Africa

Throughout these pages you can see a selection of artefacts created by people from western and west central Africa. Most were collected between 1895 and 1916 and were brought to Liverpool on steamships involved in the West African trade.

In the gallery the objects are laid out so you can follow the shipping routes down the west coast of Africa, from Sierra Leone to Angola.

The gallery presents African cultures in three main themes:

• the links between African peoples and between Africa and other parts of the world
• the effects of European trade and intervention
• changing European perceptions of Africans and the influence of African sculpture on 20^th century European art

Explore the collections by clicking on the links below:

• Europeans in Africa
• Chief Collector
• Trade
• Sierra Leone
• Ghana
• Weighing Gold
• Nigeria: Hausa
• Nigeria: Yoruba
• Southeast Nigeria
• The Edo Kingdom
• Cameroon
• Gabon
• Central Africa: Kongo
• The spiritual world of the Kongo
• What are Minkisi?
• The African Diaspora
• Haitian Vodou
• 20^th Century European art and African sculpture
• The Idea of African Art

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