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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Power Relations and Social Interactions among Ibadan Slaves, 1850-1900 |
Author: | Falola, Toyin |
Year: | 1987 |
Periodical: | African Economic History |
Volume: | 16 |
Pages: | 95-114 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | Yoruba slavery History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3601271 |
Abstract: | By relying on oral evidence and pieces of information from lineage history, this article examines certain aspects of the interaction among slaves in Ibadan, Yorubaland, Nigeria. Interviews were conducted with over a hundred informants who provided information on domestic slavery from the mid-1870s to the 1930s. The article identifies the joint efforts by slaves to secure integration into the households of their masters, to obtain their freedom, or to escape. It also examines how the privileged among the slaves interacted with other slaves, not as members of the same class but as masters in their own right. It argues that it is not true, as some have suggested, that slaves were content with their status to the extent that most regarded their masters as mentors and friends. Slaves were aware of being exploited and united to ameliorate their conditions and, if possible, to escape, even if a class consciousness did not fully develop. Notes, ref. |