What is slavery according to Miers and Kopytoff and according to Meillassoux?

INTRODUCTION

For much of the twentieth century, academic and legal discussions of slavery were defined by the
Western imaginary of the New World plantation slave. As Miers and Kopytoff write, this slave is

a commodity, to be bought and sold and inherited. He is a chattel, totally in the possession
of another person who uses him for private ends. He has no control over his destiny, no choice
of occupation or employer, no rights to property or marriage, and no control over the fate of
his children. He can be inherited, moved or sold without regard to his feelings, and may be ill-
treated, sometimes even killed, with impunity.1

Miers and Kopytoffs description is intended to emphasise the fact that the conventional Western
understanding of slavery centres on the notion of property, and that it usually defines the slave by a
total lack of rights and by poor treatment. Moreover, the structure of their description inadvertently
underlines two other important features of conventional definitions of slavery: first, that many focus
on understanding the intrinsic nature of the slave as a being, rather than slavery as a historical process;
and second, that the slave is unthinkingly gendered as male, by many scholars as well as in the public
imagination.

The inadequacies of this conception of slavery have increasingly become apparent: scholars of
societies ranging from the classical world to medieval Russia to early modern Asia have emphasised
its inapplicability to their areas of study, claiming that New World slavery was a truly exceptional form;
meanwhile, greater variation and complexity has been recognised even within American slavery.2

Slavery is particularly central to studies of Africa, partly due to significant interest in the connections
between internal slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the question of whether African
slavery was more benign than its New World counterpart. However, historians of African slavery
continued to sidestep problems of definition for decades. For example, in a 1969 article on the
connections between domestic slavery and the slave trade, Fage admitted that analysis was
complicated by the problem of deciding what institution or institutions in West African societies
corresponded to the European idea of slavery. However, he went on to offer what he calls a
straightforward definition of slavery in which the slave was a man or woman who was owned by
some other person, whose labour was regarded as having economic value, and whose person had

1
Miers & Kopytoff 1977, p. 3.
2
For summaries of some such definitional debates with respect to south and southeast Asia, see Casiro 1986
and Miers 2003. On Russia and the Classical World, see Kolchin 1986 and Kopytoff 1982. On New World slavery,
its uniqueness and complexity, see Kolchin 1986, pp. 767, 777.

Page 1
commercial value.3 Although scholars at this time were becoming more aware of the problems of
definition, they still ultimately returned to definitions of slavery based upon the condition of slaves
themselves, and centring on notions of property and economics.

From the 1970s onwards, scholars began to make more serious attempts to address the problem of
definition. Reviewers of Miers and Kopytoffs 1977 edited volume on forms of slavery in Africa
portrayed their theoretical framework for understanding the term slavery as part of a radical
turnaround or transformation in the field.4 However, although their work was recognised as a
major contribution, it also provoked disagreement and debate. Fifteen years later, Claude
Meillassouxs The Anthropology of Slavery offered one of the longest and most detailed critiques of
their analysis of how slavery related to African kinship structures. This essay will take a thematic
approach to these two works, considering how they challenge conventional notions of slavery and
identifying areas of agreement and of divergence between them. It will thus use these analyses as a
lens through which to consider the ongoing debates about the nature of slavery in West Africa and
beyond.

SLAVERY, KINSHIP, AND INTEGRATION

One of the central problems with Western comprehensions of slavery is that they tend to define the
institution in relation to an abstract notion of freedom. As Miers notes, complete freedom obviously
exists only in theory.5 All individuals have social, economic and political limitations upon their
freedom, and there are many situations in which an individuals autonomy may be severely restricted
for example, through economic destitution, total submission to the authority of a spouse or relative,
conscription of contracted labour, or physical imprisonment without their being considered a slave.
One point of agreement between Meillassoux and Kopytoff and Miers is their critique of this aspect
of conventional notions of slavery: both works claim that it is most meaningful to understand slaves
not as less free than all other members of society, but rather as outsiders to society as a whole. This
idea is not unique the idea of slave as outsider has long been noted in relation to classical Rome6
but these works were among the first to elaborate and conceptualise it with regard to African
societies.

3
Fage 1969, p. 394.
4
Klein 1978, p. 599; Cooper 1979, p. 103; Last 1979, p. 82.
5
Miers 2003, p. 2.
6
See Cooper 1979, pp. 105-106.

