Abolition, Economic Transition, Gender and Slavery: The Expansion of Women's Siavehoiding in Ghana, 1807-1874

Abstract

The British withdrawal from the Atlantic Slave Trade fostered the expansion, rather than retrenchment of slavery within Africa. It also spurred a shift in the pre-nineteenth-century gendered pattern of slave holding. This paper examines the extent to which radical economic changes altered the gendered structure of slave holding in post-abolition Ghana. It argues that the British prohibition liberalised slave holding conditions and resulted in a reconceptualisation of the value of slaves which breached the tradition of restricted female proprietorship of slaves, and also led to increased women's earning capacity, slave acquisition and use, as well as the scale of their holdings.