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slave trade in ghana history: A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana Akosua Adoma Perbi, 2004 Slavery has existed in nearly every society in the world at one time or another: the Romans practiced it and so did the Greeks. A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana examines slavery as it existed in Ghana until the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began. Academic research and publication on indigenous slavery in Ghana and in Africa more widely have not received attention commensurate with the importance of the phenomenon: the history of indigenous slavery, which existed long before the trans-Atlantic slave trade, has been a marginal topic in documented historical, studies on Ghana. Yet its weighty historical, and contemporary relevance inside and outside Africa is undisputed. This book begins to redress this neglect. Drawing on sources including oral data from so-called slave descendants, cultural sites and trade routes, court records and colonial government reports, it presents historical and cultural analysis which aims to enhance historical knowledge and understanding of indigenous slavery. The author further intends to provide a holistic view of the indigenous institution of slavery as a formative factor in the social, political and economic development of precolonial Ghana. |
slave trade in ghana history: Routes of Remembrance Bayo Holsey, 2008-09-15 Over the past fifteen years, visitors from the African diaspora have flocked to Cape Coast and Elmina, two towns in Ghana whose chief tourist attractions are the castles and dungeons where slaves were imprisoned before embarking for the New World. This desire to commemorate the Middle Passage contrasts sharply with the silence that normally cloaks the subject within Ghana. Why do Ghanaians suppress the history of enslavement? And why is this history expressed so differently on the other side of the Atlantic? Routes of Remembrance tackles these questions by analyzing the slave trade’s absence from public versions of coastal Ghanaian family and community histories, its troubled presentation in the country’s classrooms and nationalist narratives, and its elaboration by the transnational tourism industry. Bayo Holsey discovers that in the past, African involvement in the slave trade was used by Europeans to denigrate local residents, and this stigma continues to shape the way Ghanaians imagine their historical past. Today, however, due to international attention and the curiosity of young Ghanaians, the slave trade has at last entered the public sphere, transforming it from a stigmatizing history to one that holds the potential to contest global inequalities. Holsey’s study will be crucial to anyone involved in the global debate over how the slave trade endures in history and in memory. |
slave trade in ghana history: Routes of Remembrance Bayo Holsey, 2008-06 Over the past fifteen years, visitors from the African diaspora have flocked to Cape Coast and Elmina, two towns in Ghana whose chief tourist attractions are the castles and dungeons where slaves were imprisoned before embarking for the New World. This desire to commemorate the Middle Passage contrasts sharply with the silence that normally cloaks the subject within Ghana. Why do Ghanaians suppress the history of enslavement? And why is this history expressed so differently on the other side of the Atlantic? Routes of Remembrance tackles these questions by analyzing the slave trade’s absence from public versions of coastal Ghanaian family and community histories, its troubled presentation in the country’s classrooms and nationalist narratives, and its elaboration by the transnational tourism industry. Bayo Holsey discovers that in the past, African involvement in the slave trade was used by Europeans to denigrate local residents, and this stigma continues to shape the way Ghanaians imagine their historical past. Today, however, due to international attention and the curiosity of young Ghanaians, the slave trade has at last entered the public sphere, transforming it from a stigmatizing history to one that holds the potential to contest global inequalities. Holsey’s study will be crucial to anyone involved in the global debate over how the slave trade endures in history and in memory. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Rebecca Shumway, 2011 The history of Ghana attracts popular interest out of proportion to its small size and marginal importance to the global economy. Ghana is the land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 1960s; it has been a temporary home to famous African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois and Maya Angelou; and its Asante Kingdom and signature kente cloth-global symbols of African culture and pride-are well known. Ghana also attracts a continuous flow of international tourists because of two historical sites that are among the most notorious monuments of the transatlantic slave trade: Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. These looming structures are a vivid reminder of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana's coast between 1700 and 1807. Here author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807. Rebecca Shumway is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Rebecca Shumway, 2011 The first book-length history of the Fante people of southern Ghana during the Atlantic slave trade. Specifically, this volume provides a historical framework for the relationship between Ghana's coastal forts and castles and local African societies during this complex period. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Slave Trade Hugh Thomas, 2013-04-16 After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated. |
slave trade in ghana history: Lose Your Mother Saidiya Hartman, 2008-01-22 An original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery from the 16th century to the present.--Elizabeth Schmidt, The New York Times. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Door of No Return William St. Clair, 2007 Publisher description |
