New Books Network Toby Green, "The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Jan 27, 2026
Toby Green, historian of seventeenth-century West Africa and author of A Fistful of Shells, recounts the life and trial of Crispina Peres, a powerful Cacheu trader accused by the Portuguese Inquisition. Short scenes evoke Cacheu’s streets, trade networks, healing rituals, female-led economies, and how a single trial reflected global shifts in empire and the slave trade.
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Trial Documents Reveal Daily Life
- Toby Green found Crispina Peres's Inquisition trial and related documents give unusually complete insight into 17th-century life in Cacheu.
- He used decades of regional research to reframe these fragments into a broader social and historical narrative.
Narrative Mirrors Local Conceptions Of Time
- Green structures the book to reflect a cyclical West African sense of time rather than a purely linear narrative.
- He revisits fragments across chapters to reproduce that non-linear temporal logic while still following Crispina's story.
Institutions Can Be Imperial Instruments
- Green challenges institutional-economic frameworks that assume only externally imposed institutions drive growth.
- He shows the Inquisition itself acted as a powerful imperial institution shaping local economies like Cacheu's.
