Primary Sources On This Website

Primary Sources Elsewhere

  • Almeida, Manuel de. Some Records of Ethiopia, 1593-1646, being Extracts from The History of High Ethiopia or Abassia by Manoel de Almeida. Translated and edited by C.F. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford. London: Hakluyt Society, 1954.
  • Alvares, Francisco. The Prester John of the Indies: a True Relation of the Lands of the Prester John, being the Narrative of the Portuguese Embassy to Ethiopia in 1520, volume 1. Translated by Lord Stanley of Alderley, revised and edited by C.E. Beckingham and G.W.B. Huntingford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1961.
  • Atkins, John. A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies in His Majesty’s Ships, the Swallow and Weymouth: Describing the Several Islands and Settlements, Viz : Madeira, the Canaries, Cape de Verde, Sierra Leone, Sesthos, Cape Apollonia, Cabo Corfo, and Others on the Guinea Coast; Barbadoes, Jamaica, Andc. in the West Indies: the Colour, Diet, Languages, Habits, Manners, Customs, and Religions of the Respective Natives, and Inhabitants : with Remarks on the Gold, Ivory, and Slave Trade: and on the Winds, Tides and Currents of the Several Coasts. London: Routledge, 2013. [originally published 1735]
  • Bosman, Willem. A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coasts. … Illustrated with Several Cutts. Written Originally in Dutch by William Bosman, … To Which Is Prefix’d, an Exact Map of the Whole Coast of Guinea. London: printed for James Knapton, and Dan. Midwinter, 1705.
  • Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Edited by Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. See especially al-Bakri (p.62-87) and Ibn Battuta (p.279-303).
  • Ethiopian Itineraries circa 1400-1524, Including Those Collected by Alessandro Zorzi at Venice in the Years 1519-1524. Edited by O.G.S. Crawford. Hakluyt Society, Second Series, no. 109. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
  • Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century. 2nd ed. London: Rex Collings, 1975.
  • Legacies of Slavery in Niger, directed by Lala Goma (2019).
  • Haile, Getatchew. “From The Markets of Damot to that of Bärara: A Note on Slavery in Medieval Ethiopia.” Paideuma 27 (1981): 173–180.
  • Hall, Trevor P. Before Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading from West Africa to Iberian Territories, 1513-1526. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015.
  • Hunwick, John O., and Eve Troutt Powell, eds. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002.
  • Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325-1354: Volumes I-V. Translated by C.F. Beckingham and H.A.R. Gibb. The Hakluyt Society, Second Series. London: Routledge, 2016. 
  • Irwin, Graham W. Africans Abroad: A Documentary History of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean During the Age of Slavery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
  • Leo Africanus. The History and Description of Africa. 3 vols. Edited by Robert Brown. London: Hakluyt Society, 1896.
  • Lewis, Bernard, ed. Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. See especially 2:22-27 (Mahmud Ka’ti, The Pilgrimage of Mansa Musa).
  • Lopez, Robert, and Irving Raymond, eds. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. See especially doc. 17 (Ibn Hawqal, Book of Routes and Kingdoms, p.52-54).
  • McDonald, Kevin P. “Appendix I: Slave Trade Ships in Madagascar, 1663-1747.” In Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World, 178-183. University of California Press, 2015.
  • Peabody, Sue, and Keila Grinberg, eds. Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s 2007. See especially doc. 1 (The Code Noir, 1685).
  • Pierce, R.H. “A Sale of an Alodian Slave Girl: A Reexamination of Papyrus Strassburg Inv. 1404.” Symbolae Osloenses 70 (1995): 159-164.
  • Tegegne, Habtamu. “The Edict of King Gälawdéwos against the Illegal Slave Trade in Christians: Ethiopia, 1548.” The Medieval Globe 2 (2016): 73-114.
  • Westra, Piet and James Armstrong, Eds. Slave Trade with Madagascar: The Journals of the Cape Slaver Leijdsman, 1715. Cape Town, South Africa: Africana Publishers, 2006.

