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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Of Slaves and the Gift: Kabre Sale of Kin during the Era of the Slave Trade |
| Author: | Piot, Charles |
| Year: | 1996 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 37 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 31-49 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Togo |
| Subjects: | Kabre slave trade History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/183287 |
| Abstract: | During the 19th century, the Kabre of northern Togo had a distinct reputation among Europeans at the coast: they were known as a people who, during the time of the Atlantic slave trade, had sold their own kin as slaves in return for cowrie shells, the local currency. This article explores the Kabre case by situating it within the slaving complex that enveloped this coastal hinterland between the 18th and the mid-19th centuries and by analysing dynamics internal to Kabre society, especially economic and exchange practices, and the Kabre conceptions of value, ownership and personhood that informed and motivated them. The evidence suggests that similar practices occurred among other peoples of the savanna and that the phenomenon of selling kin was not unusual. The material also suggests that a more complicated understanding of the relationship between West African kingdoms and their peripheries during this time period needs to be developed. Subject populations also demanded control at the local end of things and in part determined the shape of the forces that affected them. The article is based on fieldwork among the Kabre carried out from 1982 to 1984, with follow-up trips in 1985 and 1989. Notes, ref., sum. |
