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Slavery, Absorption, and Gender: Frederick Cooper and the Power of Comparison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2019

Lisa A. Lindsay
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Abstract:

This essay considers Frederick Cooper’s early scholarship on African slavery, which called for and modeled a practice of comparative historiography. His critique of the “absorption model” of African slavery, enabled by comparison with the Americas, anticipated important recent trends in the study of Atlantic slavery. Revisiting this critique helps us to understand key features of cultural continuity and change among enslaved people and can inform future research about gender and the Atlantic slave trade. In particular, it suggests the limitations of an analysis that separates the assumed African assimilation of enslaved women from the export mostly of men.

Résumé:

Cet essai porte sur les premières études de Frederick Cooper sur l’esclavage africain, qui préconisaient et modélisaient une pratique de l’historiographie comparée. Sa critique du “modèle d’absorption” de l’esclavage africain, rendue possible par la comparaison avec les Amériques, anticipait d’importantes tendances récentes dans l’étude de l’esclavage dans le monde atlantique. Revenir sur cette critique nous aide à comprendre les caractéristiques clés de la continuité et du changement culturels chez les personnes réduites en esclavage et peut éclairer les recherches futures sur le genre et le commerce des esclaves dans le monde atlantique. En particulier, cette critique suggère les limites d’une analyse qui sépare l’assimilation africaine présumée des femmes esclaves de l’exportation majoritaire d’hommes.

Type
Frederick Cooper and the Historiography of Africa
Information
History in Africa , Volume 47 , June 2020 , pp. 65 - 74
Copyright
© African Studies Association 2019

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