slave trade in ghana history: African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade Anne Bailey, 2005-01-02 It's an awful story. It's an awful story. Why do you want to bring this up now?--Chief Awusa of Atorkor For centuries, the story of the Atlantic slave trade has been filtered through the eyes and records of white Europeans. In this watershed book, historian Anne C. Bailey focuses on memories of the trade from the African perspective. African chiefs and other elders in an area of southeastern Ghana-once famously called the Old Slave Coast-share stories that reveal that Africans were traders as well as victims of the trade. Bailey argues that, like victims of trauma, many African societies now experience a fragmented view of their past that partially explains the blanket of silence and shame around the slave trade. Capturing scores of oral histories that were handed down through generations, Bailey finds that, although Africans were not equal partners with Europeans, even their partial involvement in the slave trade had devastating consequences on their history and identity. In this unprecedented and revelatory book, Bailey explores the delicate and fragmented nature of historical memory. |
slave trade in ghana history: Slave Owners of West Africa Sandra E. Greene, 2017-05-22 In this groundbreaking book, Sandra E. Greene explores the lives of three prominent West African slave owners during the age of abolition. These first-published biographies reveal personal and political accomplishments and concerns, economic interests, religious beliefs, and responses to colonial rule in an attempt to understand why the subjects reacted to the demise of slavery as they did. Greene emphasizes the notion that the decisions made by these individuals were deeply influenced by their personalities, desires to protect their economic and social status, and their insecurities and sympathies for wives, friends, and other associates. Knowing why these individuals and so many others in West Africa made the decisions they did, Greene contends, is critical to understanding how and why the institution of indigenous slavery continues to influence social relations in West Africa to this day. |
slave trade in ghana history: Abina and the Important Men Trevor R. Getz, Liz Clarke, 2016 This is an illustrated graphic history based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court. The main scenes of the story take place in the courtroom, where Abina strives to convince a series of important men--A British judge, two Euro-African attorneys, a wealthy African country gentleman, and a jury of local leaders --that her rights matter.--Publisher description. |
slave trade in ghana history: Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora Rebecca Shumway, Trevor R. Getz, 2018-12-27 Ghana-for all its notable strides toward more egalitarian political and social systems in the past 60 years-remains a nation plagued with inequalities stemming from its long history of slavery and slave trading. The work assembled in this collection explores the history of slavery in Ghana and its legacy for both Ghana and the descendants of people sold as slaves from the “Gold Coast” in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The volume is structured to reflect four overlapping areas of investigation: the changing nature of slavery in Ghana, including the ways in which enslaved people have been integrated into or excluded from kinship systems, social institutions, politics, and the workforce over time; the long-standing connections forged between Ghana and the Americas and Europe through the transatlantic trading system and the forced migration of enslaved people; the development of indigenous and transnational anti-slavery ideologies; and the legacy of slavery and its ongoing reverberations in Ghanaian and diasporic society. Bringing together key scholars from Ghana, Europe and the USA who introduce new sources, frames and methodologies including heritage, gender, critical race, and culture studies, and drawing on archival documents and oral histories, Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora will be of great interest to scholars and students of comparative slavery, abolition and West African history. |
slave trade in ghana history: Slavery and its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora Rebecca Shumway, Trevor R. Getz, 2017-10-19 Ghana-for all its notable strides toward more egalitarian political and social systems in the past 60 years-remains a nation plagued with inequalities stemming from its long history of slavery and slave trading. The work assembled in this collection explores the history of slavery in Ghana and its legacy for both Ghana and the descendants of people sold as slaves from the “Gold Coast” in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. The volume is structured to reflect four overlapping areas of investigation: the changing nature of slavery in Ghana, including the ways in which enslaved people have been integrated into or excluded from kinship systems, social institutions, politics, and the workforce over time; the long-standing connections forged between Ghana and the Americas and Europe through the transatlantic trading system and the forced migration of enslaved people; the development of indigenous and transnational anti-slavery ideologies; and the legacy of slavery and its ongoing reverberations in Ghanaian and diasporic society. Bringing together key scholars from Ghana, Europe and the USA who introduce new sources, frames and methodologies including heritage, gender, critical race, and culture studies, and drawing on archival documents and oral histories, Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora will be of great interest to scholars and students of comparative slavery, abolition and West African history. |
