← New Books Network
New Books Network
Sandra E. Greene, “Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition” (Indiana UP, 2017)
00:42:25
In today’s podcast we talked to Dr. Sandra Greene about her book Slave Owners of West Africa. Decision Making in the Age of Abolition published in 2017 by Indiana University Press. In this book Dr. Greene presents us with the biographies of three indiv...
Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:01]
Venmo Advertiser
Get in the game with the College branded Venmo debit card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo. No monthly fee, no minimum balance, just school pride and spending power. Get in the game and sign up for the Venmo debit card@venmo.com collegecard. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. select schools available. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo me stash terms max $100 cash back per month.
- [00:31]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:33]
Nordstrom Rack Advertiser
New spring arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60% off rag and bone, Marc Jacobs, free people and more.
- [00:43]
Dr. Sandra Green
How did I not know Rack has Adidas? Cause there's always something new.
- [00:46]
Nordstrom Rack Advertiser
Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack
- [01:01]
Dr. Sandra Green
welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:12]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Hello everyone and welcome. I am Esperanza Brisuela Garcia, one of the hosts for this channel. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Sandra Green about her book Slave Owners in West Decision Making in the Age of abolition, published in 2017 by Indiana University Press. Dr. Green is a Stephen 1959 and Madeline 1960 Abender professor of African History in the History Department at Cornell University. Dr. Green's research has included the study of gender and ethnic relations in West Africa and the role that religious beliefs, warfare, and the experience of slavery have played in the lives of individuals and communities in 18th and 19th century Ghana. Dr. Green, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:53]
Dr. Sandra Green
Thank you.
- [01:54]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
I wonder if you could begin by telling us a little bit about yourself.
- [01:58]
Dr. Sandra Green
I was born and raised in a small town in Southwest Ohio, Xenia, Ohio, which was also the town where you had two HBCUs, Central State University and Wilberforce University. And that in itself had an influence on my interest in Africa. My mother completed her BA at Central State, and because she was there and had met quite a few African students, her worldview expanded a lot and she exposed us also to the wider world. I think she was one of the two people in the east end of Xenia, which is where the vast majority of the black people live. In fact, all of us live there. This was in an era of kind of de facto segregation. She was one of the few people in our area who actually subscribed to the New York Times and so she was very interested in politics and especially international affairs. And I think that influenced me as well. So when I was looking at colleges to attend, I wanted to, like so many other young kids, wanted to kind of get away from home. I was especially attracted to Kalamazoo College because of its African studies program. It's one of the oldest in the country. And they had opportunities for students not only to study African history, African politics, African literature, but actually to study abroad. And so I enrolled at Kalamazoo was actually a philosophy major, but I went to the University of Ghana in my senior year, spent the entire senior year there. And because of my experience there, I decided to apply to Northwestern University and a lot of other places. But Northwestern gave me a full ride. And so I went to Northwestern to continue studying African history there. So that's how I got involved. Of course, the period that we're talking about is in the mid to late 60s, when I was in high school and in college in the early 70s. And this still was a very exciting period. It was the Black power movement. It was a civil rights movement. There was a lot of black is beautiful movement, a lot of black is beautiful activities, a lot of interest in Africa at the time. African countries were not only becoming independent, but introducing all kinds of new strategies for governing. You had ujama in Tanzania, for example. Nkrumah was, you know, was still a well known figure around Pan Africanism, et cetera. So it was a very exciting time. Even though things were beginning to African countries beginning to have difficulties during this period, but still there was a lot of excitement in the US about Africa. And so that also propelled me to shake a look. I found that I knew very little when I went to college and was taking my African history courses and just felt like I was learning something new every day. And I just thrived on that. So that's how I meant it.
- [05:37]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Very good. And so we're talking about a very sort of long trajectory. And I've sort of mentioned a little bit like all the different topics that you have written about and research. How did you come to write this particular work? Slave Owners of West Africa?
- [05:58]
Dr. Sandra Green
I started my field work in the area where I have focused much of my research in 1977, 78. And I did a lot of oral interviewing and did not focus on slavery at that time. I was looking at more social history, the impact of immigrant immigration into this area and its impact on gender and ethnic relations. And then I subsequently did another book on sacred sites, all of which came out of my oral interviewing. But As I was after I finished those two books, I was really looking for another topic, and I explored a variety of things. But in the end, I decided to focus on slavery in large part because the material was there, both the documentary sources and the oral materials I had collected a little bit. But I ended up going back to the area, the Anglo area, and doing more interviewing, focusing specifically on slavery. And that established the foundation for the next book, which was West African Narratives of Slavery and this book as well, Slave Owners of West Africa. So in many respects, I have been collecting material for. Since 1970s, and some of that material ended up in this book. And so it's been a long journey, you might say, of collecting materials and then looking at them and determining, okay, how much do I have enough material to focus on this or to focus on that? And in this case, I had enough material to write the Slave Owners of West Africa.
