Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Atlantic African leaders confronted new challenges as the European demand for captive African labour transformed the political economy of the region and the experience of living within it. Among a range of new and remodelled strategies designed to protect their polities, West African leaders used alcohol diplomacy to facilitate political alliance, cross-cultural communication and economic exchange. This article draws on warehouse registers, European travelogues and joint-stock company correspondence to uncover Queen Tituba of Agona (c.1638–1707) in her efforts to manage the English Royal African Company. By tracing her adroit use of alcohol, it reveals how West Africans repurposed English commodities to fit their own patterns of consumption and exchange. From funnelling diplomatic gifts of brandy into Akan-speaking political hierarchies to resolving disputes over rum, the queen drew on alcohol to fortify her rule against other coastal powers and navigate the demands of her own officials, subjects and enslaved labourers. She deployed alcohol in these ways despite, and because of, the pressures placed on her as a woman political leader. Essential to trade and ritual, yet morally fraught, Queen Tituba’s use of alcohol upended the European hierarchies of race and gender that consigned West African women to the status of commodity rather than recognized them as strategic consumers. Following alcohol offers a way of unravelling the intersection between gender, consumption and authority in a period when the trafficking of enslaved African peoples fundamentally transformed Atlantic political economy.

中文翻译：

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17 世纪末黄金海岸奴隶情结中的酒精外交、性别和权力


在整个 17 世纪和 18 世纪，大西洋非洲领导人面临着新的挑战，因为欧洲对俘虏非洲劳动力的需求改变了该地区的政治经济和生活在其中的体验。在旨在保护其政体的一系列新战略和重塑战略中，西非领导人利用酒精外交来促进政治联盟、跨文化交流和经济交流。本文利用仓库登记簿、欧洲游记和股份公司通信，揭示了阿戈纳的蒂图巴女王（约 1638-1707 年）管理英国皇家非洲公司的努力。通过追溯她对酒精的熟练使用，它揭示了西非人如何重新利用英国商品以适应他们自己的消费和交换模式。从将白兰地的外交礼物输送到讲阿肯语的政治等级制度，到解决关于朗姆酒的争端，女王利用酒精来加强她对其他沿海强国的统治，并满足她自己的官员、臣民和奴隶劳工的要求。她以这些方式酗酒，尽管作为女性政治领袖，她承受着压力。蒂图巴女王对酒精的使用对贸易和仪式至关重要，但在道德上令人担忧，它颠覆了欧洲的种族和性别等级制度，这种等级制度将西非妇女置于商品的地位，而不是承认她们是战略消费者。在那个时期，贩卖被奴役的非洲人民从根本上改变了大西洋政治经济，追随酒精提供了一种解开性别、消费和权威之间交叉点的方法。