A Comparative Study of Societal Influences on Indigenous Slavery in Two Types of Societies in Africa

A Comparative Study of Societal Influences on Indigenous Slavery in Two Types of Societies in Africa
Author: E. S. D. Fomin
Publisher:
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN:

This work contributes to the study of slavery in Africa by emphasizing the roles Africans played both as slaves and slavers. It uses comparative and eclectic approaches to demonstrate that in the different types of indigenous states in Africa, slavery was never a common phenomenon. In Centralized states it emanated from indigenous servitude and formed an integral component of the elaborate kinship system. In the non-Centralized states it was introduced by the trans-system and it fulfilled an economic function.

Hadija's Story

Hadija's Story
Author: Harmony O'Rourke
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2017-02-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253023890

In 1952, a woman named Hadija was brought to trial in an Islamic courtroom in the Cameroon Grassfields on a charge of bigamy. Quickly, however, the court proceedings turned to the question of whether she had been the wife or the slave-concubine of her deceased husband. In tandem with other court cases of the day, Harmony O'Rourke illuminates a set of contestations in which marriage, slavery, morality, memory, inheritance, status, and identity were at stake for Muslim Hausa migrants, especially women. As she tells Hadija's story, O'Rourke disrupts dominant patriarchal and colonial narratives that have emphasized male activities and projects to assert cultural distinctiveness, and she brings forward a new set of women's issues involving concerns for personal prosperity, the continuation of generations, and Islamic religious expectations in communities separated by long distances.

Outcasts of the Gods?

Outcasts of the Gods?
Author: Hazel Petrie
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2015-09-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 177558786X

‘Us Maoris used to practice slavery just like them poor Negroes had to endure in America . . .' says Beth Heke in Once Were Warriors. ‘Oh those evil colonials who destroyed Maori culture by ending slavery and cannibalism while increasing the life expectancy,' wrote one sarcastic blogger. So was Maori slavery ‘just like' the experience of Africans in the Americas and were British missionaries or colonial administrators responsible for ending the practice? What was the nature of freedom and unfreedom in Maori society and how did that intersect with the perceptions of British colonists and the anti-slavery movement? A meticulously researched book, Outcasts of the Gods? looks closely at a huge variety of evidence to answer these questions, analyzing bondage and freedom in traditional Maori society; the role of economics and mana in shaping captivity; and how the arrival of colonists and new trade opportunities transformed Maori society and the place of captives within it.

Saharan Crossroads

Saharan Crossroads
Author: Tara F. Deubel
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2014-06-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443862894

Saharan Crossroads: Exploring Historical, Cultural, and Artistic Linkages between North and West Africa counteracts the traditional scholarly conception of the Sahara Desert as an impenetrable barrier dividing the continent by employing an interdisciplinary lens to examine myriad interconnections between North and West Africa through travel, trade, communication, cultural exchange, and correspondence that have been ongoing for several millennia. Saharan Crossroads offers a unique contribution to existing scholarship on the region by uniting a diverse group of African, European, and American scholars working on various facets of trans-Saharan history, social life, and cultural production, and bringing their work together for the first time. This trilingual volume includes eleven chapters written in English, five chapters in French, and three chapters in Arabic, reflecting the multicultural nature of the Sahara and this international project. Saharan Crossroads explores historical and contemporary connections and exchanges between populations living in and on both sides of the Sahara that have led to the emergence of distinctive cultural and aesthetic expressions. This contact has been fostered by a series of linkages that include the trans-Saharan caravan trade, the spread of Islam, the migration of nomadic pastoralists, and European colonization. The book includes three major sections: (1) history, culture, and identity; (2) trans-Saharan circulation of arts, music, ritual performance, and architecture; and (3) religion, law, language, and writing. While the gaze of international political analysts has turned toward the Sahara to follow problematic developments that pose serious threats to human rights and security in the region, it is especially timely to recall that the people and countries of the Sahelo-Saharan world have maintained long histories of peaceful coexistence, interdependence, and cooperation that are too often overlooked in the present.

