Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth CenturyA key theme in the West African trading system of the nineteenth century is the transition from the slave trade to legitimate commerce, and its significance for the African societies of the region. In this period of transition, trade in palm oil was at the core of relations between Britain and West Africa in the nineteenth century, and of immense importance to the economies of large parts of West Africa. Filling a major gap in the literature, Martin