slave trade in ghana history: Slave Empire Padraic X. Scanlan, 2020-11-26 'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking' Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian 'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history' Mihir Bose, Irish Times 'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and convincing prose.' The Economist The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was 'free' and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery. Slave Empire puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, Padraic Scanlon shows how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together. |
slave trade in ghana history: Sources for the Mutual History of Ghana and the Netherlands Michel René Doortmont, Jinna Smit, 2007 Annotated guide to the Dutch archives on Ghana and West Africa in the Nationaal Archief offering a comprehensive overview of available sources. Part I: description of archival materials. Part II: historical overview of the Dutch in Ghana and selected themes from Ghana's history. With bibliography and index. |
slave trade in ghana history: Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade Manu Herbstein, 2018-01-05 I am a human being; I am a woman; I am a black woman; I am an African. Once I was free; then I was captured and became a slave; but inside me, here and here, I am still a free woman. During a period of four hundred years, European slave traders ferried some 12 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the Americas, teaching a slave to read and write was a criminal offense. When the last slaves gained their freedom in Brazil, barely a thousand of them were literate. Hardly any stories of the enslaved and transported Africans have survived. This novel is an attempt to recreate just one of those stories, one story of a possible 12 million or more.Lawrence Hill created another in The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows my Name in the U.S.) and, more recently, Yaa Gyasi has done the same in Homegoing. Ama occupies center stage throughout this novel. As the story opens, she is sixteen. Distant drums announce the death of her grandfather. Her family departs to attend the funeral, leaving her alone to tend her ailing baby brother. It is 1775. Asante has conquered its northern neighbor and exacted an annual tribute of 500 slaves. The ruler of Dagbon dispatches a raiding party into the lands of the neighboring Bekpokpam. They capture Ama. That night, her lover, Itsho, leads an attack on the raiders’ camp. The rescue bid fails. Sent to collect water from a stream, Ama comes across Itsho’s mangled corpse. For the rest of her life she will call upon his spirit in time of need. In Kumase, the Asante capital, Ama is given as a gift to the Queen-mother. When the adolescent monarch, Osei Kwame, conceives a passion for her, the regents dispatch her to the coast for sale to the Dutch at Elmina Castle. There the governor, Pieter de Bruyn, selects her as his concubine, dressing her in the elegant clothes of his late Dutch wife and instructing the obese chaplain to teach her to read and write English. De Bruyn plans to marry Ama and take her with him to Europe. He makes a last trip to the Dutch coastal outstations and returns infected with yellow fever. On his death, his successor rapes Ama and sends her back to the female dungeon. Traumatized, her mind goes blank. She comes to her senses in the canoe which takes her and other women out to the slave ship, The Love of Liberty. Before the ship leaves the coast of Africa, Ama instigates a slave rebellion. It fails and a brutal whipping leaves her blind in one eye. The ship is becalmed in mid-Atlantic. Then a fierce storm cripples it and drives it into the port of Salvador, capital of Brazil. Ama finds herself working in the fields and the mill on a sugar estate. She is absorbed into slave society and begins to adapt, learning Portuguese. Years pass. Ama is now totally blind. Clutching the cloth which is her only material link with Africa, she reminisces, dozes, falls asleep. A short epilogue brings the story up to date. The consequences of the slave trade and slavery are still with us. Brazilians of African descent remain entrenched in the lower reaches of society, enmeshed in poverty. “This is story telling on a grand scale,” writes Tony Simões da Silva. “In Ama, Herbstein creates a work of literature that celebrates the resilience of human beings while denouncing the inscrutable nature of their cruelty. By focusing on the brutalization of Ama's body, and on the psychological scars of her experiences, Herbstein dramatizes the collective trauma of slavery through the story of a single African woman. Ama echoes the views of writers, historians and philosophers of the African diaspora who have argued that the phenomenon of slavery is inextricable from the deepest foundations of contemporary western civilization.” Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book. |
slave trade in ghana history: West African Narratives of Slavery Sandra E. Greene, 2011-02-16 Slavery in Africa existed for hundreds of years before it was abolished in the late 19th century. Yet, we know little about how enslaved individuals, especially those who never left Africa, talked about their experiences. Collecting never before published or translated narratives of Africans from southeastern Ghana, Sandra E. Greene explores how these writings reveal the thoughts, emotions, and memories of those who experienced slavery and the slave trade. Greene considers how local norms and the circumstances behind the recording of the narratives influenced their content and impact. This unprecedented study affords unique insights into how ordinary West Africans understood and talked about their lives during a time of change and upheaval. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Freedom of Speech Miles Ogborn, 2019-10-14 The institution of slavery has always depended on enforcing the boundaries between slaveholders and the enslaved. As historical geographer Miles Ogborn reveals in The Freedom of Speech, across the Anglo-Caribbean world the fundamental distinction between freedom and bondage relied upon the violent policing of the spoken word. Offering a compelling new lens on transatlantic slavery, this book gathers rich historical data from Barbados, Jamaica, and Britain to delve into the complex relationships between voice, slavery, and empire. From the most quotidian encounters to formal rules of what counted as evidence in court, the battleground of slavery lay in who could speak and under what conditions. But, as Ogborn shows through keen attention to both the traces of talk and the silences in the archives, if enslavement as a legal status could be made by words, it could be unmade by them as well. A deft interrogation of the duality of domination, The Freedom of Speech offers a rich interpretation of oral cultures that both supported and constantly threatened to undermine the slave system. |