Selected Bibliography

  • Abir, Mordechai. Ethiopia and the Red Sea: The Rise and Decline of the Solomonic Dynasty and Muslim-European Rivalry in the Region. London: Frank Cass, 1980.
  • Alexander, J. “Islam, Archaeology and Slavery in Africa.” World Archaeology 33 (2001): 44-60.
  • Austen, Ralph A. “The Mediterranean Islamic Slave Trade out of Africa: A Tentative Census.” Slavery and Abolition 13, no. 1 (1992): 214-248. 
  • Barry, Boubacar. Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Bennett, Herman. African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
  • Bezemer, Dirk, Jutta Bolt, and Robert Lensink. “Slavery, Statehood, and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa.” World Development 57 (2014): 148-163.
  • Bialuschewski, Arne. “Pirates, Slavers, and the Indigenous Population in Madagascar, c. 1690-1715.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 38.3 (2005): 401–25.
  • Bouanga, Ayda. “Gold, Slaves, and Trading Routes in Southern Blue Nile (Abbay) Societies, Ethiopia, 13th–16th Centuries.” Northeast African Studies 17.2 (2017): 31–60.
  • Caldeira, Arlindo Manuel. “Learning the Ropes in the Tropics: Slavery and the Plantation System on the Island of São Tome.” African Economic History 39 (2011): 35-71.
  • Campbell, Gwyn. “East Africa in the Early Indian Ocean World Slave Trade: The Zanj Revolt Reconsidered.” In Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World, edited by Gwyn Cambpell, 275–303. Cham: Palgrave, 2016.
  • Connah, Graham. “Voyages in the Sahara: The Desert Trade with West Africa.” In Forgotten Africa : An Introduction to Its Archaeology, 108-111. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2004.
  • Demisse, Yonas Ashine. “Bringing the Slaves Back In: Captives and the Making and Unmaking of the Premodern Ethiopian State.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38.2 (2018): 261-279.
  • Diouf, Sylviane Anna, ed. Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies. Ohio University Press, 2003.
  • Duyvendak, J. J. L. China’s Discovery of Africa: Lectures Given at the University of London on January 22 and 23, 1947. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949.
  • Edwards, David N. “Slavery and Slaving in the Medieval and Post-Medieval Kingdoms of the Middle Nile.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 79-108. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • El Hamel, Chouki. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • Fauvelle-Aymar, François-Xavier. The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. See especially chapters 3, 4, and 30.
  • Ferreira, Roquinaldo. “Slaving and Resistance to Slaving in West Central Africa.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 132-162. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Filesi, Teobaldo. China and Africa in the Middle Ages, tr. David L. Morison. London: Frank Cass, Central Asian Research Centre, 1972. 
  • Finneran, Niall. “The Invisible Archaeology of Slavery in the Horn of Africa?” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 225-249. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Green, Toby. “Building Slavery in the Atlantic World: Atlantic Connections and the Changing Institution of Slavery in Cabo Verde, Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries.” Slavery & Abolition 32.2 (2011): 227-245.
  • Gronenborn, Detlef. “Kanem-Borno: A Brief Summary of the History and Archaeology of an Empire of the Central bilad al-sudan.” In West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Christopher DeCorse, 101-130. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2001.
  • Gutkind, Peter C W. “The Canoemen of the Gold Coast (Ghana). A Survey and an Exploration in Precolonial African Labour History.” Cahiers d’études africaines 29.3 (1989): 339–339.
  • Haour, Anne. “The Early Medieval Slave Trade of the Central Sahel: Archaeological and Historical Considerations.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 61-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Hawthorne, Walter. “The Production of Slaves Where There Was No State: The Guinea-Bissau Region, 1450-1815.” Slavery & Abolition 20.2 (1999): 97–124.
  • Hawthorne, Walter. “Nourishing a Stateless Society during the Slave Trade: The Rise of Balanta Paddy-Rice Production in Guinea-Bissau.” Journal of African History 42.1 (2001): 1-24.
  • Heywood, Linda M. “Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo: 1491-1800.” The Journal of African History 50, no. 1 (2009): 1–22.
  • Hunwick, John O. “Black Slaves in the Mediterranean World: Introduction to a Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora.” Slavery & Abolition 13, no. 1 (1992): 5–38.
  • Kusimba, Chapurukha. “Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa.” African Archaeological Review 21 (2004): 59-88.
  • Lane, Paul J. and Kevin C. MacDonald. “Introduction: Slavery, Social Revolutions, and Enduring Memories.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 1-22. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Lane, Paul J. “Slavery and Slave Trading in Eastern Africa: Exploring the Intersections of Historical Sources and Archaeological Evidence.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, ed. P.J. Lane and K.C. MacDonald, 281-314. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Lane, Paul J. “Slavery in Africa c.500-1500 CE: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 531-552. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Law, Robin. “Trade and Politics Behind the Slave Coast: The Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, 1500–1800.” Journal of African History 24. 3 (1983): 321–348.
  • Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. See especially chapters 1 and 2, p. 1-45.
  • Lowe, Kate. “The Lives of African Slaves and People of African Descent in Renaissance Europe,” in Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, edited by Joaneath Spicer, 13-34. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012.
  • MacEachern, Scott. “State Formation and Enslavement in the Southern Lake Chad Basin.” In West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Christopher DeCorse, 131-151. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2001.
