Publishers Weekly
01/10/2022
Journalist Lewis, who is based in Senegal, debuts with an astute and distressing history of the links between slavery and peanut farming in 19th-century west Africa. According to Lewis, the rising demand for high-quality peanut oil for the European soap-making industry encouraged French colonial officials to ignore kidnapping and slave trading in the region, despite France’s abolition of slavery in 1848. Noting that most of the enslaved’s lives were poorly documented, Lewis relies heavily on the letters and records of Protestant missionary Walter Taylor. Originally from Sierra Leone, Taylor graduated from a French seminary and founded the Shelter for Runaway Slaves in Senegal, which helped fugitives obtain their “freedom papers.” His heartfelt letters detail the struggles of west Africans caught between local chiefs and European officials, their efforts to preserve their cultural traditions, and the machinations of Lewis’s mentor turned nemesis, François Villéger, whose racist attitudes undermined Taylor’s missionary work. Lewis’s skillful mining of Taylor’s records and her own immersion in Senegalese culture results in a fascinating exploration of regional loyalties and the intricacies of western African slavery. This informative and compassionate account unearths a little-known chapter in the history of slavery and European imperialism. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Slaves for Peanuts:
“A rich and very readable overview of people and peanuts in nineteenth-century West Africa.”
—World Literature Today
“Slaves for Peanuts is a valuable addition to agricultural and West African history.”
—Nature
“The geopolitical game Lewis describes in Slaves for Peanuts is an old one, and one essential to the formation of the modern world.”
—Africa Is a Country
"Slaves for Peanuts plumbs a fascinating and disturbing slice of history, shining a light on another glaring example of Western hypocrisy and oppression.”
—NPR Books
"[Slaves for Peanuts] unearths the stories of African kingdoms and colonial settlements, showing how demand for peanut oil in Europe drove the expansion of the peanut trade in Senegal in the 19th century and ensured that slavery and indentured labor in West Africa would continue long after the Europeans had abolished it."
—Civil Eats
“Astute and distressing. . . . This informative and compassionate account unearths a little-known chapter in the history of slavery and European imperialism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Within these pages, you’ll encounter plagues and palace intrigues, adventures and misadventures, kingmakers and kingbreakers, fortunes won and lost—all wrapped around the mighty peanut! In well-researched, engaging prose, Jori Lewis unravels the intimate connections between this major export crop, enslavement, and abolition on Senegambian soil. The wars fought over it, and the history that surrounds it. This work is an important contribution to African historiography.”
—Sandra Jackson-Opoku, author of The River Where Blood Is Born and co-editor of Revise the Psalm
“In this whirlwind tour with the yellow-blossomed peanut across the Atlantic world, journalist Jori Lewis skillfully unveils the intertwined and troubling trajectory of plants, people, slavery, and colonialism. Slaves for Peanuts is a broad, complex, and unexpected environmental history vibrantly told.”
—Tiya Miles, professor of history, Harvard University, and author of All That She Carried
“Slaves for Peanuts is a revelation. With elegant prose and engaging details, Lewis uncovers a vital history that promises to transform our understanding of slavery and colonialism. Though focused on a single crop, this terrain is vast and deep. I highly recommend this outstanding work.”
—Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University, and author of Breathe
“Jori Lewis’s superbly readable book does more than bring life to something we all too often ignore: the history of slavery in Africa. She has also found a sort of African version of the Underground Railroad. And all of this is connected to an everyday food whose history we seldom think of.”
—Adam Hochschild, journalist, historian, lecturer, and bestselling author of King Leopold’s Ghost
“Slaves for Peanuts is an extraordinary and often tender work of meticulous research that spans time and continents, an insightful and captivating narrative of how slavery in Africa supported industrialization in the West, and how enslaved people took back their freedom. I am in awe of the authoritative care with which Jori Lewis lays out the entangled relationships between white supremacy, capitalism, food, and the indefatigable human agency. A must-read that illustrated the long-standing history of the many ways in which the African continent has been for centuries paying the price for the comforts of the Global North.”
—Anna Badkhen, author of Fisherman’s Blues
“Jori Lewis has achieved the nearly impossible task of educating us about peanuts, a vegetable juggernaut that has changed the world, while recounting stories of slavery and freedom, all presented with extraordinary nuance and humanity. Slaves for Peanuts is a triumph of deep research and engaging writing.”
—Andrés Reséndez, professor, department of history, University of California, Davis, and author of The Other Slavery
“In this magnificently researched, beautifully told narrative history, Jori Lewis brings the roiling story of slavery and liberation in West Africa to life. By combing through stacks of archived documents on three continents, she masterfully weaves a rich tale of African kingdoms and European ‘civilizers’; of unbathed Englishmen and mystical priestesses; of camel caravans and railroad bandits; of imperial decrees, epic poems, and forests in the mist. At the center of it all stands the towering figure of an African protestant pastor and liberator; and, not far away, the fertile soils that would send the humble, mighty peanut to distant shores, and into history.”
—Sandy Tolan, professor of journalism, USC Annenberg, and bestselling author of The Lemon Tree