- [07:55]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
One of the things that. It is very clear, actually, from looking at these three biographies that the work has been a long process to put together these biographies. And one of the things I was wondering as I was reading was whether you have, for instance, other individuals that you could have been included. And at one point during the introduction, for instance, you mentioned how you took this decision of only using materials of individuals for whom you had. Who have given you explicit approval to talk about them. So I guess I have a couple questions here. One is whether there was a lot of materials that you couldn't use because you didn't get the approval. In other words, do you have a lot of other biographies that could have been included and that for one reason and another could not be included? Or were these just. Or you chose these three ones specifically because they were more representative or just more complete?
- [09:09]
Dr. Sandra Green
I really chose the three individuals I focused on because they were the ones I had the most material for. I had been in communication with. I had interviewed the descendants. I continued to be in communication with some family, you know, families, as we exchanged information. What did they have on the family? They sent me, And I sent material that I had to them on their family, you know, so they. There'd been quite a bit of exchange. I have some materials on other individuals. I was really sorry that I didn't have enough material on a woman slave owner, for example, but I simply did not have enough. So in many respects, the material that. The reason why I selected these three individuals because they are the ones that I have the most material on.
- [10:01]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I mean, it's a difficult topic to research, and I was Wondering also on the. That along those lines, if you could tell us a little bit more about the decision to focus on slave owners. I mean, you do talk a little bit in the introduction about how it's been an overlooked topic. And so I was wondering if you could sort of expand from that or just tell us a little bit more about how basically this is a very new approach into the topic of slavery.
- [10:42]
Dr. Sandra Green
The pokelets on the slave owners really came as an outgrowth of my previous book on West African narratives of slavery that really focused on individuals who were enslaved, and they were also kind of biographical in orientation and their descendants of the enslaved, that is. And so I said, okay, if we want to look at the institution of slavery, we've got these perspectives, these life histories, these short biographies, diaries by individuals who were enslaved, et cetera. But we don't see. It would be interesting to see the other side, what slave owners were thinking. So. And really, in. In many respects, I see the two working together, just flipping the coin and looking at different sides of the same, but the same institution, the enslaved and then the slave owners. So that's why I focused on playbonage in this particular book.
- [11:39]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
No, no, no, that's good. I mean, it was also really interesting just to see both in how you discuss your decision about what information to include, the process of trying to gain approval from the descendants of these individuals, but also just in terms of the current relev that the topic of slavery has. And I think that's something that is probably not always evident to a lot of people who look at the issue of slavery in Africa.
- [12:17]
Dr. Sandra Green
That's an extremely sensitive topic. It continues to be a very sensitive topic to this day. In fact, just a couple of days ago, I was reading a. I believe it was a BBC article on a set of an effort to establish a museum with UNESCO funds and other funds in Benin. And it talked about the sensitivity associated with slave owners that now that there is an effort to, you know, focus on heritage tourism, et cetera, the families themselves of the slave owners, their descendants really don't want to be singled out and highlighted. They're very, very sensitive about being associated with an ancestor who was involved in this kind of business. And the sensitivity continues to this day. And in large part it's because obviously slavery is not an institution that is assumed to just be part of the regular economy. It is illegal worldwide. It continues to exist, and it continues to be vilified as a practice. And so that level of sensitivity means that even descendants of slave owners don't want to, in a sense, be outed, you might say, as having an ancestor who was involved in this business because it's so negative.
- [13:51]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah, that becomes one of the most interesting, I think, elements in the book, especially how you structure each of chapters first in their biography. And then you have that last section about the legacy or what legacy could have come of the decisions that that particular individual made in terms of how to approach the abolition. So maybe now we can talk specifically about each one of them. So in your first chapter, you talk about an. Please correct me if I mispronounce any of these names, which I probably will. Amegashi Afeku of Keita. And so can you tell us a little bit about him? What, you know, what were his. What was his particular approach to slavery and later on to abolition?
