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Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History - Hardcover | Diverse Reads

Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History

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A stunning work of popular history—the story of how a crop transformed the history of slavery

Americans consume over 1.5 billion pounds of peanut products every year. But few of us know the peanut’s tumultuous history, or its intimate connection to slavery and freedom.

Lyrical and powerful, Slaves for Peanuts deftly weaves together the natural and human history of a crop that transformed the lives of millions. Author Jori 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.

Delving deep into West African and European archives, Lewis recreates a world on the coast of Africa that is breathtakingly real and unlike anything modern readers have experienced. Slaves for Peanuts is told through the eyes of a set of richly detailed characters—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.

ISBN-13: 9781620971567

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: New Press The

Publication Date: 04-19-2022

Pages: 352

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

Jori Lewis is an award–winning journalist who writes about agriculture and the environment. Her reports have appeared on PRI’s The World and in Discover Magazine, Pacific Standard, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She is also a contributing editor of Adi, a literary magazine about global politics. In 2018, she received the prestigious Whiting Grant for Creative Nonfiction. Lewis splits her time between Illinois and Senegal, and Slaves for Peanuts (The New Press) is her first book.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part I

1 A Shelter for Runaway Slaves 3

2 A Crossroads 12

3 A Spark, a Solution, the Industrial Revolution 16

4 From Here to There and Back Again 22

5 A Peanut Ruse 30

6 The Legend of Ndakaaru 34

7 The Caravan 36

8 Those of the Sand 39

9 A Middleman 42

Part II

10 The People Who Came from the Sea 53

11 The African Business 59

12 Unholy Wars 64

13 A Word on Slavery 68

14 This Black Man from Gorée 72

15 Lat Joor Wants His Slaves Back 76

Part III

16 A Sickness with No Name 83

17 A Native Evangelist 88

18 Ceebu Jën 95

19 A Steamboat on Land 100

20 The Ebbs and Flows of My Courage 104

Part IV

21 Saxayaay 113

22 Springtime in Paris 115

23 Reports from the Rivers 121

24 A New Appeal 127

25 The Fifteen Captives of Ndiack Ndiaye 131

26 The Future of France 139

27 A Word on Freedom 147

28 The Civilizing Mission 150

29 A Stain That Must Be Washed 159

Part V

30 A Delicate Business 165

31 You Will Find Only Jackals and Hyenas 171

32 A Colleague and a Partner 175

33 Since the Invention of the Peanut 182

34 Special Seeds 185

35 Interregnums 190

36 The Propagation of French Culture? 195

Part VI

37 The Darnel 205

38 Bethesda 207

39 Poor Lat Joor 211

40 Go East! 215

41 The Dawn of a New Era 223

42 We Have Already Proven That the Negro Is Capable 231

Part VII

43 Lost and Found (Ephemera) 237

44 Why Have the Peanuts Degenerated? 239

45 Kerbala 242

46 On the Run 247

47 Your Civilization Has Not Dazzled Him 253

48 This Land of My Ancestors 256

Part VIII

49 A Peanut Fable 263

50 One of the Most Delicate Questions 266

51 A Child from the Dark Continent 272

52 Emaciated Lands 277

53 Drink My Cup to the Dregs 280

54 The Crushing Supremacy of the Peanut 285

55 What Remained 289

Epilogue 293

Acknowledgments 299

A Note on Sources 301

Notes 303

Index 363