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In "Slavery and Reform in West Africa," Trevor Getz demonstrates that it was largely on the anvil of this issue that French and British policy in West Africa was forged. With distant metropoles unable to intervene in daily affairs, local European administrators, striving to balance abolitionist pressures against the resistance of politically and economically powerful local slave owners, sought ways to satisfy the latter while placating or duping the former. By comparing the strategies of colonial administrators, slave-owners, and slaves across these two regions and throughout the nineteenth century, "Slavery and Reform in West Africa" reveals not only the causes of the astounding success of slave owners, but also the factors that could, and in some cases did, lead to slave liberations. These findings have serious implications for the wider study of slavery and emancipation and for the history of Africa generally.
About the author
An assistant professor of African history at San Francisco State University, Trevor R. Getz has published articles on slavery and emancipation in West Africa, on the state of Akyem Abuakwa, and on the Atlantic slave trade.
Summary
A series of transformations, reforms, and attempted abolitions of slavery form a core narrative of nineteenth-century coastal West Africa.