Page 2
Kopytoff and Miers write that the insider in most traditional societies of Africa was not an
autonomous individual but rather was defined by belonging to a kin group which was the
fundamental social, legal, political, and ritual protective unit.7 The key words here are belonging and
protective social status and lifestyle was dependent upon integration into a society through
recognition as kin, resulting in protection by the kin group and its leaders. They thus argue that slavery
is defined by relative exclusion from these structures of belonging and protection: they note that the
Giriama consider the opposite of slave to be Gariama, or that the Duala use the same word to refer
to free foreigners as their own slaves,8 and the same phenomenon is found in Igboland, where one of
Carolyn Browns informants used the terms slave and indigene as opposites.9

Meillassoux, similarly, recognises that many kin members particularly wives, children, and cadets
were subject to the absolute power of the head of the family and, as dependents, were obliged to
work for him.10 These people are therefore distinguished from slaves not by their degree of freedom,
but by recognition of their inherent belonging in the community. Meillassoux justaposes kin with
aliens, arguing that the fundamental distinction between the two is a question not of blood relation
but of congeneration or growing up together.11

However, although Kopytoff and Miers and Meillassoux agree that slavery is the opposite of kinship,
one of their most significant disagreements centres on the potential for movement between the two
states. Kopytoff and Miers posit a slavery-to-kinship continuum in African societies, upon which all
individuals can be situated, and along which there is potential for certain social circumscribed
movement.12 Kinship and slavery are thus not seen as two uniform, discrete categories: although the
two extremities on the spectrum may be polar opposites, there are many degrees of marginality
between the two. By contrast, Meillassoux is deeply critical of this notion, and instead views slavery
and kinship as so strictly antinomic and not part of the same spectrum, rejecting the possibility for
gradual movement between the two.13

However, while Miers and Kopytoffs continuum model is not perfect, many of Meillassouxs criticisms
of it fail to take account of the subtleties of their argument. One of the primary criticisms of Miers and
Kopytoffs slavery-to-kinship continuum is that it equates slavery with family relations, thus risking

7
Kopytoff & Miers 1997, p. 17.
8
Ibid., pp. 17-18.
9
Struggles in 20th Century Igboland, p. 4.
10
Meillassoux 1992, p. 10.
11
Ibid., pp. 23-25.
12
Kopytoff & Miers 1997, pp. 23-24.
13
Meillassoux 1992, p. 14.

Page 3
becoming apologist or presenting African slavery as benign: Meillassoux claims that seeing slavery as
an extension of kinship, as he puts it, inadvertently endorses an apologist ideology in which the
slave-owner tries to pass off those he exploits as his beloved children.14 However, Miers and
Kopytoffs argument does not imply that slavery is a form of kinship, but rather that the two are
antithetical extremes of social relation, but with a number of other intermediate statuses available
between the two. To acknowledge that absolute belonging and absolute marginalisation are not the
only available statuses, but that there are other available positions in society on a sliding scale
between the two, is not to imply that the two are intrinsically the same. Kopytoff and Miers
themselves pre-emptively address this criticism when they write that the spectrum should not be
misunderstood to mean that a slave in Africa was always a quasi kinsman and never a chattel, but
that both of these positions lay along a spectrum, where the two ends represent polar opposites but
the centre represents a more ambiguous shading of marginality.15 Furthermore, they point out that,
while kinship metaphors used about slavery or other power relations in the West are, indeed, usually
intended to emphasise affection and nurture, in Africa they more often express authority and
hierarchy.16

One of the key flaws in Meillassouxs argument against the slavery-to-kinship continuum is an
oversimplified view of kinship. His assertion that there are no intermediate states between kinship
and marginality denies not only the existence of partially-integrated slaves, but also of inequalities in
kinship structures. Essentially, he argues that kinship relations are based upon a codified expression
of the common development of men relative to each other, whereby men essentially pay into the
shared pool of resources during their productive life, and are therefore entitled to take from this pool
in order to feed their young children, or sustain themselves in old age. It is this closed system, which
can be penetrated only by birth, which apparently prevents any possibility of integration for the
slave.17 The slaves status, for Meillassoux, is characterised by a denial of the right to paternity.18
However, this idealised view of egalitarian kinship relations centred on the father-son relationship,
describes only the position of relatively privileged, able-bodied men within a society. It fails to consider
the differing position of wives brides brought in from outside the kinship are penetrating the closed
system through a means other than birth, but this is not accounted for and of marginalised kin such
as illegitimate children, orphans, daughters who are to be married outside the kin group, or poor or

14
Ibid., p. 15.
15
Kopytoff & Miers 1997, pp. 23-24.
16
See ibid., pp. 23-25; Kopytoff 1982, p. 215.
17
Meillassoux 1992, p. 25.
18
Ibid., pp. 27, 35.

