African Women in the Atlantic World

Property, Vulnerability & Mobility, 1660-1880

An article by Mariana P. Candido and Adam Jones

Get an insight into the importance of the research in African Women in the Atlantic World, straight from the editors, Mariana P. Candido and Adam Jones

African Women in the Atlantic World. Property, Vulnerability and Mobility, 1660-1880 brings together the work of junior and senior scholars from Africa, North and South America and Europe examining African women’s roles in West and West Central Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition.

Much of what has been written about the history of women and gender relations in the Atlantic world has come from historians with only limited knowledge of African history. Bearing this in mind, Mariana Candido and Adam Jones have assembled 11 case studies on Africa and produced a volume located at the intersection of two fields: the history of the Atlantic world and that of women in Africa. They move the focus away from unidirectional and Eurocentric interpretations while linking commercial / economic history to social history.

Stressing the importance of women in both African and Atlantic history, the contributions critically examine prevailing assumptions concerning women’s property (wealth in persons as well as in land and in things), their vulnerability in terms of sexual relations, violence and potential enslavement and their mobility both within Africa and across the Atlantic. These hitherto neglected perspectives make the volume indispensable reading for scholars and students interested in African-Atlantic societies in the centuries preceding the colonial partition of Africa.

The chapters demonstrate the exciting nature of research on women in Atlantic Africa before the Berlin Conference, exploring factors which fostered or restricted women’s mobility, both spatially and socially, as well as women’s economic power and its limitations. The contributors have employed a wide variety of sources, ranging from oral interviews to population censuses. The resulting African perspectives on Atlantic history shift attention towards a more people-centred kind of narrative, highlighting ways in which African women participated in economic, social and political spaces in Atlantic coast societies.

Building upon earlier research, the contributors analyse how women in Africa used the opportunities offered by the Atlantic commerce to negotiate their social and economic positions. From a more general point of view, the volume suggests methodological approaches which may be useful in understanding women’s insecurity and vulnerability in changing societies.

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MARIANA P. CANDIDO is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame; ADAM JONES recently retired as Professor of African History and Culture History at the University of Leipzig.