slave trade in ghana history: Where the Negroes Are Masters Randy J. Sparks, 2014-01-13 Annamaboe--largest slave trading port on the Gold Coast--was home to wily African merchants whose partnerships with Europeans made the town an integral part of Atlantic webs of exchange. Randy Sparks recreates the outpost's feverish bustle and brutality, tracing the entrepreneurs, black and white, who thrived on a lucrative traffic in human beings. |
slave trade in ghana history: Decolonizing Heritage Ferdinand De Jong, 2022-03-17 Senegal's cultural heritage sites are in many cases remnants of the French empire. This book examines how an independent nation decolonises its colonial heritage, and how slave barracks, colonial museums, and monuments to empire are re-interpreted to imagine a postcolonial future. |
slave trade in ghana history: After Abolition Marika Sherwood, 2007-02-23 With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the Emancipation Act of 1833, Britain seemed to wash its hands of slavery. Not so, according to Marika Sherwood, who sets the record straight in this provocative new book. In fact, Sherwood demonstrates that Britain continued to contribute to the slave trade well after 1807, even into the twentieth century. Drawing on government documents and contemporary reports as well as published sources, she describes how slavery remained very much a part of British investment, commerce and empire, especially in funding and supplying goods for the trade in slaves and in the use of slave-grown produce. The nancial world of the City in London also depended on slavery, which - directly and indirectly - provided employment for millions of people. After Abolition also examines some of the causes and repercussions of continued British involvement in slavery and describes many of the apparently respectable villains, as well as the heroes, connected with the trade - at all levels of society. It contains important revelations about a darker side of British history, previously unexplored, which will provoke real questions about Britain's perceptions of its past |
slave trade in ghana history: African Kings and Black Slaves Herman L. Bennett, 2018-09-10 A thought-provoking reappraisal of the first European encounters with Africa As early as 1441, and well before other European countries encountered Africa, small Portuguese and Spanish trading vessels were plying the coast of West Africa, where they conducted business with African kingdoms that possessed significant territory and power. In the process, Iberians developed an understanding of Africa's political landscape in which they recognized specific sovereigns, plotted the extent and nature of their polities, and grouped subjects according to their ruler. In African Kings and Black Slaves, Herman L. Bennett mines the historical archives of Europe and Africa to reinterpret the first century of sustained African-European interaction. These encounters were not simple economic transactions. Rather, according to Bennett, they involved clashing understandings of diplomacy, sovereignty, and politics. Bennett unearths the ways in which Africa's kings required Iberian traders to participate in elaborate diplomatic rituals, establish treaties, and negotiate trade practices with autonomous territories. And he shows how Iberians based their interpretations of African sovereignty on medieval European political precepts grounded in Roman civil and canon law. In the eyes of Iberians, the extent to which Africa's polities conformed to these norms played a significant role in determining who was, and who was not, a sovereign people—a judgment that shaped who could legitimately be enslaved. Through an examination of early modern African-European encounters, African Kings and Black Slaves offers a reappraisal of the dominant depiction of these exchanges as being solely mediated through the slave trade and racial difference. By asking in what manner did Europeans and Africans configure sovereignty, polities, and subject status, Bennett offers a new depiction of the diasporic identities that had implications for slaves' experiences in the Americas. |
slave trade in ghana history: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 John Thornton, 1998-04-28 This book explores Africa's involvement in the Atlantic world from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century. It focuses especially on the causes and consequences of the slave trade, in Africa, in Europe, and in the New World. African institutions, political events, and economic structures shaped Africa's voluntary involvement in the Atlantic arena before 1680. Africa's economic and military strength gave African elites the capacity to determine how trade with Europe developed. Thornton examines the dynamics of colonization which made slaves so necessary to European colonizers, and he explains why African slaves were placed in roles of central significance. Estate structure and demography affected the capacity of slaves to form a self-sustaining society and behave as cultural actors, transferring and transforming African culture in the New World. |
slave trade in ghana history: African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene, Martin A. Klein, 2013-05-13 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. |