Page 4
infirm relations. Ultimately, the marginality of an individual in society will be determined by their age,
gender, wealth, and so on, and not simply by their status as slave or free.

If we follow Meillassoux in defining slavery in opposition to the position of the father figures who are
most central to the majority of kinship structures, then it is easy to produce a dichotomy. However,
the picture blurs when we compare the status and livelihoods of, for example, a free and a slave wife.
From colonial records of the 1900 case of Beydy Couloubaly, we see the difficulty of formal or legal
distinction between these two categories. The initial difficulty of the colonial officials in deducing
whether Couloubalys three wives were in fact free wives or his slaves is understandable; however,
what is even more striking is the continued blurring of these two categories once they had judged that
all three women had been initially bought as slaves. As a slave wife who had borne her masters
children was not considered saleable in local customs, the French assumed that this meant that she
was free; in fact, she and her children were still considered slaves, just with slightly different rights
in recognition of the steps they had taken along the continuum towards integration as kin.19
Furthermore, once the colonial authorities recognised the emancipation of the two women who had
still been slaves (according to their understanding) at the time of their escape, they stated that their
case was now a concern for the divorce courts.20 This would seem to suggest that these women were
considered wives like any others, but with the added feature of their slavery, emphasising the
ambiguity of the distinction between free and slave wives. This emphasises the importance of
comparing slaves to their free counterparts, rather than to the social ideal of the position accorded
to the most privileged men in society. Miers and Kopytoffs model of degrees of marginality and the
movement along a continuum are thus much more useful for understanding this case than
Meillassouxs rigid insistence that slavery is always the polar opposite of kinship.

Miers and Kopytoff note that slaves note that their edited volume contains no case studies of outsiders
who begin as slaves and are fully incorporated as kin within a single generation; rather, they gradually
acquire extra formal rights and/or informal emotional ties within the group which move them slightly
further from absolute marginality. Only over several generations can this lead to integration as kin
within the masters society (as suggested by the case above, where slaves became unsaleable if they
had kinship ties to their master, but remained slaves). Meillassoux does, in fact, recognise that it was
possible in many societies for aliens to begin in a new society as slaves and become integrated over
the course of several generations; however, he essentially excludes such cases from his definition of
slavery, writing that in a non-slave society the position of children of alien origin gradually becomes

19
The Beydy Couloubaly Petition, p. 2.
20
Ibid., p. 3.

Page 5
comparable to that of the children of other families whose genealogical roots rarely go back further
than five generations. At the end of this period, re-absorption has been completed.21 This seems to
suggest that a community cannot be called a slave society if it contains outsiders who retain
marginalised status throughout their lifetime, and pass on some portion of their marginality to their
descendants, provided that this marginality is sufficiently reduced so as to disappear after a century
or more. In fact, the absorption that he is describing is precisely what Miers and Kopytoff mean by
integration, or people moving along the slavery-to-kinship continuum both within and across several
generations. Meillassouxs rejection of this integration as a part of slavery is essentially based upon
a self-fulfilling definition in which anyone who can hope for their ancestors to be integrated is not
truly part of a slave society (however much they are seen as a slave by that society, and however
numerous the slaves within that society), and can thus be excluded from his description of slavery as
a social institution.

Meillassoux thus seems to object to Miers and Kopytoffs idea of a continuum partly on the basis of a
belief that they see all forms of slavery as fundamentally similar to kinship something which they
firmly state is not the case and partly stemming from his own very narrow view of what counts as a
slave society. This latter point is rooted in his understanding of slavery as a primarily economic
institution, which will be explored below.

SLAVERY, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Along with the idea of slavery as the opposite of freedom, Miers and Kopytoff also reject the
simplified image of the slave as a commodity, to be bought and sold, who is thus the property of
another individual. Meillassoux initially appears to agree with aspects of this position: both works note
that not all slaves are considered saleable, whereas some people deemed free may be sold in certain
contexts.22 Meillassoux elaborates on this by stressing that the legal understanding of slaves as
possessions and thus objects not only denies their status as human beings (the very basis of their value
to their masters), but also because it defines them only in terms of the individual, one-to-one
relationship of ownership, rather than in relation to the wider society.23 Miers and Kopytoff,
meanwhile, argue that the notion of property is different in each culture, and that African kin groups
are thought to have certain ownership rights over all their members: they therefore argue that we

21
Meillassoux 1992, p. 32.
22
Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 3, 10; Meillassoux 1992, p. 11.
23
Meillassoux 1992, p. 10.

