African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade

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.

“'By combining so many studies that give voice to enslaved Africans into a single forum, Bellagamba, Greene, and Klein have transformed the study of slavery in a way that will require a revolutionary reassessment of what we think about slavery and how we study enslavement and resistance … a tour de force of global significance for historians, students, and all people concerned with social justice.' Paul E. Lovejoy, Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History, York University”

Alice Bellagamba is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Milan, Bicocca. She is the author of Ethnographie, histoire et colonialism en Gambie (2002), L'Africa e la stregoneria: Saggio di antropologia storica (2008) and co-editor of Beside the State: Emergent Powers in Contemporary Africa (with Georg Klute, 2008). She has extensive fieldwork experience in the Senegambia and since 2000 she has directed MEBAO, a network of Italian and African scholars working on historical memory and heritage in West Africa. In 2004–5, she was Alexander Humboldt Fellow at the University of Bayreuth and in 2011–12 a EURIAS Senior Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Berlin. Sandra E. Greene is a Professor of African History at Cornell University, New York. She has served as President and Vice-President of the African Studies Association. Greene has written three books: West African Narratives of Slavery: Texts from Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ghana (2011); Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (2002), which was a finalist for the 2003 Herskovits Award; and Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe (1996), which earned an Honorable Mention from the 1997 Herskovits Award Committee. Martin A. Klein is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Klein has taught African history for 34 years. He has served as President of both the African Studies Association (ASA) and the Canadian Association of African Studies. He has written or edited several books, including Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition (2002); Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa (Cambridge, 1998), edited with Suzanne Miers; Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (1993); and Women and Slavery in Africa (1983), edited with Claire C. Robertson. His book Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa earned an Honorable Mention from the Herskovits Award Committee. In 2001, Klein was awarded the ASA's Distinguished Africanist Award. He also edits Cambridge University Press's New Perspectives in African History series.

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