slave trade in ghana history: Labour and Living Standards in Pre-Colonial West Africa Klas Rönnbäck, 2015-11-19 Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest region in the world. But its current status has skewed our understanding of the economy before colonization. Rönnbäck reconstructs the living standards of the population at a time when the Atlantic slave trade brought money and men into the area, enriching our understanding of West African economic development. |
slave trade in ghana history: A New World of Labor Simon P. Newman, 2013-06-14 By 1650, Barbados had become the greatest wealth-producing area in the English-speaking world, the center of an exchange of people and goods between the British Isles, the Gold Coast of West Africa, and the the New World. Simon P. Newman argues that this exchange stimulated an entirely new system of bound labor. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Atlantic Slave Trade Joseph E. Inikori, Stanley L. Engerman, 1992-04-30 Debates over the economic, social, and political meaning of slavery and the slave trade have persisted for over two hundred years. The Atlantic Slave Trade brings clarity and critical insight to the subject. In fourteen essays, leading scholars consider the nature and impact of the transatlantic slave trade and assess its meaning for the people transported and for those who owned them. Among the questions these essays address are: the social cost to Africa of this forced migration; the role of slavery in the economic development of Europe and the United States; the short-term and long-term effects of the slave trade on black mortality, health, and life in the New World; and the racial and cultural consequences of the abolition of slavery. Some of these essays originally appeared in recent issues of Social Science History; the editors have added new material, along with an introduction placing each essay in the context of current debates. Based on extensive archival research and detailed historical examination, this collection constitutes an important contribution to the study of an issue of enduring significance. It is sure to become a standard reference on the Atlantic slave trade for years to come. Contributors. Ralph A. Austen, Ronald Bailey, William Darity, Jr., Seymour Drescher, Stanley L. Engerman, David Barry Gaspar, Clarence Grim, Brian Higgins, Jan S. Hogendorn, Joseph E. Inikori, Kenneth Kiple, Martin A. Klein, Paul E. Lovejoy, Patrick Manning, Joseph C. Miller, Johannes Postma, Woodruff Smith, Thomas Wilson |
slave trade in ghana history: House of Slaves and "door of No Return" Edmund Kobina Abaka, 2012 Grim and foreboding, they dominate the skyline, personifying the slave trade in all its ramifications - brutality, estrangement, alienation and social death. The slave forts of Ghana constitute an integral part of the Atlantic slave trade, and yet they have received scant scholarly attention. House of Slaves & `Door of No Return' addresses this gap in scholarly history, focusing on the dark past of these forts as well as their modern significance. |
slave trade in ghana history: In the Shadow of Slavery Judith Carney, 2011-02-01 The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early nineteenth century, African slaves came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans. In the Shadow of Slavery provides a startling new assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment. Many familiar foods—millet, sorghum, coffee, okra, watermelon, and the Asian long bean, for example—are native to Africa, while commercial products such as Coca Cola, Worcestershire Sauce, and Palmolive Soap rely on African plants that were brought to the Americas on slave ships as provisions, medicines, cordage, and bedding. In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots—botanical gardens of the dispossessed—became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies. |
slave trade in ghana history: Transformations in Slavery Paul E. Lovejoy, 2011-10-10 This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European abolition and assesses slavery's role in African history. The book corrects the accepted interpretation that African slavery was mild and resulted in the slaves' assimilation. Instead, slaves were used extensively in production, although the exploitation methods and the relationships to world markets differed from those in the Americas. Nevertheless, slavery in Africa, like slavery in the Americas, developed from its position on the periphery of capitalist Europe. This new edition revises all statistical material on the slave trade demography and incorporates recent research and an updated bibliography. |
slave trade in ghana history: Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana Kwame Essien, 2016-10-01 Brazilian-African Diaspora in Ghana is a fresh approach, challenging both pre-existing and established notions of the African Diaspora by engaging new regions, conceptualizations, and articulations that move the field forward. This book examines the untold story of freed slaves from Brazil who thrived socially, culturally, and economically despite the challenges they encountered after they settled in Ghana. Kwame Essien goes beyond the one-dimensional approach that only focuses on British abolitionists’ funding of freed slaves’ resettlements in Africa. The new interpretation of reverse migrations examines the paradox of freedom in discussing how emancipated Brazilian-Africans came under threat from British colonial officials who introduced stringent land ordinances that deprived the freed Brazilian- Africans from owning land, particularly “Brazilian land.” Essien considers anew contention between the returnees and other entities that were simultaneously vying for control over social, political, commercial, and religious spaces in Accra and tackles the fluidity of memory and how it continues to shape Ghana’s history. The ongoing search for lost connections with the support of the Brazilian government—inspiring multiple generations of Tabom (offspring of the returnees) to travel across the Atlantic and back, especially in the last decade—illustrates the unending nature of the transatlantic diaspora journey and its impacts. |