Page 6
should use the notion of rights-in-persons when discussing African cultures, and analyse how these
rights differed between slaves and kin in each particular society.24

However, on closer examination, the relationship between slavery and economics, and the role of the
notion of property, form another key site of disagreement. Meillassoux is deeply critical of Miers and
Kopytoffs notion of rights-in-persons, arguing that it is ethnocentrically based upon the strict
application of Western notions of law and of liberal economics, and specifically upon the European
legal notions of usus, fructus and abusus, which delineate different forms of claim to property. He
insinuates that Miers and Kopytoffs recognition of the importance of accumulating dependants in
many African societies is an espousal of conservative classical economics.25

However, the only economic principle in Miers and Kopytoffs reasoning seems to be that many
individuals and groups are interested in increasing their financial, political and social capital, which I
would argue is hardly a Eurocentric or economics-centred perspective. Furthermore, they emphasise
and explain the many non-economic uses to which slaves are put in various societies, whether as
reproducers, political supporters, military protection, or status symbols. By contrast, Meillassouxs
argument is centred entirely on the economic basis of slavery, ignoring these other factors his
argument thus excludes many forms of slavery which do not fit this definition. Furthermore, it is based
on a uniquely Marxist views of class, taken from models which are based upon observation of
capitalist, nineteenth-century European societies. It is therefore Meillassoux, rather than Miers and
Kopytoff, who is more Eurocentric and narrowly economic in focus.

Despite recognising that not all slaves are saleable and that the relationship of possession does not
sufficiently recognise the structural, societally-defined position of the slave, Meillassoux continues to
view slavery as a mode of production, in which slaves are the primordial form of property26 and
their function is always primarily economic. Meillassoux recognises social, political and other factors
only as secondary and almost incidental aspects of these relations: where slaves are not used as
producers, he argues that they are nonetheless primarily intended to increase societys overall
productive capacity for example, by undertaking wars to capture further slaves.27 Meillassouxs
insistence on the economic basis of all slavery leads him to claim that slavery exists only where there
is a class of slaves and the whole economy is thus based upon a slave system. He states that so-
called patriarchal slavery should not be identified as a class relation As I see it, this is not, strictly

24
Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 7-12.
25
Meillassoux 1992, pp. 13-14.
26
Lovejoy 1991, p. 138.
27
Meillassoux 1992, p. 15.

Page 7
speaking, slavery, but rather an isolated phenomenon of subservience.28 This seems to include any
society where slaves are kept by small family groups, but where this is a widespread phenomenon
sanctioned by the whole of society, such as the Gando of northern Benin, where a widespread cultural
and social phenomenon saw many families taking one or two slave children.29 In fact, Meillassoux is
correct that such apparently individual relationships are actually defined structurally in relation to the
entire society and kin group within which each family is operating.

Meillassoux thus offers a self-fulfilling definition in which any society without class relations, similar
to the European economic structures observed by Marx, cannot be seen as a slave society. Elsewhere
he claims that captives only truly become slaves if they permanently free from labour a stable class
of masters.30 Klein notes that Meillassouxs writings on slavery centre on the concept of mode of
production, but this concept is never precisely defined.31 Meillassoux thus limits the term slavery
only to slave systems that is, societies where the whole economy and mode of production is based
on slavery. The category of slave system is useful in understanding the ways in which slaves can be
put to economic use; however, to recognise it as the only possible form of slave society ignores the
numerous other ways in which slaves can form part of a societys structure. Miers and Kopytoff,
meanwhile, describe many of these other possible forms of slave society, and their notions of rights-
in-persons and the slavery-to-kinship continuum seem to better account for this variety than
Meillassouxs somewhat limited view.

