Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies

by Sylviane A. Diouf, Sylviane A. Diouf (Editor)

Overview

This collection of thirteen case studies by international scholars examines the strategies whole societies adopted in opposition to slavery over a period of five centuries.

This is the first book to explore in a systematic manner the strategies used by Africans to protect and defend themselves and their communities from the onslaught of the Atlantic slave trade and how they assaulted it.
It concludes with a reflective epilogue on the memory of slavery.

North America: Ohio U Press

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782047742
Publisher:	James Currey
Publication date:	01/22/2004
Series:	Western African Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	270
File size:	857 KB

About the Author

The author of the award-winning Servants of Allāh: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, Sylviane A. Diouf also initiated and co-organized the conference “Fighting Back: African Strategies against the Slave Trade” held at Rutgers University. She is a researcher at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Introduction	ix
Part 1	Defensive Strategies
1.	Lacustrine Villages in South Benin as Refuges from the Slave Trade	3
2.	Slave-Raiding and Defensive Systems South of Lake Chad from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century	15
3.	The Myth of Inevitability and Invincibility: Resistance to Slavers and the Slave Trade in Central Africa, 1850-1910	31
4.	The Impact of the Slave Trade on Cayor and Baol: Mutations in Habitat and Land Occupancy	50
5.	Defensive Strategies: Wasulu, Masina, and the Slave Trade	62
Part 2	Protective Strategies
6.	The Last Resort: Redeeming Family and Friends	81
7.	Anglo-Efik Relations and Protection against Illegal Enslavement at Old Calabar, 1740-1807	101
Part 3	Offensive Strategies
8.	Igboland, Slavery, and the Drums of War and Heroism	121
9.	"A Devotion to the Idea of Liberty at Any Price": Rebellion and Antislavery in the Upper Guinea Coast in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries	132
10.	Strategies of the Decentralized: Defending Communities from Slave Raiders in Coastal Guinea-Bissau, 1450-1815	152
11.	The Struggle against the Transatlantic Slave Trade: The Role of the State	170
12.	Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade	199
	Epilogue: Memory as Resistance: Identity and the Contested History of Slavery in Southeastern Nigeria, an Oral History Project	219
	Contributors	227
	Index	231

Editorial Reviews

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the West Africans’ fight against enslavement.”—Rachel Dowty, Journal of World History


“The scholars in this collection overwhelmingly argue that certain populations of West Africans were keenly aware of the devastating impact of the transatlantic slave trade on their societies, and these populations sought to mitigate the damages as best they could.... This collection is particularly useful in teaching undergraduate and graduate students about the transatlantic slave trade to counter and balance the pervasive belief that Africans were either passive victims or active participants in slavery.” —African Studies Quarterly


“Fighting the Slave Trade provides a comprehensive and compelling interpretation of the West African involvement in the Atlantic trade…Its clear language and engaging style make it relevant both to specialists and a broader readership.”—Benedetta Rossi, Progress in Development Studies

From the Publisher