic of The Gambia: 1965–1994
Mid-twentieth century global realities
New rulers, old rules
A chance encounter with world history and a boost for tourism: Roots
Modernization?
8 Niumi in the recent wave of globalization: the Second Republic, 1994–2017
Globalization’s newest wave
Soldier to statesman to tyrant
Is globalization good for the world’s poor? Niumi as case study
The economy
Non-sustainable development
Culture and society
Women’s roles
Freedom, dignity, and human rights
Niumi in diaspora
The presidential election of 2016
Epilogue, 2017: #Gambia HAS Decided
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Donald R. Wright is Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, Emeritus, at the State University of New York—Cortland. His other books include two on early African American history, and a two-volume collection of oral traditions from The Gambia, and (as co-author) The Atlantic World: A History (2007).
