Summary

In Africa, slaves have been employed in many different ways: in mines and manufacturing; as concubines and domestics; as soldiers; as members of the administration or royal servants; as porters, stock boys, and paddlers of canoes; and as commercial agents. However, most enslaved men and women in many African contexts worked in agriculture in both decentralized and centralized political entities and in a variety of ways. These ranged from plantation systems, where members of the ruling class might employ hundreds, if not thousands, of slaves in their estates, to smallholder systems, where the slaves performed virtually the same activities and economic functions as lineage members and could hope to be (partially) assimilated in their masters’ society. Between—and within—these two poles, however, there were many different social settings in which many categories of slaves could exist side by side while experiencing dissimilar social positions and being exposed to different working conditions.