Slave Owners of West Africa
Book • 2017
Sandra E. Greene’s 'Slave Owners of West Africa' analyzes the lives of three prominent slaveholding men in southeastern modern Ghana to explore how personal, political, economic, and religious factors shaped responses to abolition and colonial rule.
Drawing on extensive oral interviews and missionary and colonial records, Greene reconstructs each man’s strategies—resistance, accommodation, or emancipation—to illuminate local decision-making in a period of profound change.
The book situates these biographies within broader community dynamics to show varying legacies for descendants of the enslaved.
Greene emphasizes emotions and agency to humanize complex actors often missing from conventional narratives.
The work contributes to scholarship by flipping focus from enslaved peoples’ experiences to the perspectives and calculations of slave owners during abolition.
Drawing on extensive oral interviews and missionary and colonial records, Greene reconstructs each man’s strategies—resistance, accommodation, or emancipation—to illuminate local decision-making in a period of profound change.
The book situates these biographies within broader community dynamics to show varying legacies for descendants of the enslaved.
Greene emphasizes emotions and agency to humanize complex actors often missing from conventional narratives.
The work contributes to scholarship by flipping focus from enslaved peoples’ experiences to the perspectives and calculations of slave owners during abolition.
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Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
Sandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017)
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Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
Sandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017)