Africa in Global History

Africa in Global History
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110678012

This handbook places emphasis on modern/contemporary times, and offers relevant sophisticated and comprehensive overviews. It aims to emphasize the religious, economic, political, cultural and social connections between Africa and the rest of the world and features comparisons as well as an interdisciplinary approach in order to examine the place of Africa in global history. "This book makes an important contribution to the discussion on the place of Africa in the world and of the world in Africa. An outstanding work of scholarship, it powerfully demonstrates that Africa is not marginal to global concerns. Its labor and resources have made our world, and the continent deserves our respect." – Mukhtar Umar Bunza, Professor of Social History, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, and Commissioner for Higher Education, Kebbi State, Nigeria "This is a deep plunge into the critical place of Africa in global history. The handbook blends a rich set of important tapestries and analysis of the conceptual framework of African diaspora histories, imperialism and globalization. By foregrounding the authentic voices of African interpreters of transnational interactions and exchanges, the Handbook demonstrates a genuine commitment to the promotion of decolonized and indigenous knowledge on African continent and its peoples." – Samuel Oloruntoba, Visiting Research Professor, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University

Heritage and History in Africa

Heritage and History in Africa
Author: Ignatius Song Womei
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2024-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9956554073

There has been a long standing belief and misconception that ‘relevant’ history is shelved and can only be retrieved from written documentation. This conviction systematically diminished in importance with the emergence and approach of Africanist scholarship in the 1960s which increasingly exposed the pitfalls of religiously relying on paper- inscribed or engraved historical sources. This twist away from recorded history gave premium to a craving for the exploration and exploitation of material and immaterial heritage sources to understand and communicate connections between heritage and history in Africa. This compendium of interlacing themes on Cameroon threads the multiple but complex ways by which vestiges; natural and man-made, and social memory merges into confi guration of perspectives on historical representation of people, environment, and society in Africa. Designed in seven grand themes with a conceptual lead on heritage and presented in sixteen chapters, this book generally provides reliable non-documented sources that help construct the African indigenous knowledge as experienced by themselves from their heritage. This volume is highly recommended for use by scholars, students, practitioners, promoters and lovers of heritage values.

Boundaries and History in Africa

Boundaries and History in Africa
Author: Willibroad Dze-Ngwa
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 658
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 9956791016

This book compromises 26 well-researched essays in honour of Professor Verkijika G. Fanso, who retired in 2011 after over 36 years of distinguished service at universities in Cameroon. Contributors include colleagues, former students and close collaborators in Cameroon and beyond. Contributions cover a wide range of issues related to the contested histories, politics and practices of boundaries and frontiers in Africa. These are themes on which Fanso has researched, published and taught extensively, and earned international recognition as a leading scholar. The book explores, inter alia, indigenous and endogenous practices of boundary making in Africa; as well as colonial and contemporary traditions, practices and conflicts on and around frontiers. In particular focus, are disputed colonial boundaries between Cameroon and its neighbours. Issues of intra- and inter-disciplinary frontiers, politics and cultures are also addressed. The volume is crowned by a farewell valedictory lecture by Fanso. Like Fanso and his rich repertoire of publications, this bumper harvest of essays is without doubt, truly immortalising.

Afrodiasporic Forms

Afrodiasporic Forms
Author: Raquel Kennon
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2022-06-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0807177636

Afrodiasporic Forms explores the epistemological possibilities of the “Black world” paradigm and traces a literary and cultural cartography of the monde noir and its constitutive African diasporas across multiple poetic, visual, and cultural permutations. Examining the transatlantic slave trade and modern racial slavery, Raquel Kennon challenges the US-centric focus of slavery studies and draws on a transnational, eclectic archive of materials from Lusophone, Hispanophone, and Anglophone sources in the Americas to inspect evolving, multitudinous, and disparate forms of Afrodiasporic cultural expression. Spanning the 1830s to the twenty-first century, Afrodiasporic Forms traverses national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries as it investigates how cultural products of slavery’s afterlife—including poetry, prose, painting, television, sculpture, and song—shape understandings of the African diaspora. Each chapter uncovers multidirectional pathways for exploring representations of slavery, considering works such as a Brazilian telenovela based on Bernardo Guimarães’s novel A Escrava Isaura, Robert Hayden’s poem “Middle Passage,” Kara Walker’s sculpture A Subtlety, and Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo. Kennon’s expansive method of comparative reading across the diaspora uses eclectic pairings of canonical and popular textual and artistic sources to stretch beyond disciplinary and national borders, promoting expansive diasporic literacies.

African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources

African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources
Author: Alice Bellagamba
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 110732808X

Though the history of slavery is a central topic for African, Atlantic world and world history, most of the sources presenting research in this area are European in origin. To cast light on African perspectives, and on the point of view of enslaved men and women, this group of top Africanist scholars has examined both conventional historical sources (such as European travel accounts, colonial documents, court cases, and missionary records) and less-explored sources of information (such as folklore, oral traditions, songs and proverbs, life histories collected by missionaries and colonial officials, correspondence in Arabic, and consular and admiralty interviews with runaway slaves). Each source has a short introduction highlighting its significance and orienting the reader. This first of two volumes provides students and scholars with a trove of African sources for studying African slavery and the slave trade.