Research Catalog

Title

From slaving to neoslavery : the Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the era of abolition, 1827-1930 / Ibrahim K. Sundiata.

Author

Sundiata, I. K.

Publication

Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, c1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 250 p. : ill., maps; 24 cm.

Summary

Fernando Po, home to the Bantu-speaking Bubi people, has an unusually complex history. Long touted as the "key" to West Africa, it is the largest West African island and the last to enter the world economy. Confronted by both African resistance and ecological barriers, early British and Spanish imperialism foundered there. Not until the late nineteenth century did foreign settlement take hold, abetted by a class of westernized black planters. It was only then that Fernando Po developed a plantation economy dependent on migrant labor, working under conditions similar to slavery. In From Slaving to Neoslavery, Ibrahim K. Sundiata offers a comprehensive history of Fernando Po, explains the continuities between slavery and free contract labor, and challenges standard notions of labor development and progress in various colonial contexts. Sundiata's work is interdisciplinary, considering the influences of the environment, disease, slavery, abolition, and indigenous state formation in determining the interaction of African peoples with colonialism. From Slaving to Neoslavery has manifold implications. Historians usually depict the nineteenth century as the period in which free labor triumphed over slavery, but Sundiata challenges this notion. By examining the history of Fernando Po, he illuminates the larger debate about slavery current among scholars of Africa.

Subject

• Slavery > Fernando Po
• Slavery > Africa, West
• Fernando Po (Equatorial Guinea) > History
• Africa, West > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Ch. 1. The Island Background -- Ch. 2. Aborted Antislaving -- Ch. 3. Spain in the Bight -- Ch. 4. Trade and Politics -- Ch. 5. Islanders and Interlopers -- Ch. 6. The Cocoa Economy -- Ch. 7. The Search for Labor -- Ch. 8. Creole Culture and Change -- Ch. 9. The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance.

ISBN

0299145107

LCCN

^^^94039082^

OCLC

31374607

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library