North Eastern Atlantic

The Atlantic off Upper Guinea faces a coast of mangrove islands and branching rivers. Along the Rio Nunez, Baga farmers cultivated rice in fields shaped by the tides, while coastal communities also supplied salt and kola to traders. In the late eighteenth century European visitors described their rice-growing skills, even as warfare and the trade in captive people brought danger to the coast. Ships arriving from the ocean entered a landscape already connected to the interior by African commerce.