Post-abolition Slaveholding in the Gold Coast: Slave Mistresses of Coastal Fante, 1807-1874

This history of slaveholding by women in nineteenth-century coastal Fante-the central section of the seaboard of modern Ghana-examines the ways in which the gender pattern of slave acquisition changed with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, beginning from the 1800s. Dr. Adu-Boahen discusses the ways in which abolition significantly altered the West African economic regime and social structure and created the enabling conditions which enhanced women's capacity for agency, economic autonomy and upward mobility. A remarkable feature of these changes was increased female slave acquisition. He discusses the increasing women's use of slaves for profitable economic ventures which created avenues for wealth creation and property accumulation. The book emphasizes the ways in which women exercised agency not as slaves, as the bulk of the literature on slavery in Africa does, but as slave owners and in many cases entrepreneurs comparable to prominent men and sometimes even excelling such men. The book analyses patterns of female slaveholding and use in terms of women of all classes-aristocratic, affluent, commoner and even ex-slave.