Quite apart from Meillassouxs rejection of slavery which occurs in a familial setting, there are still
many different forms of complex slave society evident in African history, only some of which placed
all slaves in a single, economically-directed stratum at the bottom of society. There are many instances
of African societies in which slaves functioned as a political or military elite, or as valued skilled
workers, instead of or in addition to being used as basic economic producers.32 Miers and Kopytoff
argue that many such slaves were in fact given these positions of authority precisely because of their
slave status, as their situation as detached outsiders meant that they had no competing loyalties, and
were also less of a threat to their masters position than his kin, particularly in the case of royal
families.33 This is convincing, and demonstrates how well-adapted Miers and Kopytoffs idea of

28
Meillassoux 1992, p. 19.
29
Yesterdays Slaves, 2011.
30
Ibid., p. 34.
31
Klein 1978, p. 603.
32
Examples include the tonjonw, elite slave warriors in the Segu Bambara (see Roberts 1980); the Amazons,
hundreds of slave women who acted as the Dahomian kings wives and palace guards (Law 1993); or the use
of Hausa slaves as specialised grooms in Oyo (Law 1975). These were not isolated examples; many others are
offered and discussed by Miers and Kopytoff themselves.
33
Miers & Kopytoff 1977, pp. 28, 46-47.

Page 8
institutionalised marginality is to explaining a wide variety of slave societies, unlike Meillassouxs
more limited economic vision.

Miers and Kopytoff go on to argue that we should distinguish between slaves who form a single, low
social stratum, like those envisaged by Meillassoux, and those whose slave status can be regarded as
placing them on the side of the society rather than at the bottom.34 This is less convincing: although
it is true that in such systems, slaves may have worldly power, wealth or privileges which are not open
to some free individuals, this does not mean that their slave status does not also give them a lower
social status at least when compared to free individuals with a similar degree of wealth and power,
and perhaps even when compared to some free individuals whose social standing may be lower than
theirs in other ways. Miers acknowledges this intersection of different types of inequality in a later
work, writing that successful slaves might be better off than the free in terms of lifestyle, although
they could never be their social equals.35 In complex societies where there were groups of both
labouring and elite slaves, there was certainly a more complex form of social stratification than in
societies where they simply formed a single stratum at the bottom of society, but we must be careful
not to misinterpret this as meaning that slaves formed a parallel but equal social organisation at the
side of society. If slave status is defined by marginality and by lack of protection by kin, then even a
slave who becomes the mother of a king can never truly have the same social position as her free
counterpart.

Despite these weaknesses, Miers and Kopytoffs recognition of the multiple ways in which slaves can
be built into social structures offers a much stronger explanation of the huge variety found within the
institution of slavery in Africa than Meillassouxs limited view of slavery as a kind of proto-proletariat,
used only for its labour and freeing a whole class of masters from the obligation to work. Together
with their explanation of how and why many societies allow for the gradual reduction of marginality
and integration as kin, this offers a much more subtle picture of the social and political foundations of
slavery, where Meillassoux considers only its economic functions. Some reviewers have criticised
Miers and Kopytoff for downplaying the economic functions of slavery too much; and indeed, we must
be careful not to claim that it was always a primarily social institution, but to recognise that it fulfilled
different functions in different societies.36 However, Miers and Kopytoff were writing against a
tradition which paid little or no attention to the social and political position of slaves, assuming them
to derive their unique status from a definition as property. Their more socially-based model of the

34
Ibid., p. 41.
35
Miers 2003, p. 5.
36
Klein 1978, p. 606; Kolchin 1986, pp. 772-773.

Page 9
institutionalisation of marginality and the lack of protection that comes from kin helps us to make
sense of slavery in contexts where slaves are used for a variety of functions, including as labourers.

BEYOND KOPYTOFF & MIERS AND MEILLASSOUX: REACHING FOR A PROCESSUAL FRAMEWORK

Overall, therefore, Miers and Kopytoffs understanding of slavery offers a more useful framework than
Meillassouxs for understanding the complexities of social, political and economic relations in a wide
variety of slave societies. However, it is important to note that neither Slavery in Africa nor The
Anthropology of Slavery actually sets out to find a universal definition of slavery. Miers and Kopytoff
explicitly reject such an aim, calling it a fruitless effort in semantics; instead, their initial stated aim
is to offer a framework within which these institutions [in various societies in their edited volume]
can be understood and the full range of variations be seen.37 By the end of their introduction,
however, this aim has shifted somewhat, as they claim to wish to deconstruct the term slavery and
suggest the search for an entirely new vocabulary to express the relations they have been describing.38
Meillassoux, meanwhile, states that his focus is upon the definition of slavery, which must be
generally accepted if a real discussion is to take place.39