  • Machado, Pedro. “Maritime Passages in the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
  • Manning, Patrick. Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. [reprint; original 1969]
  • Marcus, Harold G. History of Ethiopia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
  • Marshall, Lydia Wilson, Ed. The Archaeology of Slavery : A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014.
  • Mattingly, David, and Martin Sterry. “Zuwila and Fazzan in the Seventh to Tenth Centuries: The Emergence of a New Trading Center.” In The Aghlabids and their Neighbours: Art and Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa, edited by Glaire D. Anderson, Corisande Fenwick and Mariam Rosser-Owen, 551-572. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
  • Mattingly, David, Martin Sterry, and David N. Edwards. “The origins and development of Zuwīla, Libyan Sahara: an archaeological and historical overview of an ancient oasis town and caravan centre.” Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 50, no. 1 (2015): 27-75.
  • Newson, Linda A. & Susie Minchin. “Slave Mortality and African Origins: A View from Cartagena, Colombia, in the Early Seventeenth Century.” Slavery & Abolition 25.3 (2004): 18-43.
  • Nwokeji, G. Ugo. “Slavery in Non-Islamic West Africa, 1420-1820.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 111-131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Ofosu-Mensah, Emmanuel Ababio. “Mining in Ghano and its Connections with Mining in the Brazilian Diaspora.” The Extractive Industries and Society 4 (2017): 473-480.
  • Ojo, Olatunji. “‘Èmú’ (Àmúyá): The Yoruba Institution of Panyarring or Seizure for Debt.” African Economic History 35 (2007): 31–58.
  • Osborn, Emily Lynn. “Origins: The Founding of Baté, 1650-1750.” In Our New Husbands are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule, 23-48.Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011.
  • Pankhurst, Richard. A Social History of Ethiopia: the Northern and Central Highlands from Early Medieval Times to the Rise of Emperor Tewodros II. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992.
  • Pankhurst, Richard. The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century. Lawrence, KS: Red Sea Press, 1997.
  • Perry, Craig. “Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Western Indian Ocean World.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 123-152. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Pouwels, R. L. “Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean to 1800: Reviewing Relations in Historical Perspective.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 35 (2002): 385–425.
  • Ramos, Manuel João. “Ethiopia in the Geographical Representations of Mediaeval and Renaissance Europe.” In Cultures of the Indian Ocean, edited by Jessica Haller and C. Amaral, 44-54. Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses: Instituto Portugués de Museus, 1998.
  • Robertshaw, Peter and W.L. Duncan. “African Slavery: Archaeology and Decentralized Societies.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, 57-79. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
  • Savage, Elizabeth. “Berbers and Blacks: Ibāḍī Slave Traffic in Eighth-Century North Africa.” Journal of African History 33 (1992): 351–368. 
  • Savage, Elizabeth, ed. The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass, 1992.
  • Shumway, Rebecca. “Public Slavery in the Precolonial Gold Coast (Ghana).” Bulletin – Institute of Classical Studies 64.2 (2022): 80–91.
  • Sorentino, Sara-Maria. “So-Called Indigenous Slavery: West African Historiography and the Limits of Interpretation.” Postmodern Culture: An Electronic Journal of Interdisciplinary Criticism 30.3 (2020): np.
  • Spaulding, Jay. “Medieval Christian Nubia and the Islamic World: A Reconsideration of the Baqt Treaty.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 28 (1995): 577-594.
  • Staller, Jared. Converging on Cannibals : Terrors of Slaving in Atlantic Africa, 1509–1670. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019.
  • Thornton, John K. Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800. New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 1999.
  • Tolmacheva, Marina A. “Concubines on the Road: Ibn Battuta’s Slave Women.” In Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History, edited by Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain, 163-189. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Toru, Miura and John Edward Philips, eds. Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: a Comparative Study. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000.
  • Trimingham, S. “The Arab Geographers and the East African Coast.” In East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Syntheses in Pre-Colonial Times, ed. N. Chittick and R. Rotberg, 115-146. London; New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1975.
  • Vernet, T. “Slave trade and slavery on the Swahili coast (1500-1750).” In Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, ed. B. Mirzai, I.M. Montana, and P.E. Lovejoy, 37-76. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2009.
  • Walden, Justine. “Capuchins, Missionaries, and Slave Trading in Precolonial Kongo-Angola, West Central Africa (17th Century).” Journal of Early Modern History 26 (2022): 38-58.
  • Ware, Rudolph T., III. “Slavery in Islamic Africa, 1400-1800.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 81-110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Weber, Klaus. “Injection: Atlantic Slavery and Commodity Chains.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
  • Wheat, David. “The First Great Waves: African Provenance Zones for the Transatlantic Slave Trade to Cartagena de Indias, 1570-1640.” Journal of African History 52.1 (2011): 1-22.
  • Zeuske, Michael. “The Rise of Atlantic Slavery in the Americas.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.

Contributors

Carolyn Arena, Hannah Barker, Richard Eaton, Ky Greene, Paul Lane, Stan Mirvis, Kimberly Peloquin, Craig Perry, Henriette Rødland, Don Wyatt