slave trade in ghana history: Tongnaab Jean Allman, John Parker, 2005-11-18 For many Africanist historians, traditional religion is simply a starting point for measuring the historic impact of Christianity and Islam. In Tongnaab, Jean Allman and John Parker challenge the distinction between tradition and modernity by tracing the movement and mutation of the powerful Talensi god and ancestor shrine, Tongnaab, from the savanna of northern Ghana through the forests and coastal plains of the south. Using a wide range of written, oral, and iconographic sources, Allman and Parker uncover the historical dynamics of cross-cultural religious belief and practice. They reveal how Tongnaab has been intertwined with many themes and events in West African history -- the slave trade, colonial conquest and rule, capitalist agriculture and mining, labor migration, shifting ethnicities, the production of ethnographic knowledge, and the political projects that brought about the modern nation state. This rich and original book shows that indigenous religion has been at the center of dramatic social and economic changes stretching from the slave trade to the tourist trade. |
slave trade in ghana history: Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization Guillermo Algaze, 2009-05-15 The alluvial lowlands of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia are widely known as the “cradle of civilization,” owing to the scale of the processes of urbanization that took place in the area by the second half of the fourth millennium BCE. In Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization, Guillermo Algaze draws on the work of modern economic geographers to explore how the unique river-based ecology and geography of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvium affected the development of urban civilization in southern Mesopotamia. He argues that these natural conditions granted southern polities significant competitive advantages over their landlocked rivals elsewhere in Southwest Asia, most importantly the ability to easily transport commodities. In due course, this resulted in increased trade and economic activity and higher population densities in the south than were possible elsewhere. As southern polities grew in scale and complexity throughout the fourth millennium, revolutionary new forms of labor organization and record keeping were created, and it is these socially created innovations, Algaze argues, that ultimately account for why fully developed city-states emerged earlier in southern Mesopotamia than elsewhere in Southwest Asia or the world. |
slave trade in ghana history: The History of Ghana Roger S. Gocking, 2005-06-30 Gocking provides a historical overview of Ghana from the emergence of precolonial states through increasing contact with Europeans that led to the establishment of formal colonial rule by Great Britian at the end of the 19th century. Colonial rule transformed what was known as the Gold Coast economically, socially, and politically, but it contained the seeds of its own demise. After World War II an increasingly more effective nationalist movement challenged British rule, and in 1957 Ghana became independent. Independence brought its own challenges the most important of which was the inability to maintain political stability. Within the space of 24 years there were four military coups and the collapse of three republics. Ghana's Fourth Republic, established in 1993, has dealt with the legacy of instability inherited from the past as it moves towards a more stable future. A timeline, photographs, maps, and an appendix of biographies of notable figures in the history of Ghana are included. Students and adults alike will find this book to be highly effective in describing the often turbulent and tumultuous history of this country. |
slave trade in ghana history: Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves George C. Galster, 2019-03-13 Drawing on economics, sociology, geography, and psychology, Galster delivers a clear-sighted explanation of what neighborhoods are, how they come to be—and what they should be. Urban theorists have tried for decades to define exactly what a neighborhood is. But behind that daunting existential question lies a much murkier problem: never mind how you define them—how do you make neighborhoods productive and fair for their residents? In Making Our Neighborhoods, Making Our Selves, George C. Galster delves deep into the question of whether American neighborhoods are as efficient and equitable as they could be—socially, financially, and emotionally—and, if not, what we can do to change that. Galster aims to redefine the relationship between places and people, promoting specific policies that reduce inequalities in housing markets and beyond. |
slave trade in ghana history: The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420-AD 1804 David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman, Keith R. Bradley, Paul Cartledge, Seymour Drescher, 2011-07-25 The various manifestations of coerced labour between the opening up of the Atlantic world and the formal creation of Haiti. |
slave trade in ghana history: A Short History of Slavery James Walvin, 2007-03-01 As we approach the bicentenary of the abolition of the Atlantic trade, Walvin has selected the historical texts that recreate the mindset that made such a savage institution possible - morally acceptable even. Setting these historical documents against Walvin's own incisive historical narrative, the two layers of this extraordinary, definitive account of the Atlantic slave trade enable us to understand the rise and fall of one of the most shameful chapters in British history, the repercussions of which the modern world is still living with. |
slave trade in ghana history: In the Watches of the Night Peter C. Baldwin, 2012-02 Before skyscrapers and streetlights, American cities fell into inky blackness with each setting of the sun. But over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, new technologies began to light up the city. This text depicts the changing experiences of the urban night over this period, visiting a host of actors in the nocturnal city. |
slave trade in ghana history: Slavery and African Life Patrick Manning, 1990-09-28 This book summarizes a wide range of recent literature on slavery for all of tropical Africa. |
