Rossi, Benedetta;
(2024)
The Abolition of Slavery in Africa's Legal Histories.
Law and History Review
, 42
(1)
pp. 1-29.
10.1017/S0738248023000585.
Preview |
Text
Rossi_the-abolition-of-slavery-in-africas-legal-histories.pdf Download (246kB) | Preview |
Abstract
This introduction contextualizes the special issue's articles in the broader continental dynamics. It discusses the Eurocentric bias of the historiography and suggests that the view that Europe was responsible for the legal abolition of slavery in Africa should be nuanced and qualified. Some independent African polities abolished slavery before Europe's colonial occupation. Nowhere did European abolitionists encounter a tabula rasa: African polities had complex jurisdictions, oral or written, which formed the normative background against which slavery's abolition should be studied. To do so, however, it is misleading to imagine abolitionism as a unitary movement spreading globally out of Europe. What happened differed from context to context. Normative systems varied, and so did abolition's legal processes. This introduction examines the dynamics that led to the introduction and implementation of anti-slavery laws in African legal systems. It recenters the analysis of the legal abolition of slavery in Africa around particular African actors, concepts, strategies, and procedures.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Abolition of Slavery in Africa's Legal Histories |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0738248023000585 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248023000585 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society for Legal History. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181832 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
