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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Slavery, Indentured Servitude, Legitimate Trade and the Impact of Abolition in the Gold Coast, 1874-1901: A Reappraisal |
| Author: | McSheffrey, Gerald M. |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 24 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 349-368 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | slavery abolition of slavery History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Economics and Trade Labor and Employment |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/181899 |
| Abstract: | Much of the recent literature on slavery in Africa, of which the collection edited by Miers and Kopy-toff is typical, has tended to reinforce conventional wisdom on the subject characteristic of earlier anthropological accounts. According to this functionalist perspective, slavery in Africa, unlike the plantation slavery of the New World, was essentially social in origin, domestic in character, and economically marginal to the societies in which it was found. Increasingly, however, this idealized and often ahistorical view of slavery in Africa has been challenged by historians and historically orientated anthropologists who have questioned many of the assumptions on which it rests. The two most significant features of the best of these works are that they approach the study of slavery in Africa from a comparative perspective, and they are acutely aware of the importance of the impact of economic change on the institution over time. This study of slavery and abolition in the late nineteenth century Gold Coast adopts a similar approach and thus gives further support to an emerging revisionist view of the nature and role of slavery in pre-colonial African societies. Notes, sum. |