slave trade in ghana history: Women and Slavery in Africa Claire C. Robertson, Martin A. Klein, 1997 Most slaves in sub-Saharan African were women. With that introductory and revolutionary sentence Robertson and Klein redefined much of the social and economic history of Africa. |
The Transatlantic Slave Trade in Ghanaian Academic ... - JSTOR
reluctant to confront subjects such as the slave trade, which are likely to raise questions about internal slavery. Non-African Africanists, less bur-dened by these considerations, began to …
Slave Trade In Ghana History Full PDF - netsec.csuci.edu
Slave Trade In Ghana History Slave trade in Ghana's history: This article explores the devastating impact of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana, examining its pre-colonial roots, its role in …
Impact of the Slave Trade Through a Ghanaian Lens - OER Project
Impact of the Slave Trade Through a Ghanaian Lens The Atlantic slave trade removed 12.5 million people from Africa and probably resulted in the death of millions more. This violence …
Ghana Senior High School History Syllabus The Trans-Atlantic …
slave trade began with the arrival of the Portuguese on the coast from 1470 onwards and later followed by the French, the English, the Dutch and the Danes. It is important to note that the
A Survey of Sites and Relics on the Slave Trade in Ghana: A …
Oral histories had a questionnaire answered by the leading scholar in the field of Ghanaian archaeology, Professor James Anquandah, have proven to be enormously insightful. …
Perbi, Akosua Adorna. 2004. A HISTORY OF INDIGENOUS …
Any reader eager to learn about the history of slavery in Ghana will find much about the organization of the slave trade, its markets, slave labor, and social positions, as well as the …
Transactionsof the Historical Society of Ghana, Vol. X
consciously contemplated the Atlantic slave trade as an alternative source of strength when Akim gold was no longer readily forthcoming, since captives were sold to Europeans for firearms to …
Ghana Slave Trade History
1. What role did Ghana play in the transatlantic slave trade? Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, served as a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade, with coastal castles like Elmina …
Ghana transatlantic slave trade resources in Danish-Osu, Awusai …
Ghana served as an important supply point for the TAST, with 63 slave markets (about 30 of these being located along the coast), during the period (Perbi, 2004). Towards the middle of …
Slavery and Slave Trade in West Africa, 1450-1930
In 1450, a West African population of perhaps 20 to 25 persons million lived in relative stability. This population, while divided into numerous ethnic, linguistic, and political communities, was …
Africa Before the Slave Trade - blackhistory4schools.com
Ghana was said to have a very developed government, large armies and almost total control of well hidden gold mines. Although they never fully adopted Islam as their religion, they had …
The Fante Shrine of Nananom Mpow and the Atlantic Slave Trade
slave trade era as one community united in their fate. Nananom Mpow was therefore one of the most significant elements of historical change in southern Ghana in the eighteenth century and …
Rethinking the "Slaves of Salaga": Post-Proclamation Slavery in …
12 Feb 2019 · studies has revealed that slaves obtained from the Salaga trading axis formed the bulk of slaves in the precolonial Gold Coast.* What this study seeks to do, and which has not …
HUP_Africa_slave_trade10.dvi - Scholars at Harvard
Africa’s history is intimately connected with slavery. The continent has experience four large slave trades, all of which date back at least to the mid-fifteenth century. The oldest of the slave …
How Did The Atlantic Slave Trade Economically Impact Ghana
Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana's coast between 1700 and 1807. Here author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of …
Slavery and Akan Origins? - JSTOR
Ghanaian history and prehistory who have uncritically repeated Wilks's argument that foreign slaves generated a food-producing revolution and a population explosion in the fifteenth …
A Political and Economic History of Ghana, 1957–2003 - Springer
The castles and forts served variously as slave posts, trading posts, army garrisons, colonial residences and territorial markers. By the 1850s, only the Dutch and British were left. When …
Ghana Slave Trade History
1. What role did Ghana play in the transatlantic slave trade? Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, served as a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade, with coastal castles like Elmina …
THE SLAVE TRADE AND AFRICAN SOCIETIES - JSTOR
Recent slave trade studies have produced conclusions which may be summarized in five propositions: 1. The so-called tremendous population loss to Africa as a result of the slave …
History in the Dungeon: Atlantic Slavery and the Spirit of …
THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE DUNGEON of Cape Coast Castle who greets visitors to what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site commemorating four centuries of Atlantic slavery and the …
The Transatlantic Slave Trade in Ghanaian Academic ... - JSTOR
reluctant to confront subjects such as the slave trade, which are likely to raise questions about internal slavery. Non-African Africanists, less bur-dened by these considerations, began to …
Slave Trade In Ghana History Full PDF - netsec.csuci.edu
Slave Trade In Ghana History Slave trade in Ghana's history: This article explores the devastating impact of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana, examining its pre-colonial roots, its role in …
Impact of the Slave Trade Through a Ghanaian Lens - OER Project
Impact of the Slave Trade Through a Ghanaian Lens The Atlantic slave trade removed 12.5 million people from Africa and probably resulted in the death of millions more. This violence …
Ghana Senior High School History Syllabus The Trans-Atlantic Slave ...
