An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (review)

bulk of his paper is about the new diseases and new therapies introduced during and after the colonial era. The volume concludes with three essays on themes of great importance for contemporary African history. In the longest essay in the book, Celestin Monga, a senior economist at the World Bank, sketches some of the theoretical debates behind the programmes of structural adjustment; his conclusion that these failed to take proper account of ‘exogenous variables’ will surprise nobody. Cyril Daddieh makes a more lucid attack on an equally broad and complex subject: the reasons behind the failings and collapse of the hopes which the freedom generation placed in the centralized state. The concluding essay is rather more interesting and original: Brian Larkin and Birgit Meyer compare the spread of Christian Pentecostalism with that of Salafi-inspired Islamism, and argue that both have won support by directly confronting established cultural norms and practices. Readers are bound to find any volume of this sort something of a ‘lucky dip’; in my opinion the best prize here was the last one in the barrel.