THE HERETIC OF CACHEU

A stunning global history of West Africa with this new tour de force Green confirms himself as the most innovative historian writer and thinker of his generation Ana Lucia Araujo author of Humans in Shackles An Atlantic History of SlaveryA unique startling book that gives a rich and detailed sense of life in an African port some 360 years agoIn 1665 Crispina Peres the most powerful trader in the West African slave trafficking port of Cacheu was arrested by the Inquisition Her enemies had conspired to denounce her for taking treatments prescribed by Senegambian healers the djabakós But who was Peres And why was the Portuguese Inquisition so concerned with policing the faith of a West African woman in today s Guinea Bissau In Cacheu Toby Green takes us to the heart of this conundrum but also into the atmosphere of a very distant time and place We learn how people in seventeenth century Cacheu built their houses what they wore how they worshipped and also the work they did how they had fun and how they healed themselves from illness Through this story the haunting realities of the growing slave trade and the rise of European empires emerge in shocking detail By the 1650s the relationship between Europe West Africa and the Americas was alread