Slavery, Power and Human Dignity: Africa and the Global History of Bondage

Description

Slavery is often presented as a single story, but its history spans many societies, regions and centuries. Slavery, Power and Human Dignity examines systems of bondage across Africa and the wider world, including African institutions, the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic trades, European colonial expansion, resistance, abolition and enduring legacies. 

Drawing carefully on historical records and modern scholarship, Kawsu Jaiteh distinguishes documented evidence from estimates and contested interpretations. The book neither minimises suffering nor turns history into a competition between civilisations. Instead, it asks how power allowed human beings to control, exploit and dehumanise others and how enslaved people resisted, survived and asserted their dignity. 

Accessible, comparative and evidence-led, this book offers readers a broader understanding of slavery’s global history while keeping the human person at the centre.