- [14:45]
Dr. Sandra Green
Amagaki Akoku was quite a prominent businessman, slave owner. He was also associated with one of the most important religious orders that operated in the area. And so he was quite wealthy and influential. He was also a very close advisor to the paramount chief in the Anglo area. So he was a very prominent individual. He adamantly opposed the abolition of slavery. He did several things. He moved his. When the British extended their authority over the Anglo area, he moved just out of their reach so he could keep his slaves. There was an incident in which a number of people who had been enslaved during a war decided that with abolition, they wanted to go home because they knew exactly where they came from. So they gathered together and were going home carrying the goods of a missionary who was also going into the interior as a way to make a little money on their way home. And Amegashi sent a group of individuals to stop them. Now, these weren't even his own slaves or his former slaves. Instead, they belonged to other people. But he was opposed to the abolition of slavery, and he was opposed to the idea of any slave trying to return home. Another incident involves his selling of slaves. And he was prosecuted at least twice by the British for slave dealing. And he simply refused to show up in court, you know, so he was pretty adamant about maintaining the institution of slavery. And what I do in the book is to offer some rationale or reasons why he in particular took this a particular approach. Now, he was not unique in really opposing abolition. There are many other individuals that I give as examples just to show that he was not unique. But for Amegashi in particular, I suggest that one of the reasons he was so opposed was because he himself had been. Was of slave descent. And during that particular period, we know that individuals of slave descent were constantly reminded of their low social status, they were teased, they were abused, et cetera. And yet he somehow managed to use his connections to gain quite a bit of political, economic and social status within the community, despite the fact that he was of slave descent. And so I suggest that in fact, one of the reasons he may have been so adamantly opposed to slavery is because he had spent his entire life working the system to his own benefit. And so the last thing he would want to see is for the system to suddenly just be thrown over, you know, and slavery to be abolished. So that was a very interesting example of someone who really opposed slavery. And in this case, I speculated for him in particular why he was so opposed to the abolition.
- [18:22]
Best Western Advertiser
Spring break isn't what it used to be. It's better this spring. Stay three nights and get a $50 Best Western gift. Life's a trip. Make the most of it. At best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.
- [18:37]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah, I mean, that was, it was a bit of a surprise, I have to admit, when I was reading his case and then to find out that he himself had been a slave. And like you said, that had been such a, that seems to have been such a central reason why he might have adopted this position. And like you mentioned in your book, at the point when you examine the legacy that this, that a decision like this might have had, I mean, how it does speak to the continuation of that stigma of having been a slave among some of West African communities. So it's a very poignant example of how and why that stigma might still
- [19:29]
Dr. Sandra Green
exist because his descendants, I mean, all of these things happen within the family. And at least one or one of his descendants who was, you know, fairly well off individual, was still making distinctions between himself and the people who technically his ancestor had inflates, even though they were all considered to be one large extended family now.
- [19:56]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
So let's talk about your second biography. As Nyahu Tamakloi of Anlo, he takes a different approach to abolition and he comes from a different trajectory. Can you tell us a little bit about him?
- [20:15]
Dr. Sandra Green
Yeah, Tamaklo was a. A very well respected individual, military leader. That's how he gained his reputation. Although he came also from a very respectable family, a free family. But with abolition, he did not technically oppose abolition. He didn't embrace it either. He didn't free his slaves. But with abolition and the obvious situation in which he, as a political leader in his community, found himself that they were unable to militarily resist colonial rule, he took a Very different kind of approach. He decided that he was going to use the new British colonial system to his advantage. He became a very astute businessman with investments not only in the area, but many, many miles away in timber and mining, et cetera. An astute politician in terms of using his position with regard to the British to benefit himself and with regard to slavery. As a businessman, what he needed most of all was individuals who could work his farms and support his political views when there were debates in the community, when there were decisions to be made, having large groups of people who would be, you know, supportive of his particular perspective, individuals who could serve as accountants, as lawyers. And so he didn't really free any of slaves, and he was a very large slave owner instead of. He gave them every reason to want to continue to be associated with him. He was a large landowner. He gave land to the Catholic Church, and then, upon giving the Catholic Church this land, stipulated that all of his children should receive free education. The Catholics were setting up not only churches but also schools, and they were allowing English to be taught earlier than some of the other schools that would have been established by other missionary societies. And English was the language of business at the time. They're talking about the mid to late 19th century, largely the late 19th century. And so a lot of the children of his slaves changed their name to Tamaclo and went to school. He sent a couple of individuals of slave descent to England and paid for their training to be lawyers. And so all of these individuals, in a sense, became part of his larger family, wanting to stay affiliated with him because of the opportunities he gave them. He had villages where he had settled slaves on the outskirts of the larger community. He had the leaders of those slave villages recognized as such, and that allowed them to be part of the Council of Chiefs, which was highly unusual that someone of slave descent be given that opportunity to be the Council of Chiefs. But of course, he needed them, and they supported him when he was pushing his own ideas about how Anglo should modernize and. And take advantage of what opportunities might come with British colonial rule. So he was quite an astute politician. Quite an amazing individual. Quite remarkable, yeah. Very smart.
