Slavery in Africa
- LAST REVIEWED: 16 March 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 April 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0134
- LAST REVIEWED: 16 March 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 24 April 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0134
Introduction
Slavery is viewed as an ancient and universal institution and thus it can be found in a diversity of forms throughout Africa. During the period of the Atlantic world, slavery served multiple roles within Africa and provided a foundation for the transatlantic slave trade in that Europeans found slaves for sale within Africa. In many parts of Africa, land was held in common and therefore people’s ability to work the land, and their position within their society, related to the number of people whom they controlled. This patron-client system meant that patrons were always looking for more clients, both free and unfree, as a way to increase their power. The nature of this agricultural and political system made slavery and pawnship (debt peonage) a common system in Africa, yet it was a system that is hard to generalize about and one that possessed great differences from the African slavery that developed in the Americas. While the role of African slavery in the Americas has been more thoroughly studied, and is better known, than slavery in Africa, the rise of the transatlantic slave trade, and then its gradual abolition in the 19th century, had important consequences for slavery within Africa.
General Overviews
The best starting point for the study of slavery in Africa involves Stilwell 2014, a broad treatment of the subject. This builds upon the debate that occurred between Walter Rodney and J. D. Fage concerning the origins of slavery in Africa. While Rodney 1966 argues that slavery did not appear until Africa’s sustained contact and interaction with Europeans within the context of the transatlantic slave trade, Fage 1969 argues that slavery existed before this in Africa; Fage 1969 is the accepted interpretation. One point that most studies make clear is that slavery in Africa differed greatly from slavery in the Americas and because of this it is hard to create a general definition of African slavery. An attempt to do so is seen within Miers and Kopytoff 1977, in Watson 1980, and in Meillassoux 1991, which challenges the accepted interpretation of Miers and Kopytoff. One common trend involves exploring the relationship between slavery in Africa and African slavery in the Americas. Scholars are especially interested in understanding the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade upon Africa, and one area of inquiry involves how external slavery affected internal slavery. Beyond this has been the attempt to understand the negative (see Manning 1990), and other consequences (see Lovejoy 2000), of the external slave trade on Africa. Law, et al. 2013 examines the relationship between abolition and the expansion of slavery within West Africa. Quirk and Vigneswaran 2013 focuses upon modern forms of slavery within Africa while making connections to earlier forms of slavery. The collection of essays in Rossi 2009 explores the legacy of slavery and the slave trade within West Africa while those in Lane and MacDonald 2011 provide insight into the archaeology and remembrance of indigenous slavery. Greene 2017 utilizes three biographies to explore the place of slavery within West Africa, while the edited collection Greene, et al. 2017 explores the diversity of master-slave relations along with the legacy of slavery within Africa.
Fage, J. D. “Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History.” Journal of African History 10.3 (1969): 393–404.
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700036343
A response to Rodney 1966 that argued that slavery was not introduced by Europeans to Africa—rather it already existed. States that the Atlantic slave trade provided those who controlled slaves with a new option while expanding an already existing system.
Greene, Sandra E. Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1zxz17q
Utilizes three biographies to explore the place of slavery within West Africa. Demonstrates how a variety of factors influenced individuals’ reactions to the end of the Atlantic slave trade and the place of slavery within West Africa.
Greene, Sandra E., Alice Bellagmaba, and Martin Klein, eds. African Slaves, African Masters: Politics, Memories, Social Life. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 2017.
A series of essay that explore the relationships between masters and slaves in Africa and how African slavery changed over time. Many essays address the legacy of slavery in Africa.
Lane, Paul, and Kevin C. MacDonald. Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.5871/bacad/9780197264782.001.0001
A collection of essays that explore the latest archaeological investigations into slavery within a broad framework of African history and relates these sites to the public remembrance of slavery in Africa. Has a focus upon the Sudan, West Africa during the period of Atlantic slavery, and East Africa.
Law, Robin, Suzanne Schwartz, and Silke Strickrodt, eds. Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade & Slavery in Atlantic Africa. Woodbridge, UK: James Currey, 2013.
An edited collection of essays that explores the relationship between the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the development of large-scale agriculture within West Africa that often relied upon slave labor.
Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
A quantitatively revised edition of an important work that argues that the transatlantic slave trade transformed West Africa by reinforcing and expanding hierarchies while increasing militarism. Argues that while differences existed between African slavery and Atlantic slavery, the rise of the transatlantic slave trade increased slavery within Africa.
Manning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
An examination of the negative consequences of the slave trade upon West African societies. Some sections are broad while others utilize models to measure issues such as the trade’s impact on Africa and the relationship between price and supply. Explores African slavery and how the external trade affected internal slavery.
Meillassoux, Claude. The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold. Translated by Alide Dasnois. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Argues against Miers and Kopytoff’s interpretation of slavery in Africa (Miers and Kopytoff 1977). Develops an interpretation of the evolution of slavery in Africa that stresses violence and argues that slavery developed in a similar manner throughout much of Africa.
Miers, Suzanne, and Igor Kopytoff. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.
An edited collection that broadly explores the topic while stressing the difference between American and African slavery. Includes a long, and influential, introduction by the editors that argues that African slavery was a complex continuum in which slaves served a variety of roles and that slavery incorporated outsiders into a society.
Quirk, Joel, and Darshan Vigneswaran, eds. Slavery, Migration, and Contemporary Bondage in Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2013.
These essays focus upon the slavery that exists in Africa after the ending of Atlantic slavery. It not only provides insight into the long-term existence of slavery within Africa but also pays particular attention to more modern forms of slavery that the collection argues exist because of poverty and migration.
Rodney, Walter. “African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave-Trade.” Journal of African History 7.3 (1966): 431–443.
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700006514
Argues against the idea that slavery was an ancient institution in Africa and instead contends that slavery in Africa was a result of the Atlantic slave trade and European involvement along the West African coastline.
Rossi, Benedetta. Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2009.
By stressing that slavery in West Africa has not been abolished, this collection of essays seeks to provide a new understanding of the institution. Many deal with slavery, along with its legacy and status, in a contemporary context.
Stilwell, Sean. Slavery and Slaving in African History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
A broad survey of slavery and slaving in Africa’s broad history. Connects these institutions to their internal and external causes along with a review of the major debates.
Watson, James L., ed. Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.
A collection of eleven essays that comparatively examine the diversities of slavery in two regions. The editor’s introduction endeavors to create a definition of slavery that works across boundaries.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos South Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets