Slavery Routes: The History of the African Slave Trade, VI–XX Centuries

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch

(Albin Michel/Arte Editions, 230 pages, 2018)

The history of slavery did not start in the cotton fields of the American South or the sugar plantations of the West Indies. From the sixth century on, and for more than twelve hundred years, Sub-Saharan Africa was the epicenter of a devastating market for human beings that laid the foundations for some of the world’s greatest empires. How did the African continent find itself at the heart of such a vast network of slavery routes? From the bankruptcy of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century to the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, and from medieval West African kingdoms to the recent discovery of migrant slave markets in Libya, in this far-reaching book Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch offers a masterful synthesis of the latest research on a global phenomenon that has built and haunted our modern world.

To help us understand the amplitude and historical complexity of the African slave trade, Coquery-Vidrovitch draws from her own acclaimed work, as well as the expertise of the more than forty specialists from Africa, Europe, and the Americas, who contributed to the TV series of the same name, broadcast by the European ARTE channel. Tapping as never before into a wealth of sources long thought to be nonexistent or lost, a new generation of historians is exploring and shedding light on less-well-known aspects of the African slave trade. Thus the reader will learn, among many other captivating topics, about the Baqt, a seventh-century treaty between the Nubian Christian state of Makuria and the new Muslim rulers of Egypt; the historical significance of São Tome as a model for the island plantation societies that eventually arose in the West Indies and other parts of the New World; and the institutionalization of slavery in Guadeloupe in the context of Anglo-French commercial rivalry. The author focuses more on Brazil and the Caribbean than on the extensively studied slavery in the United States. Other chapters are devoted to a variety of themes such as revolts and resistances, slavery abolition laws, the economic impact of the slave trade on Western economies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the link between the financial compensation received by plantation owners and the rise of industrial capitalism.

Defining terms is essential in a book that presents African slavery within a broad historical and geographical framework. Well versed in the contemporary debates over the African slave trade, the author begins by clarifying what being a slave meant over time and in different contexts, and how to define slavery. She addresses a number of commonplace yet erroneous ideas, providing her readers with keys to understanding the contemporary challenges of this common heritage. At once historically rigorous and accessible, Slavery Routes is an essential work for all those interested in deepening their knowledge of the global history of slavery.

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch is Professor Emerita of modern African history. She taught at SUNY Binghamton (NY) from 1981 to 2005. Four of her books have been translated into English: Africa:Endurance and Change South of the Sahara (Univ. of California Press, 1989), African Women: A Modern History (Perseus, 1997), The History of African Cities South of the Sahara (Markus Wiener Publishers, 2009), Africa and Africans in the 19th Century: A Turbulent History (Routledge, 2009). She also has received the 1999 ASA (African Studies Association) Distinguished Africanist Award.