- [24:09]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah. No, I mean, you know, one could even call him progressive in some regards. And it is interesting how, you know, I mean, I think one of the interesting things is that in looking at the different decisions of these individuals, like you said, they also leave different ways to deal with the descendants of slaves. So among the communities that he was able to influence, you see a minimized stigma for slavery. And I Think what that starts to sort of give the reader is this sense that there's like a real. There's not just one single way in which the descendants of slaves are treated or remembered, but that there's like a little patchwork in which that. How this. How this legacy has been passed on to the present day.
- [25:06]
Dr. Sandra Green
No, that's absolutely the case. Yeah. There was no single way, you know, and different families, different communities took different approaches on how to handle abolition and how they were going to continue on managing a population that had different. Whose ancestors had different social statuses. And in this case, he was an example that slave status should not be a stigma. It really has to do with individuals ability to contribute to the larger society.
- [25:45]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Well, let's go to your last example, Noah Yawo of Ho Kapnoe, and tell us a little bit about him.
- [25:55]
Dr. Sandra Green
Noayawo certainly was not as wealthy as Kamaklo or Amagashi, but for his community he was fairly well off. He was rending money. He was engaged in business, buying and selling, et cetera. And what is particularly interesting about him is that his religious beliefs were significantly challenged. He was a polytheist, believed in multiplicity of gods, but having experienced a war where there was devastating impact on his community and on him. Famine, a smallpox epidemic, and a whole series of. Of tragedies. It's amazing. Year after year, something is always coming up that is really, really difficult for him and for the larger community, for that matter. The straw that broke the camel's back in terms of his continued faith in his own religious tradition came when his brother became very ill. And he went from one healer to another who was using traditional beliefs to try to heal, and it didn't work. And at that point he decided to convert to Christianity. And the missionaries he was working with, largely African missionaries who had been trained by a German missionary society, were urging him to free his slaves. He did eventually. But again, this shows you that of course, people have to have some way of maintaining themselves. And so he. Before freeing, he said he would free his slaves, but it took him several years to do so because he needed to get his financial house in order. He tried to recover some of the loans that he had lent. And he became increasingly attached to the missionary society, which saw that he was sometimes in difficult economic strait and they would raise funds for him, et cetera. Eventually got back on his feet economically, financially. And at that point he freed his slaves, some of whom were debt slaves, people who had. Were attached to him because they owed a debt or the families owed a debt or individuals whom he had bought. You know, so, again, this is yet another example where it wasn't just a different approach. It wasn't adamant opposition to abolition, wasn't not freeing your slaves, but doing everything else that, you know, would want to keep the slaves attached to you. As a former slave owner, rather, he fully embraced his. This new religion as fully as he had actually embraced his former religion. And that religion dictated that he, in this case, Christianity, that he free his slaves, which he eventually did.
- [29:07]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah. And I think what is interesting about this last case, but, I mean, it kind of goes back to the other two to some extent, is how you start to sort of how you see these individuals sort of really making very strategic decisions, not just in terms of what they see as is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, but, you know, how can I do the right thing but still survive? Like you said, you know, keep. Manage my finances, manage my own sort of economic transition throughout this period. And again, it just complicates, makes us realize how complicated these decisions were, which is not a moral decision, but it was also like a legal position in addition to an economic decision. Put it together. Oh, I imagine. I imagine that it was. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about that. I know it took you many years to put this research, but I think sometimes it is in terms of just how to put a biography. I mean, obviously recently there's been more and more biographies of Africans in African history. Many years ago, I remember writing a paper about the value of biographies in African history, just in terms of how they help us sort of challenge notions of historical time, how there's like a different chronology when you write in biography, how they help us kind of make more complicated statements about agency, how agency. It sort of looks different when you're looking at it from the. From the point of view of an individual. So how do you see those concepts change as you were writing these biographies?
- [31:07]
Dr. Sandra Green
I think concepts of agency and time were kind of woven into those. But one of the things that I really wanted to do was to focus on emotions as a way of not just saying, recounting the times in which these people lived and the, you know, the factual character of the decisions that they made, but to get underneath their actions, to try to really understand them as individuals, as members of a particular community, as social beings who have feelings and concerns. And I think that is critical for really getting a feel for an individual and connecting those individuals to the reader. In many instances, biographies are of often Famous people biographies are one of the largest sections and in bookstores, for example. And they're almost always famous people, but these are not well known people outside of their own communities. And yet I wanted to connect with their humanity. Very few people know anything about Africa or Africans. It's very easy to get abstract images. And I really wanted to go beneath the surface and really hopefully connect the reader to these individuals so that you're not thinking about good or bad. You know, this individual was terrible or this, you know, or did wonderful things. No, it was complicated, you know, because life is complicated and individuals are complicated. And hopefully it will allow readers to see Africans as complicated human beings as everybody else, when very rarely they have an opportunity to see that.