The difference in the stated aims of the two works invites an analysis of how well each has adhered
to these aims, and what gaps are therefore left to be filled by future analysis. Their conflict of opinion
also raises the question of whether we need a universal definition of slavery, and what uses such a
definition could serve. While Meillassoux claims to offer a definition of slavery, in fact his analysis
repeatedly shows itself to be primarily concerned with the genesis of slavery,40 as he tries to
formulate a universal pattern for how African domestic societies developed into slave systems,
concluding that the genesis of slavery is to be found in the transition to a market economy and
particularly in Africas integration into world trade.41 Quite apart from the remarkable degree of
passivity which this idea attributes to African domestic societies, which in Meillassouxs vision seem
to represent an unspoilt state of nature, it is necessarily problematic to try to retrieve the origins of
slavery from the distant past, much less to reach universal truths about its emergence across the
whole of Africa.42

37
Miers & Kopytoff 1977, p. 7.
38
Ibid., pp. 77-78.
39
Meillassoux 1992, p. 22.
40
Ibid., pp. 14-15, 20, 36.
41
Ibid., p. 40.
42
Klein 1978, p. 608 ; Kopytoff 1982, p. 224.

Page 10
However, it should also be considered whether, if we take Meillassouxs stated aim to provide a
definition of slavery at face value, we agree that this is a worthy pursuit, given Miers and Kopytoffs
insistence that such an exercise is futile. First, it is important to note the pressing need for a formal,
workable definition of slavery in international law, as current ambiguities may be hindering legal
action against contemporary slavery.43 However, in the context of historical study, a framework for
understanding slavery as a varied historical process, which manifested differently in various places
and at different times, is likely to prove more useful than a universal, ahistorical and totalising
definition of slavery as a thing, although Miers and Kopytoff do not offer a convincing argument that
it is impossible to reach such a framework through continued use of the word slavery.

Miers and Kopytoffs notions of rights-in-person and a slavery-to-kinship continuum go some way to
offering such a framework; however, they fall at the last hurdle, because they share with Meillassoux
a belief that there must necessarily be something unique about African slavery, a characteristic which
is shared by slavery across the continent but which is not found elsewhere in the world. Cooper argues
that it is useful to speak of slavery, but it is not useful to speak of African slavery, as if a form of
slavery were co-terminous with the continent.44 However, Miers and Kopytoff do just that,
repeatedly stating that the slavery-to-kinship continuum is a unique feature of African slavery,
without offering evidence for this claim. This tendency towards essentialising African slavery can best
be combatted by universal comparisons and collaboration between scholars who continue to be
limited by regional boundaries in analysing slavery, in order to create a model for understanding the
diversity of these forms of servitude across human history.

43
Miers 2003, p. 14.
44
Cooper 1979, p. 106.

Page 11
 Bibliography

Secondary sources

Casiro, E. S., Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia (Review), Philippine Studies, 34
(1986), 234-39.

Cooper, F., The Problem of Slavery in African Studies, The Journal of Africa History, 20:1 (1979), 103-
125.

Fage, J. D., Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History, The Journal of African
History, 10:3 (1969), 393-404.

Klein, M. A., The Study of Slavery in Africa, The Journal of African History, 19:4 (1978), 599-609.

Kolchin, P., Some Recent Works on Slavery Outside the United States: An American
Perspective, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 28:4 (1986), 767-777.

Kopytoff, I., Slavery, Annual Review of Anthropology, 11 (1982), 207-230.

Last, M., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Review), Africa, 49:1 (1979),
82-83.

Law, R., 'A West African Cavalry State: The Kingdom of Oyo', The Journal of African History, 16:1 (1975),
1-15.

Law, R., 'The 'Amazons' of Dahomey', Paideuma, 39 (1993), 245-260.

Lovejoy, P. E., Millers Vision of Meillassoux, The International Journal of African Historical Studies,
24:1 (1991), 133-145.

Meillassoux, C., The Anthropology of Slavery: the Womb of Iron and Gold (London: The Athone Press,
1992).

Miers, S. & I. Kopytoff, (eds.), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).

Miers, S., Slavery: A Question of Definition, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave
Studies, 24:2 (2003), 1-16.

Page 12
Roberts, R. L., Production and Reproduction of Warrior States, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, 13:3 (1980), 389-419.

Primary sources

The Beydy Couloubaly Petition, 1900.

Struggles in 20th Century Igboland: Interviews 19892000.

Yesterdays Slaves. Democracy & Ethnicity in Benin (2011).

Page 13