West Africa

West Africa is rarely included in standard studies of travel as a viable destination of medieval Europeans in its own right. It appears as a sideshow; part of a teleological narrative of exploration that had India as its target and modern imperialism as its long-term inevitable consequence. Perhaps as a result, pre-colonial Africa is often viewed through the lens of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British colonialism, something that is perpetuated today by continued Anglophone reliance on Hakluyt Society translations made during the colonial period. The texts to be discussed below originally involved layers of Castilian, Italian, French, Portuguese, or Latin; viewing them only from the British imperialistic perspective of these older translations can be very misleading. A result of this limited approach to West Africa is that several early accounts of European visits have been neglected. This chapter will explore some of accounts of West Africa, focusing on the vast coastlines of Upper and Lower Guinea (between modern Senegal and modern Ghana).