Resistance to and Flight from Slavery in West Africa

* Prof. Dr. Martin A. Klein, Professor of African History, University of Toronto

In this seminar the speaker will argue that slave resistance in West Africa took two major forms: resistance to enslavement itself and flight from slavery. He thinks that there was undoubtedly some day-to-day resistance, but that it has been exaggerated. Slave revolts were very rare. This paper written for this seminar uses the work of the Guinean historian, Thierno Mouctar Bah on military architecture and the work of two young Americans, Andrew Hubbell and Walter Hawthorne, on decentralized societies. The neat division of African societies into prey and predator is taken into account. People have defended themselves effectively, prey often became predator, and slavers were forced to move deeper into the African interior and to develop new mechanisms for the trade. Slaves often fled, and where they could flee safely, they fled massively. We see slaves fleeing to enemy states, joining jihads, fleeing to European towns or to the bases of egalitarian Muslim reformers like the Hubbu of Guinea. The most massive flight was the Great Exodus at the beginning of the colonial period. The speaker will end with some thoughts about priorities for research. Subsequently the floor will be open for discussion.

The African Study Centre and the faculty of Cultural Anthropology of the University of Leiden have jointly organized this seminar.