This study shows how British influence affected the course of Cuban history.

The Travels of Marco Polo is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo, describing Polo's travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan. The Travels is divided into four books. Book One describes the lands of the Middle East and Central Asia that Marco encountered on his way to China. Book Two describes China and the court of Kublai Khan. Book Three describes some of the coastal regions of the East: Japan, India, Sri Lanka, South-East Asia, and the east coast of Africa. Book Four describes some of the then-recent wars among the Mongols and some of the regions of the far north, like Russia. Polo's writings included descriptions of cannibals and spice-growers.

This book analyzes the Gold Coast and the Asante kingdom in the years following the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and prior to the start of colonial rule. The Asante state, one of the largest in the Gold Coast and West Africa after the eighteenth century is the central focus of this work. Studying their transition from a large scale supplier of captives to the transatlantic slave trade to traders in legitimate goods is a critical component that should be analyzed across West Africa. This work highlights the political and economic relationships between the interior Asante state with surrounding African groups and Europeans, chiefly British traders who entered the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.