Toby Green

Professor, Precolonial & Lusophone African, King’s College, London

Toby Green is a Fellow of the British Academy and professor of precolonial and lusophone African history and culture at King’s College, London. His new book on which this article draws is The Heretic of Cacheu (Allen Lane/University of Chicago Press, 2025). He is also the author of The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (C Hurst & Co, 2021) and A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (Penguin/University of Chicago Press, 2019).

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Written by Toby Green

Engraving showing a view of the Portuguese town of Cacheo with a fort, trees and sailing ships on a river.

essayGlobal history

A lesson in coexistence

The 17th-century town Cacheu was a hub of West African and European cultures, languages and beliefs (and run by women)

Toby Green

Black-and-white photo of people moving sacks in front of large stacked, mounds resembling pyramids.

essayGlobal history

After slavery

Abolition in Africa brought longed-for freedoms, but also political turmoil, economic collapse and rising enslavement

Toby Green

Bronze relief sculpture of five figures adorned in detailed attire, holding weapons on an intricately patterned background.

essayGlobal history

Africa, in its fullness

The West focuses only on slavery, but the history of Africa is so much more than a footnote to European imperialism

Toby Green