Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- 45 Introduction:
- 46 Two Soninke “Slave” Descendants and Their Family Biographies
- 47 Without History? Interrogating “Slave” Memories in Ader (Niger)
- Index
47 - Without History? Interrogating “Slave” Memories in Ader (Niger)
from Part Nine - Living with the Past
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- 45 Introduction:
- 46 Two Soninke “Slave” Descendants and Their Family Biographies
- 47 Without History? Interrogating “Slave” Memories in Ader (Niger)
- Index
Summary
This chapter presents four testimonies of slave descendants, which focuses on how slaves lived their lives in the second half of the nineteenth century in the Ader region of the Republic of Niger. Memories of slavery today vary across groups and individuals. Ader's social hierarchy followed the ranked divisions of Tuareg society, at the bottom of which were liberated slaves and slaves. Slave labor maintained and transformed the productive property (herds, land) of slave owners and was used in the organization of caravan trade. Social mobility, and eventually emancipation, tended to take different forms for female and male slaves. A female slave's offspring belonged to his/her mother's master and had free status. The four testimonials have been collected from elderly descendants of slaves who lived in separate settlements characterized by homogenous slave status and attached to particular masters' families or individuals.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade , pp. 536 - 554Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013