Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa

228 Pages·2012·4.547 MB·English

by  Benjamin N. Lawrance, Richard L. Roberts (eds.)

Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES SERIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN AND ALLEN ISAACMAN
Books in this series are published with support from the Ohio University National Resource
Center for African Studies.
David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon.
Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990
Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of Struggle and the End of Apartheid
Gary Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999
Stephanie Newell, The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku
Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti: A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya in Senegal, 1853–
1913
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern
Africa
Moses Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression
Emily Burrill, Richard Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and
Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the
Slave Trade to Colonial Rule
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa
James R. Brennan, Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women
and Children
Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake
Law and the Experience of Women and Children
Edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance and
Richard L. Roberts
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
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© 2012 by Ohio University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Trafficking in slavery’s wake : law and the experience of women and children / edited by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard
L. Roberts.
p. cm. — (New African histories)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8214-2002-7 (pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4418-4
1. Human trafficking—Africa. 2. Slave trade—Africa—History. 3. Slavery—Law and
legislation. 4. Slavery—History. 5. Women slaves—Africa. 6. Child slaves—Africa
I. Lawrance, Benjamin N. (Benjamin Nicholas) II. Roberts, Richard L., 1949–
HQ281.T7179 2012
306.3’62096—dc23
2012027776
Contents
Preface
Introduction Contextualizing Trafficking in Women and Children in Africa
BENJAMIN N. LAWRANCE AND RICHARD L. ROBERTS
PART I:TRAFFICKING IN COLONIAL AFRICA
Chapter 1 Trafficking and Reenslavement The Social Vulnerability of Women and Children in
Nineteenth-Century East Africa
ELISABETH MCMAHON
Chapter 2 “Without the Slave Trade, No Recruitment” From Slave Trading to “Migrant
Recruitment” in the Lower Congo, 1830–90
JELMER VOS
Chapter 3 The End of Slavery, “Crises” over Trafficking, and the Colonial State in the French
Soudan
RICHARD L. ROBERTS
Chapter 4 “Under the Guise of Guardianship and Marriage” Mobilizing Juvenile and Female
Labor in the Aftermath of Slavery in Kayes, French Soudan, 1900–1939
MARIE RODET
Chapter 5 Sex Trafficking, Prostitution, and the Law in Colonial British West Africa, 1911–43
CARINA RAY
Chapter 6 Islamic Law and Trafficking in Women and Children in the Indian Ocean World
BERNARD K. FREAMON
PART II: CONTEMPORARY ANTITRAFFICKING IN AFRICA AND BEYOND
Chapter 7 Trafficking and Human Exploitation in International Law, with Special Reference to
Women and Children in Africa
JEAN ALLAIN
Chapter 8 Documenting Child Slavery with Personal Testimony The Origins of
Antitrafficking NGOs and Contemporary Neo-abolitionism
BENJAMIN N. LAWRANCE
Chapter 9 Child-Trafficking Policymaking between Africa and Europe
MARGARET AKULLO
Chapter 10 The Story of Elsie A Case Study of Trafficking in Contemporary South Africa
SUSAN KRESTON
Chapter 11 Ranking States Tracking the State Effect in West African Antitrafficking
Campaigns
LIZA STUART BUCHBINDER
Afterword The Paradox of Women, Children, and Slavery
KEVIN BALES AND JODY SARICH
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
Preface
Reports and images of human trafficking are appearing with ever greater regularity on
television, magazines, and the Internet. Collectively they suggest that we are in the midst of an
epidemic of trafficking. The most recent Trafficking in Persons Report from the U.S. State
Department heralds the past decade’s advances against the scourge of human trafficking,
especially on the international scene. Indeed, the past decade has witnessed significant
international advances in the fight against human trafficking, and progress has been made in
combating human trafficking in many places throughout the world.
But it would be profoundly misguided to buy into the public and popular rhetoric that
portrays human trafficking as a new phenomenon. Contemporary human trafficking is a modern
rearticulation of an age-old human story. It emerges from the same deep social inequalities that
render people vulnerable, poor, illiterate, and desperate. It occupies the same social and
economic space in which reside others who are sufficiently wealthy, powerful, and eager to
use and abuse the labor and bodies of others. This relationship, generating a persistent demand
for slaves and submissive dependents, has done so for millennia. The sooner we understand
the historical antecedents of one of the greatest humanitarian challenges confronting us in the
twenty-first century, the greater our chance at combating it.
Our interest in human trafficking grows out of a shared commitment to explore historical
and contemporary abuses of human rights and human beings and a shared commitment to
promote conversations between those who study the past and those whose are engaged with the
contemporary world. We strongly believe that historians, legal scholars, anthropologists,
social scientists, prosecutors, criminologists, and human rights activists have a great deal to
gain from one another by fostering such a conversation across disciplines and across historical
periods.
We place a premium on scholarship that engages with pressing social and humanitarian
issues. And this volume originated from precisely such an endeavor. It began as two-day
international conference held at Stanford University’s Humanities Center in 2009. This
conference was the tenth in an ongoing series called the “Law and Colonialism Symposium.”
The Law and Colonialism Symposia have encouraged rigorous conversations across
disciplines and time periods resulting in volumes addressing contemporary and historical
approaches to major legal and human rights issues.
Africa, 2010
Attending the 2009 conference were scholars from Africa, Europe, and the Americas; they
represented various disciplines including history, anthropology, criminology, legal studies, and
literary studies. We would like to express our appreciation to all the participants at this
conference. As we contemplated the geographical coverage of our volume, we also
approached several other scholars and activists. Susan Kreston, Jelmer Vos, Liza Buchbinder,
Jody Sarich, and Kevin Bales all agreed to write chapters for this volume that have added
considerable depth and breadth to the core of the original participants. We certainly appreciate
all their efforts.
We wish to express our appreciation to the Center for African Studies, particularly Diane
Jakubowski and Kim Rapp, also the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, the
Stanford Humanities Center, and the Stanford University History Department for financial and
logistical support for this conference. We also wish to thank various individuals who have
provided expertise and support as this conference took the shape of an edited volume,
including cartographer Don Pirius, Hugh Alexander at the Images Department at the U.K.
National Archives, the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, series editors Jean Allman and
Allen Isaacman for their scholarly guidance, and Editorial Director Gillian Berchowitz and her

team at Ohio University Press.
We remain committed to fostering productive conversations among those with different
disciplinary orientations but with shared interests in making sense of the complex interplay of
social, economic, cultural, and political forces that shape both the past and the present.