B.A., Ph.D., F.R.Hist.S., F.B.A., F.R.S.E. Professor Robin Law has degrees from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham. He joined the Department in 1972 having held posts at the universities of Lagos and Birmingham. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Rijksuniverseit Leiden 1993-94, and a Visiting Professor at York University, Canada, 1996-97 and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2000-01. He was promoted to a Personal Chair in 1993, and recently retired in 2009. He also holds honorary posts at the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, University of Liverpool, and the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples at York University, Toronto. His distinctions include election as a Fellow of the British Academy (2000) and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2002), and the Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Studies Association of the UK (2010).
His chief research interests are in the history of pre-colonial West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade. He is the author of The Oyo Empire, c.1600-1836 (1977), The Horse in West African History (1980), The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750 (1991), The Kingdom of Allada (1997) and Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'Port', 1727-1892 (2004), a contributor to the Cambridge History of Africa and the Oxford History of the British Empire, and the Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, and is a former editor of the Journal of African History. His current projects include the publication of the journals of Louis Fraser, British Vice-consul to the Kingdom of Dahomey (modern Benin) in 1851-2, and a study of the effects of european trade on the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) in the seventeenth century.
Article
New Evidence on Relations between Portugal and the Kingdom of Allada in the Sixteenth Century
Pinto P & Law R (2020) New Evidence on Relations between Portugal and the Kingdom of Allada in the Sixteenth Century. History in Africa, 47, pp. 37-49. https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2019.25
Article
Provisioning the slave trade: The supply of corn on the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast
Law R (2018) Provisioning the slave trade: The supply of corn on the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast. African Economic History, 46 (1), pp. 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1353/aeh.2018.0000
Article
The English Interpreters in Dahomey, 1843–1852
Law R (2016) The English Interpreters in Dahomey, 1843–1852. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 44 (5), pp. 730-751. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2016.1229258
Book Review
The Slave Ship: A Human History
Law R (2008) The Slave Ship: A Human History. Review of:
Marcus Rediker, John Murray, 2008, 464 pp. 978-0719563034. American Historical Review, 113 (4), pp. 1119-1120. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.113.4.1119
Book Review
The slow suppression of the slave trade in southeastern Nigeria
Law R (2008) The slow suppression of the slave trade in southeastern Nigeria. Review of: THE SLOW SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE IN SOUTHEASTERN NIGERIA in The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885–1950. By A. E. Afigbo. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006. Pp. xv+208.(isbn 1-58046-242-1).. Journal of African History, 49 (1), pp. 144-146. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853708003472
Book Review
Themes in West Africa's history
Law R (2007) Themes in West Africa's history. Review of: Themes in West Africa’s History . Edited by Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong (Oxford: James Currey, 2005; pp. 323. ISBN-13: 978-0852559956. English Historical Review, 122 (497), pp. 729-731. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cem096
Book Review
Law R (2007) Diasporic Africa: A reader. Review of: Diasporic Africa: A Reader, Michael A. Gomez, New York, NYU Press, 2006, 326 pp. ISBN-13 978-0814731659. African Affairs, 106 (423), pp. 330-332.
Article
Law R (1997) The politics of commercial transition: Factional conflict in Dahomey in the context of the ending of the Atlantic slave trade. Journal of African History, 38 (2), pp. 213-233. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853796006846