Going to Guinea

Abstract This chapter traces the relationship between France and sub-Saharan West Africa during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Emerging from the remnants of crusader colonialism, French commercial and diplomatic exchanges in Cape Verde, the Malagueta (or Pepper) Coast, and the Gulf of Guinea became vastly more significant than historians have previously realized. Before 1600, tens of thousands of French mariners set out in search of spices, gold, ivory, leather, and other commodities, fo