Cooper's work remains the most comprehensive and thoughtful treatment of nineteenth-century East African coastal economy presently available to us.
—Journal of African History

Based on extensive research, and drawing on a wide range of sources, including local documents and interviews with descendants of both slaves and slaveowners, Cooper reconstructs the plantation economy of the East African coast and its effects on slaves. His work is intelligent, quite readable, and broadly comparative, as he relates the regional variations in slave systems along the coast and sets them beside forms of slavery