Undergraduate Seminar at McGill

Indian Ocean World Slave Trade HIST467 (413)

An advanced one-semester undergraduate reading and research course for a maximum of 18 students, taught by IOWC director Gwyn Campbell.

The seminar is based upon the research of secondary and primary material leading up to the writing of a dissertation on a topic related to some aspect of slavery or unfree labour in the Indian Ocean World. Introductory sessions present an overview of the origins, structure and impact of the Indian Ocean World slave trade, slavery and diasporas of slave descent from early times to the present day. Throughout, these are compared and contrasted with the Atlantic slave system.

Research Paper:

Approximately 8,000 words, double spaced, and contain a detailed bibliography & references.

Themes:

  • Definitions
  • Slave Trade
    • Definitions
    • Historical Dynamic
    • Structure
  • Enslavement
  • Slavery
    • Elite
    • Non-Elite
    • Working & living conditions
    • Familial relations
    • Agency
    • Religion
    • Demography & Health
  • Manumission
  • Abolition
  • Post-Abolition Slave Trades & Slavery


Selected Bibliography

Alpers, Edward, Gwyn Campbell and Michael Salman (eds).

  • 2006 Resisting Bondage in the Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. London: Routledge.
  • 2005 Slavery and Resistance in Africa and Asia. London: Routledge.

Campbell, Gwyn.

  • 2005 Ed. Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. London: Routledge.
  • 2005 “The African Diaspora in Asia,” in Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard (eds.), Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, New York, Boston, Dordrecht, London & Moscow: Kluwer & Plenum. vol.I: 3-15.
  • 2004 Ed. The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. London: Routledge.

Chatterjee, Indrani. 1999, Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial ndia. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, Ed.

  • 2006 Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • 1989 The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass.

Cooper, Frederick.

  • 1977 Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • 1980 From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925. New Haven: Yale University Press.

1988 Eastman, Carol M. “Women, Slaves and Foreigners: African Cultural Influences and Group Processes in the Formation of Northern Swahili Coastal Society,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 21.

1998 Fay, Mary Ann. “From Concubines to Capitalists: Women, Property and Power in Eighteenth-Century Cairo,” Journal of Women’s History 10.3.

1971 Fisher, Allan & Humphrey. Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.

1995 Glassman, Jonathan. Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888. Portsmouth, NH.

1962 Goitein, S. D. “Slaves and Slave Girls in the Cairo Geniza Records,” Arabica 9.

1976 Isaacman, Allen. The Tradition of Resistance in Mozambique: The Zambezi Valley, 1850-1921. Heinemann and University of California Press.

1994 Jaschok, Maria and Miers, Suzanne. Eds. Women and Chinese Patriarchy. Submission, Servitude and Escape, London & New Jersey: Zed Books.

1993 Klein, Martin A. Ed, Breaking the Chains. Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.

1977 Kopytoff, Igor and Miers, Suzanne, Eds. Slavery in Africa. Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Lovejoy, Paul E.

  • 1994 (eds - with Falola, Toyin), Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective. Boulder: Westview Press.
  • 1983 Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Manning, Patrick.

  • 1993 Slavery and African Life. Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • 1990 “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Colonial Africa” [Review Article], Journal of African History 31.
  • 1988 “The Anthropology of Slavery,” African Economic History 17

1991 Meillassoux, Claude. The Anthropology of Slavery. The Womb of Iron and Gold. Chicago: University of Chicago Press & London: Athlone Press.

1982 Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

2002 Prakash, Gyan. 2002. Bonded Histories; Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1997 Robertson, Claire C. and Klein, Martin A., Eds. Women and Slavery in Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

1992 Van der Spuy, Patricia, “Slave Women and the Family in Nineteenth-Century Cape Town,” South African Historical Journal 27.

1980 Watson, James L., Ed. Asian and African Systems of Slavery. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.

1985 Willis, John Ralph. Ed. Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, London: Frank Cass.