The mission

The research project explores 19th-century trajectories of three crucial trade items – arms, beads and cloth – in east-central Africa. Thanks to its cohesive intellectual agenda, interdisciplinary approach and broad geographical frame of reference, the project is expected to demonstrate the centrality of African societies and their material practices to global processes of production, exchange and consumption, rejecting the still common view that the Africans’ contribution to the rise of the modern global economy was limited to their role as “commodities” in the slave trade or as producers of raw materials for Western markets. The project has received funding from the European Union – Next Generation EU, PRIN Call 2022.