Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Western African Studies) [Paperback]

Sylviane A. Diouf (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0821415174 | ISBN-13: 978-0821415177 | Publication Date: October 24, 2003 | Edition: 1

While most studies of the slave trade focus on the volume of captives and on their ethnic origins, the question of how the Africans organized their familial and communal lives to resist and assail it has not received adequate attention. But our picture of the slave trade is incomplete without an examination of the ways in which men and women responded to the threat and reality of enslavement and deportation. Fighting the Slave Trade is the first book to explore in a systematic manner the strategies Africans used to protect and defend themselves and their communities from the onslaught of the Atlantic slave trade a nd how they assaulted it. It challenges widely held myths of African passivity and general complicity in the trade and shows that resistance to enslavement and to involvement in the slave trade was much more pervasive than has been acknowledged by the orthodox interpretation of historical literature. Focused on West Africa, the essays collected here examine in detail the defensive, protective, and offensive strategies of individuals, families, communities, and states. In ch apters discussing the manipulation of the environment, resettlement, the redemption of captives, the transformation of social relations, political centralization, marronage, violent assaults on ships and ports, shipboard revolts, and controlled participation in the slave trade as a way to procure the means to attack it, Fighting the Slave Trade presents a much more complete picture of the West African slave trade than has previously been available.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The author of the award-winning Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas, Sylviane A. Diouf also initiated and co-organized the conference “Fighting Back: African Strategies against the Slave Trade” held at Rutgers University. She is a researcher at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ohio University Press; 1 edition (October 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821415174
• ISBN-13: 978-0821415177
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #716,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Final Grade: C+, June 1, 2008

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The Djeli (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Western African Studies) (Paperback)

This book is in fact not written by Diouf but is a collection of over a dozen different essays that discuss how slavery affected West Africa. The book automatically wins points for simply addressing this topic, especially because most books about African enslavement are about its existence in the Western Hemisphere.

This book helps bring to light the fact that West Africans did not go quietly into slavery and revolt only upon reaching the Americas. This book focuses on ways in which some ethnic groups resisted enslavement and capture by other ethnic groups in West Africa.

That being said I was dissapointed that the book does not discuss West African resistance to Europeans. For example, the famed Senegalese King of Almammy in 1787 not only banned slavery but banned any slave being carried through his kingdom. As a result the French( with the recruitment of Arabophone Moors) destroyed his kingdom; nevertheless he is a magnificent example of West African enlightenment.

Furthermore, the book does explain the political fragmentation of the coast as a major factor for the development of the Atlantic Slave Trade, but it does not discuss the Guns for Slaves policy that Europeans enacted to ensure a supply of captives. The policy states that the only way the West African traders would get guns (which was the primary trading item for slaves and not "trinkets" as so many people think)was by giving captives, not even gold would suffice. This put the West African merchants and rulers in a predicament: if they chose not to go along with this policy yet their neighbors do, where do you think the gun holding neighbors would get their captives from? This along the fact that West Africans did not have factories to produce the guns at the rate of Europeans made it nearly impossible for the slave trade to not flourish. The fact that this book does not mention the dynamics of this is quite dissapointing.

It is surely the case that the reason the book does not address these issues is because, despite as progressive as Western society is claiming to be, responsibility for the Atlantic Slave Trade must remain primarily in the hands of Africans. Any attempt to pay homage to those Africans who opposed it or the instigation of the trade by Europeans is not scholarly work, but African "romanticism".

Black scholars dread this label, romantic, because it discredits their professionalism and academic integrity. Thus they validate their credibility as a scholar by saying "I am not afraid to take full responsibility for the slave trade." Many scholars, such as Gates and Appiah, fall victim to this.

The problem with this is that we are still not having a balance discussion, because the African villian and the conflict between Africans is the reality, and any African who has integrity and challenges Europeans cannot be a true hero, but a romantic character made to give African people dignity. I'm not saying the more fantastical African of some less credible scholars should be the picture we take, but that a balance is in order. We will never have all or even most of the stories of those valiant Africans, both commoners and royalty, who opposed the Atlantic slave trade, but we do have some, and no matter how "romantic" we are accused of being for acknowledging them, they remain some of our race's most heroic figures.