Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants in Africa

Martin A. Klein is a professor emeritus from the University of Toronto. He has written or edited a dozen books, mostly on slavery and the slave trade in Francophone West Africa. He is the author of Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa, the editor of Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia and coeditor (with Claire C. Robertson) of Women and Slavery in Africa. He has served as president of the African Studies Association and the Canadian Association of African Studies.Stephen J. Rockel is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. Specializing in East Africa, he is interested in labor, slavery, urbanization, and environmental history, as well as empires and conflict. He authored Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa and coedited (with Rick Halpern) Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire. His current projects include histories of slavery in Tanzania and caravan workers across Africa.

"Edited by Martin Klein and Stephen Rockel and with chapters by an impressive lineup of researchers, Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants in Africa: Life Histories is a seminal contribution not only to the study of slavery and its legacies in Africa, but also to the broader field of African social and political history. Focusing on individual biographies, the book reveals the full complexity of enslavement in African societies. The authors place the enslaved at the centre of Africa's recent history, acknowledging the diversity of their circumstances and their substantial contributions to shaping relations and events despite the violence and oppression they had to endure. This ground-breaking collection adopts a methodological approach that humanizes the enslaved by depicting them not as anonymous and passive victims, but as individuals who were fully integrated into their societies. It is essential reading for students of African history and for anyone wishing to understand the specificities of slavery across African regions and cultures." - Benedetta Rossi, University College London "This rich collection of life trajectories provides unique insight into the history of slavery, the slave trade, and their legacies from the standpoint of ordinary men and women across Africa. Through this methodologically inspiring and historically challenging effort, Martin A. Klein and Steven J. Rockel lead us towards an in-depth understanding of the lived realities of enslavement, and of people’s efforts to imbue with meaning their disrupted existential paths." - Alice Bellagamba, University of Milan-Bicocca