Part one: Causes: economic divergence in West and West-Central Africa. "Three measures of gold": the rise and fall of the great empires of the Sahel --
Causeways across the savannah: from Senegambia to Sierra Leone --
Ready money: The Gold Coast and the gold trade --
Rivers of cloth, masks of bronze: the bights of Benin and Biafra --
The kingdom of Kongo: from majesty to revolt --
Part two: Consequences: politics, belief and revolutions from below -- "With boots worth 3 slaves": slavery and value in the eighteenth century --
On a war footing: the "fiscal-military state" in West African politics --
Feeding power: new societies, new worldviews --
Transnational Africas, struggle, and the rising of modernity --
Warrior aristocracies and pushback from below --
Let them drink rum! Islam, revolution and the aristocracy.
