Toby Green

Toby Green FBA is a British historian of inequality. He is also a Professor of Precolonial and Lusophone African History and Culture at King's College London. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in African studies, at the University of Birmingham. He is Chair of the Fontes Historiae Africanae (Sources of African History) Committee of the British Academy,^[1] and has written extensively about African early modern history and colonial African slavery, mainly focused on slavery in the Portuguese colonies.

He has also written on the Spanish Inquisition.^[2] Green disagrees with the notion of a Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition and often quotes sixteenth-century sources, regarding the institution's abuse of power in Latin America, and is often cited regarding this subject. He has other publications regarding the issues of religious prosecution and oppression in Africa and other European colonies. His interests are slavery in the Atlantic and cultural and economic links between America and Africa.^[3]

His book, A Fistful of Shells won the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.^[4] It was a finalist for the 2019 LA Times Book prize,^[5] and was shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize^[6] and 2020 Wolfson History Prize.^[7]

Green was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2024.^[8]

Green addresses the Spanish Inquisition mainly through Hispano-American sources. He notes that the great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were "widely seen as above the law",^[9] and sometimes had motives for imprisoning, while sometimes executing alleged offenders other than for the purpose of punishing religious nonconformity, mainly in Ibero-America.^[9][10][11]

• Baculamento or Encomienda?: Legal Pluralisms and the Contestation of Power in Pan-Atlantic World of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Green, T. 28 Sep 2017 In : Journal of Global Slavery. 2, p. 310-336

• “Africa and the Price Revolution: Currency Imports and Socioeconomic Change in West And West-Central Africa During the 17th Century”, Journal of African History, 57/1 (2016), 1-24.
• “Beyond an Imperial Atlantic: Trajectories of Africans From Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa in the Early Atlantic World", Past and Present 230 (Feb 2016), 91-122
• “Beyond an Imperial Atlantic: Trajectories of Africans From Upper Guinea and West-Central Africa in the Early Atlantic World", Past and Present 230 (Feb 2016), 91-122
• Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa (Oxford University Press, for the British Academy: 2012)
• “Building Slavery in the Atlantic World: Atlantic Connections and the Changing Institution of Slavery in Cabo Verde, 15th-16th Centuries”, Slavery and Abolition 32/2, 2011, 227-45:

• Saddled with Darwin: A Journey through South America on Horseback (1999) ISBN 0571248284
• Meeting the Invisible Man: Secrets and Magic in West Africa (2001) ISBN 978-0297646150
• Thomas More's Magician: A Novel Account of Utopia in Mexico (2004) ISBN 0753819783
• The Inquisition: The Reign of Fear (2007) ISBN 978-0330443357
• The Rise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa (2012)ISBN 978-1107634718
• A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019) ISBN 9780226644578
• The Covid Consensus: The New Politics of Global Inequality (2021) ISBN 978-1787385221

A Fistful of Shells by Toby Green review – the west African slave trade - The Guardian

What heart of darkness? Busting myths about West African history - The Telegraph

Interview with Toby Green in QG Media - QG Media

Interview with Toby Green in La Presse du Soir - La Presse du Soir

Interview with Toby Green - Times Higher Education

Three Years on there is a New Generation of Lockdown Sceptics - The Guardian

We Must Change the Way we Understand our History - Big Issue North