Through an examination of early modern African-European encounters, African Kings and Black Slaves offers a reappraisal of the dominant depiction of these exchanges as simple economic transactions: rather, according to Herman L. Bennett, they involved clashing understandings of diplomacy, sovereignty, and politics.

"African Kings and Black Slaves centers the histories of peoples of African descent in the grand tale of imperial conquest and power and thereby challenges the dominant narrative that colonial slavery has timelessly been about freedom. Herman Bennett is especially sensitive to the multisited nature of the contests set in motion by colonial encounters."—Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Herman L. Bennett's indispensable study alerts us to the political and intellectual consequences of flattening the history of Europe's relations with Africa by overlooking the Iberian experience. He ably shows how recuperating the notion of African sovereignty, abundantly recognized in early exchanges, can fundamentally change our understanding of African polities and African subjects."—Barbara Fuchs, University of California, Los Angeles

"An immensely thought-provoking book. In his sophisticated reconsideration of late-medieval European characterizations of sub-Saharan Africans, Herman L. Bennett troubles the traditional account of the rise of the West."—David Wheat, Michigan State University