Reconfiguring Slavery focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears’ social positions, or to distance themselves from them. Reconfiguring Slavery contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present new empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia. As a whole, the volume advances a renewed conceptual framework for understanding slavery in West Africa today: instead of retracing the end of West African slavery, this work highlights the preliminary contours of its recent reconfigurations.

This stimulating collection for West African scholars provides an abundance of examples of the transformations in traditional forms of slavery covering the range of possibilities, from formerly subjugated groups that now have the upper hand over their former masters to situations where traditional forms of symbolic and financial domination still prevail.

Source: Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 5

This is an exceptionally interesting book. It breaks new ground and makes a significant contribution to slavery and, more particularly, post-slavery studies.

Suzanne Miers

An important contribution to Africanist scholarship ... it has every chance of achieving the reconfiguration prefigured in its title.

P. F. Moraes Source: University of Birmingham

Reconfiguring Slavery has broad academic and non-academic appeal.

Source: African Affairs, vol 110, no 440

Benedetta Rossi’s analysis bridges an important gap in the conceptualisation of slavery in the history and contemporary politics of West Africa.

Paul Lovejoy Source: Slavery and Abolition, vol. 31, no. 4

In a varied but coherent collection of case studies to which Benedetta Rossi’s stimulating introduction does full justice, the red thread is that of the multitude of ways in which the descendants of slaves attempt to evade the heritage of the past, how they negotiate the vestiges of the stigma in their contemporary lives, often in paradoxical and ambiguous ways.

Roger Botte Source: Africa, Vol. 80, No, 3

Reconfiguring Slavery has broad academic and non-academic appeal ... the content and accessible language make the text appropriate for undergraduate courses on globalization, post-colonial Africa, and poverty and inequality. Specialists of Africa and slavery will benefit from the innovative theories and methodologies that the essayists employ. In addition, the interpretations of slavery are beneficial to humanitarian organizations currently working in Africa.

Source: African Affairs

Benedetta Rossi rassemble dans son livre une serie de contributions issues d'une conference tenue a Londres en 2007 pour marquer I'anniversaire de l'abolition de la traite par la Grande Bretagne. Son ouvrage reunit historiens et anthropologues d'horizons geographiques varies (Grande Bretagne, Canada, France, Italie, Autriche, Benin). L'effort de traduction doit etre loue !Le chapitre de Martin Klein fournit une synthese tres claire de I'evolution historique de I' esclavage dans toute la region. Il permet de situer les autres chapitres plus focalises geographiquement dont la moiM aborde, a travers le continent, l'esclavage peul (5 sur 10).La contribution de Tom Mc Caskie, tres originale, retrace la relation entre le Ghana et des mouvements de descendants d'esclaves nord-americains afro­centristes. D'un cote, les enjeux politiques internes et externes du Ghana (desir de s' attirer le soutien du black caucus americain, opposition entre les presidents ghaneens successifs Rawlings, puis Kufuor). Les enjeux de developpement economique sont egalement importants avec l'essor d'un tourisme de diaspora autour des lieux de traite. La politique de distribution d'honneurs et de titres « coutumiers » aux leaders afro-americains, dans l'espoir d'encourager des projets de developpement, constitue un developpement fascinant. Ces constructions se developpent dans un contexte de negation de l'esclavage interne par les descendants des victimes de la traite, impregne d'ideologie raciste americaine. Leurs vis-a-vis Africains, eux, les accueillent avec cynisme toujours habites du mepris propre a une culture encore impregnee d'esclavagisme.Alice Bellagamba, dans la me me veine que l'ouvrage de Peters on 64, s'interesse a la reappropriation du discours anti-esclavagiste independamment de la realite de l'esclavage et de ses sequelles en Gambie.Les articles de Jean Schmitz, Christine Hardung, Oliver Leservoisier ont une veritable unite, cl la fois dans la methode d'anthropologie-historique et une precision erudite epoustouflante. Heureusement que Benedetta Rosi a pense cl joindre un glossaire cl la fill du livre ! Dans les trois cas, on nous montre trois phases: des logiques longues d'emancipation, suivies de l'impact colonial puis de celui des democratisations des annees 1990. L'article d'Eric Komlavi Hahonou complete fort bien ces trois contributions via la relation entre escIavage et micro-politique contemporaine au Benin et au Niger. Benedetta Rossi nous mene hors du monde peul, chez les Touareg. EIle s'interroge sur la question de la mobilite des maitres etdes escIaves, mais surtout, eIle montre les differences qui existent concernant .'l'esclavage entre differents groupes Touareg. L'histoire specifique de chacun d'entre eux influe sur l'emancipation ou la cIientelisation de ces groupes subordonnes. La derniere contribution, de Phi lip Burnham, propose des reflex ions sur l'evolution des discours relatifs cl l'esclavage dans les recherches des trente dernieres annees.Cet ouvrage insiste sur la polysemie et l'inflation des sens des termes « esclave » et « esclavage ». Il montre la transformation de l'esclavage cIassique de l' Afrique de l' ouest en d' autres formes de dependance, tout en gardant la meme designation. Il montre pour les ex-esclaves 1'importance du patronage dans la reussite ou meme la survie comme le cout cl moyen terme du clientelisme.

Source: Journal des Africanistes 81-1

Reconfiguring Slavery is an important book that provides rich insight into processes of emancipation and the legacies of slavery in West Africa. Most chapters draw heavily on the testimony of former slaves or slave descendants, which gives special liveliness to the difficult conceptual issues under consideration. The book has much to offer for comparisons between slavery in West Africa and in other world regions, in particular perhaps in Asian settings. Many chapters in the volume also shed light on the impact and reach of Western imperialism in Africa. Reconfiguring Slavery will find its readers mainly among scholars specializing in African studies and slave studies, but teachers of world history courses interested in Africa will also find the book rewarding and stimulating even though the chapters do not make for suitable readings in undergraduate college courses.
Claus K. Meyer, World History Connected