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by Martin a. Klein (Editor), Stephen J. Rockel (Editor)
An exploration of the resilient lives and legacies of enslaved Africans in Africa
Unlike narratives focused on enslaved people in the Americas, Europe, or the Middle East, this edited collection highlights the lives of African slaves and their descendants who remained in Africa. The contributors chronicle lives spanning the continent, from Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon to Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Africa.
The collection explores various forms of slavery and diverse personal trajectories, with many stories beginning in childhood enslavement and evolving into adulthood with limited chances for education or personal advancement. Notably, the accounts include figures who managed to achieve prominent roles, such as a slave who became a general and administrator, a female slave who rose to be a village chief, and a woman who became a successful obstetrician in Muslim Africa.
The narratives underscore the resilience and agency of the enslaved individuals, many of whom created meaningful lives despite the constraints and stigma of both slavery and post-slavery. Some, like a medical missionary in Tanganyika and a slave convert who helped grow the Catholic Church in Burkina Faso, contributed significantly to their communities and religious institutions.
Accessing these stories required rigorous research due to limited documentation, social silence surrounding slavery, and stigma associated with slave ancestry. The contributors' extensive research brings together fragmented knowledge and oral histories to provide an invaluable perspective and insight into the complex identities, struggles, and achievements of African slaves and their descendants.
Contributors: Richard Anderson Dadda Astabarka Abdourahman Halirou Martin A. Klein George Michael La Rue Adam Mahamat Ricardo Marquez Garcia Stephen J. Rockel Ute Röschenthaler Mohammed Bashir Salau Moris Samen Sandra Rowoldt Shell Joseph Jules Sinang
Author Biography
Martin A. Klein is a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto. He has written or edited a dozen books, mostly on slavery and the slave trade in Francophone West Africa. He is the author of Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa and the editor of Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia and (with Claire C. Robertson) Women and Slavery in Africa. He has served as president of the African Studies Association and the Canadian Association of African Studies.
Stephen J. Rockel is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. Specializing in East Africa, he is interested in labor, slavery, urbanization, and environmental history, as well as empires and conflict. He published Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa and coedited Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire. His current projects include histories of slavery in Tanzania and caravan workers across Africa.
