Documents menu

Readings for African Slavery Course

A dialog from H-Africa list
7 December 1995

Date sent: Thu, 07 Dec 1995
From: David Lee Schoenbrun, University of Georgia <DSCHOENB@uga.cc.uga.edu>

For students who will use Meillassoux's Anthropology of Slavery, please also have a look at Joseph Miller's long review in the IJAHS 22, 3 (1989), 473-95, and the excellent review article by Glassman in Slavery and Abolition [the current number, I believe, or the penultimate one]. Both make very different but also very pointed critiques.

Date sent: Mon, 4 Dec 1995
From: Paul Nugent, University of Edinburgh <Paul.Nugent@ed.ac.uk>

Although both texts are dense, I have found it valuable to discuss the introduction to Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa, alongside Meillassoux's The Anthropology of Slavery (or alternatively his contribution to Robertson And Klein, Women and Slavery in Africa).

They start from very different assumptions and, in my recent experience, this in itself provokes fruitful debate amongst students. By the end, the penny tends to drop--amongst the smart ones anyway--that the protagonists are actually saying broadly compatible things.