Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories
Benedetta Rossi
Abstract
This book focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears' social positions, or to distance themselves from them. The book contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia. As ... More
This book focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears' social positions, or to distance themselves from them. The book contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia. As a whole, it advances a conceptual framework for understanding slavery in West Africa today: instead of retracing the end of West African slavery, the book highlights the preliminary contours of its recent reconfigurations.
Keywords:
West Africa,
abolitions,
nineteenth century,
slaves,
slavery,
Mauritania,
Benin,
Niger,
Cameroon,
Ghana
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781846311994 |
| Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: June 2013 |
DOI:10.5949/UPO9781846315640 |
