The Problem of “African Slavery” in the Age of Abolition

Benedetta Rossi (University College London) will give a talk titled The Problem of “African Slavery” in the Age of Abolition.

Abstract

There is an extensive literature on Euro-American abolitionism, its causes and consequences, its merits and shortcomings. In contrast, little has been written about African abolitionism. The “slow death of slavery” in Africa is seen primarily as structured by the legal stages of European abolitionism. But what do we find when we write a history of African antislavery that prioritizes African ideas, voices, and political struggles? How did Africans relate to European and American abolitionism? Who were the key African abolitionists, and what were their networks and strategies? How do their approaches compare to those of Euro-American abolitionism? This lecture will contextualize various African problematizations of slavery within the framework of changing global abolitionist strategies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will consider what slavery meant to different pro- and anti-slavery actors. It will examine how the rationales that supported the slave trade and slavery were progressively refuted, where, when, why, by whom, and with what consequences in African societies.
 

Image: ‘Esclavage’ by Nigerien painter Boubacar Djibo

Benedetta Rossi is Professor of History at University College London (UCL). She is the author of From Slavery to Aid (CUP 2015) and the editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (LUP 2009, 2nd ed. 2016) and Les Mondes de l’Esclavage: Une Histoire Comparée (Seuil 2021, with Paulin Ismard and Cécile Vidal). She recently edited two special issues on the abolition of slavery in Africa’s legal histories in the Law & History Review (2024, vol. 42/1) and on African approaches to ending slavery in Esclavages & Post-esclavages (2024, vol. 10) and published “An Abolitionist Vicious Circle: Slaving, Antislavery, and Violence on the Shores of Lake Tanganyika at the Onset of Colonial Occupation” in Slavery & Abolition (2024, vol. 45/4). She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Advanced Grant African Abolitionism: The Rise and Transformations of Anti-Slavery in Africa (AFRAB).