Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (CMES Modern Middle East Series) [Hardcover]

Ahmad Alawad Sikainga (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1996 | Series: CMES Modern Middle East Series (Book 19)

In the Sudan, native Sudanese slaves served Sudanese masters until the region was conquered by the Turks, who practiced slavery on an institutional scale. When the British took over the Sudan in 1898, they officially emancipated the slaves, yet found it impossible to replace their labor in the country's economy.

This pathfinding study explores the process of emancipation and the development of wage labor in the Sudan under British colonial rule. Ahmad Sikainga focuses on the fate of ex-slaves in Khartoum and on the efforts of the colonial government to transform them into wage laborers. He probes into what colonial rule and city life meant for slaves and ex-slaves and what the city and its people meant for colonial officials.

This investigation sheds new light on the legacy of slavery and the status of former slaves and their descendants. It also reveals how the legacy of slavery underlies the current ethnic and regional conflicts in the Sudan. It will be vital reading for students of race relations and slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism, urbanization, and labor history in Africa and the Middle East.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1st edition (1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292776942
• ISBN-13: 978-0292776944
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,877,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Free" Labor Isn't So Free After All, November 15, 2002

By 

Chimonsho (Turtle Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (CMES Modern Middle East Series) (Hardcover)

This is an insightful book by perhaps the leading Sudanese historian of the Sudan. Though the subject matter will limit some readers' interest, it is a lucid and well-researched study. Through judicious use of both oral and archival sources, Sikainga demonstrates that whenever slavery is abolished, the freedmen and women have to end up somewhere. That somewhere is usually the working class, whether as tenant farmers, a rural proletariat or part of the urban labor force. Some return home, others stay near their place of enslavement, while still others go to new destinations. This work focuses on the latter group, namely those who migrated to the Sudan's expanding cities and provided the muscle spurring economic growth.

Despite the abolitionist rhetoric of imperialism, most European powers valued socioeconomic stability over prompt emanicipation, which meant that in Africa they seldom abolished the "peculiar institution." Rather, they allowed it to die out along with the slaves themselves, thus depriving many courageous and resourceful people of rights and economic opportunities. Sikainga's study is especially valuable in showing how Sudanese freedpeople struggled, with some success, to make new lives for themselves under rapidly changing circumstances. In all societies, the main force in destroying slavery was the slaves' own resistance to their condition.

A paperback edition would be quite useful in teaching courses on slavery, emancipation and labor history. It is a solid work on African transitions from slavery to wage labor. S. Miers and R. Roberts eds, "The End of Slavery in Africa" gave strong impetus to this subfield 15 years ago; P. Lovejoy and J. Hogendorn, "Slow Death for Slavery" (on Northern Nigeria) probably sets the current standard. F. Cooper, "From Slaves to Squatters" (Kenya & Zanzibar) and M. Klein, "Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa," are just as good. Many fruitful parallels also can be drawn from Latin American and Asian history; see e.g. M. Klein ed, "Breaking the Chains."