slave trade began with the arrival of the Portuguese on the coast from 1470 onwards and later followed by the French, the English, the Dutch and the Danes. It is important to note that the
A Survey of Sites and Relics on the Slave Trade in Ghana: A History ...
Oral histories had a questionnaire answered by the leading scholar in the field of Ghanaian archaeology, Professor James Anquandah, have proven to be enormously insightful. …
Perbi, Akosua Adorna. 2004. A HISTORY OF INDIGENOUS …
Any reader eager to learn about the history of slavery in Ghana will find much about the organization of the slave trade, its markets, slave labor, and social positions, as well as the …
Transactionsof the Historical Society of Ghana, Vol. X
consciously contemplated the Atlantic slave trade as an alternative source of strength when Akim gold was no longer readily forthcoming, since captives were sold to Europeans for firearms to …
Ghana Slave Trade History
1. What role did Ghana play in the transatlantic slave trade? Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, served as a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade, with coastal castles like Elmina …
Ghana transatlantic slave trade resources in Danish-Osu, Awusai …
Ghana served as an important supply point for the TAST, with 63 slave markets (about 30 of these being located along the coast), during the period (Perbi, 2004). Towards the middle of …
Slavery and Slave Trade in West Africa, 1450-1930
In 1450, a West African population of perhaps 20 to 25 persons million lived in relative stability. This population, while divided into numerous ethnic, linguistic, and political communities, was …
Africa Before the Slave Trade - blackhistory4schools.com
Ghana was said to have a very developed government, large armies and almost total control of well hidden gold mines. Although they never fully adopted Islam as their religion, they had …
The Fante Shrine of Nananom Mpow and the Atlantic Slave Trade
slave trade era as one community united in their fate. Nananom Mpow was therefore one of the most significant elements of historical change in southern Ghana in the eighteenth century and …
Rethinking the "Slaves of Salaga": Post-Proclamation Slavery in the ...
12 Feb 2019 · studies has revealed that slaves obtained from the Salaga trading axis formed the bulk of slaves in the precolonial Gold Coast.* What this study seeks to do, and which has not …
HUP_Africa_slave_trade10.dvi - Scholars at Harvard
Africa’s history is intimately connected with slavery. The continent has experience four large slave trades, all of which date back at least to the mid-fifteenth century. The oldest of the slave …
How Did The Atlantic Slave Trade Economically Impact Ghana
Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana's coast between 1700 and 1807. Here author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of …
Slavery and Akan Origins? - JSTOR
Ghanaian history and prehistory who have uncritically repeated Wilks's argument that foreign slaves generated a food-producing revolution and a population explosion in the fifteenth …
A Political and Economic History of Ghana, 1957–2003 - Springer
The castles and forts served variously as slave posts, trading posts, army garrisons, colonial residences and territorial markers. By the 1850s, only the Dutch and British were left. When the …
Ghana Slave Trade History
1. What role did Ghana play in the transatlantic slave trade? Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast, served as a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade, with coastal castles like Elmina …
THE SLAVE TRADE AND AFRICAN SOCIETIES - JSTOR
Recent slave trade studies have produced conclusions which may be summarized in five propositions: 1. The so-called tremendous population loss to Africa as a result of the slave …
History in the Dungeon: Atlantic Slavery and the Spirit of …
THERE IS A SPIRIT IN THE DUNGEON of Cape Coast Castle who greets visitors to what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site commemorating four centuries of Atlantic slavery and the …