- [33:19]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah, no, I mean, one of the things that I was thinking as I was reading it was how useful it will be for class for students because it is indeed sometimes very difficult to get students to sort of capture the complexity and in a way in which does not exoticize these individuals. And I think these biographies achieve that quite successfully. So I was wondering now whether you could tell us what are you working on now? What are your current projects?
- [34:01]
Dr. Sandra Green
I have written four books on the history of the Anglo Eve Ghana. And I've done. Two of those are directly on. Actually three of them are directly on slavery. And then I have four edited volumes that deal with the topic of slavery in Africa. So after all this work, my sense is that I need to. Time to do something different, time to move on. Exactly what that different thing is, I don't know. At the very moment, what I'm doing is collecting a lot of the material that I have. I'm cataloging it. All of the oral histories that I've recorded, well over a hundred. And a lot of the documentary sources that are in very obscure journals, especially the missionary journals, which I have relied on for all of my work because they, you know, you can read them against the grain and get a lot of information about culture, individuals, et cetera, from these materials, as long as you filter the biases out. And those are the journals of the North German Missionary Society, Nord Deutsche Missions Gesellschag. And so I'm cataloging those in order to bequeath them to Northwestern once I. And they will be available to scholars. A lot of the material that I used in this book and the other book on slave narrative were produced a lot of the material, not all of it, but a lot of the material came out of these German missionary records. The Germans are the ones who were on the ground oftentimes they were trained in ethnography. Oftentimes they talked about the individuals that they encountered in the late 19th century, some of whom were definitely. Some of those observations I was able to use in this book to flesh out these individuals. And so I am now working on just getting that material available again to bequeath to Northwestern University's Africana Library so that other people can have access to it. My next research project, I'm still exploring topics.
- [36:29]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Good. Well, that's usually the best place to be, where everything is open. Right ahead of you. One last question. I was wondering whether. If you had any ideas or any sense whether the book has been. Has been made available in Ghana and whether, you know, if people have read it and what. How has been received in the communities that these individuals for these individuals lived.
- [37:02]
Dr. Sandra Green
I don't know. I haven't been to Ghana for a while now. As I said, I've been communicating. I've been in communication with some of the families, but I don't know how. Well, how it's being received. I know that it's very sensitive topic that just from my experience here, that a lot of people probably are concerned that it's even been published or that it's even available because it has the potential to open up uncomfortable conversations, you know. But that goes along with the larger sensitivity around any topic associated with slavery within Africa. It's fine in most West African communities to talk about the slave trade because you can always, you know, people left, et cetera. But when you start getting about, getting down to, what about those people who weren't put on the boats? Where are they? Where are their descendants now? How are they treated? It opens up an area that is very sensitive. So I'm as curious as you are as to how the response would be, but I suspect it would be mixed simply because it's a sensitive topic. And so different people will have different takes on it. You know, the one family, Amegashi, Afaku's family, I was very gratified that they were willing to allow me to publish the biography of their ancestor. I sent them the final draft of that particular chapter, and I said, I know this is sensitive, and I don't, you know, I don't necessarily know what the consequences will be for you and your family. So I leave it up to you as to whether I should publish this or not. I gave them the power to say, no, this is not something you want published. Fortunately for me, they agreed. You know, they were not. They indicated that they didn't feel I was trying to use this information for any purposes except for historical research, you know, and so they were very generous in that regard. And that's why, in many ways, the. The book was published, because they allowed me to do this. And so you can see, on the other hand, I know of other families who. And I've used pseudonyms for them. They would not have been very comfortable with it, you know, so I made sure that it was not possible to identify them, you know, certain individuals.
- [39:54]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah.
- [39:55]
Dr. Sandra Green
So I would expect it would have mixed reaction because of the sensitivity of the subject.
- [40:01]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Yeah, well, you know, I mean, it's just been published too, so I imagine it will take a little while for all of that to filter out, both on the ground and into us. But it was a very illuminating and enjoyable read and thank you so much. Oh, thank you for writing it and, well, I think that we have taken plenty of time from you now. Thank you so much for talking to us about this book and for being in the podcast.
- [40:33]
Dr. Sandra Green
Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you.
- [40:35]
Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Thank you. So goodbye.
- [40:37]
Dr. Sandra Green
Bye. Bye.