Richard L. Roberts

Benjamin N. Lawrance

Emily Lynn Osborn

African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa

Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks

Suzanne Miers

This is the first comprehensive assessment of the end of slavery in Africa. Editors Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, with the distinguished contributors to the volume, establish an agenda for the social history of the early colonial period—hen the end of slavery was one of the most significant historical and cultural processes. The End of Slavery in Africa is a sequel to Slavery in Africa, edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1977. The contributors explore the historical experiences of slaves, masters, and colonials as they all confronted the end of slavery in fifteen sub-Saharan African societies. The essays demonstrate that it is impossible to generalize about whether the end of slavery was a relatively mild and nondisruptive process or whether it marked a significant change in the social and economic organization of a given society. There was no common pattern and no uniform consequence of the end of slavery. The results of this wide-ranging inquiry will be of lasting value to Africanists and a variety of social and economic historians.

The End of Slavery in Africa

Segu Bambara and Segu Tokolor

Production and Reproduction in Warrior States

Using the life of an African clerk who became a king under French colonial rule, this book illuminates conflicts over colonial policies and the application of competing rules of law.

The Rule of Law, French Soudan, and Faama Mademba Sèye

Conflicts of Colonialism

A major new approach to the study of the social and economic history of colonial French West Africa, this book traces French efforts to establish a cotton export economy in the French Soudan from the early nineteenth century through the end of World War II. By showing how a regionally based local economy successfully withstood the pressure from European capitalist markets and colonial aspirations, the book sheds new light on various generally accepted assumptions about the character of colonial economies and their integration into global export markets. It thus challenges the notion that colonial political, military, and elite intellectual hegemony translated directly or easily into regional economic hegemony. In making this argument, the book points to inherent weaknesses in the usual view of the colonial state, notably the failure to recognize sufficiently the enduring power of local processes - or local currents of culture and practice - to withstand empire and ultimately shape the experience of colonialism.

Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800-1946

Two Worlds of Cotton

Annie Bunting

With forced marriage, as with so many human rights issues, the sensationalized hides the mundane, and oversimplified popular discourses miss the range of experiences. In sub-Saharan Africa, the relationship between coercion and consent in marriage is a complex one that has changed over time and place, rendering impossible any single interpretation or explanation. The legal experts, anthropologists, historians, and development workers contributing to Marriage by Force? focus on the role that marriage plays in the mobilization of labor, the accumulation of wealth, and domination versus dependency. They also address the crucial slippage between marriages and other forms of gendered violence, bondage, slavery, and servile status. Only by examining variations in practices from a multitude of perspectives can we properly contextualize the problem and its consequences. And while early and forced marriages have been on the human rights agenda for decades, there is today an unprecedented level of international attention to the issue, thus making the coherent, multifaceted approach of Marriage by Force? even more necessary.

Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa

Marriage by Force?

Richard L. Roberts

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