Questions on "The Social and Historical
Context of Slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa"
Answer all of the following questions with a paragraph of YOUR
OWN WORDS. If you can not re-phrase the author's language into
your own words, you may not understand the article, and you
should spend a bit more time with it. The questions require
a paragraph or so to answer. Be specific in your responses.
1) According to Claude Meillassoux, are the origins of slavery
within Africa to be found within cultural or economic factors?
That is, what transformations occur within Africa that encourage
slavery to flourish?
2) How did societies within the Sahelo-Sudanese region compare
before and after this change within slavery? To answer this
question, think about their economies (where did they get goods?
who made them? did they need a lot or just a few goods?), their
political structure (were they big or small? ruled by what sort
of people?) and their use of slavery.
3) Meillassoux describes a series of wars between different
groups within Africa that were fought primarily to capture more
slaves. Meillassoux points out that although it might seem odd
to some now that these ferocious slave-capturing wars occured
after Europe had essentially withdrawn from the transatlantic
slave trade, in fact such wars emerged for particular reasons
that make them more comprehensible.
According to Meillassoux,
why did African leaders wage these slave-capturing wars after
Europeans and North Americans had (largely) stopped purchasing
enslaved Africans?
