- Author
- Felicitas Maria Becker (UGent) and Michelle Liebst
- Organization
- Abstract
- Slaves, ex-slaves, and their descendants have taken multiple and complex routes toward emancipation in East Africa. Their experiences varied regionally, with status contests most clearly traceable in those areas where slavery had been most concentrated, especially on the coast. As scholars have established, the legal abolition of slavery did not lead directly to emancipation in East Africa, but it contributed to the quick erosion of slavery-based labor regimes around 1900. Ex-slaves pursued economic security and livelihoods through access to land and wage labor and sought to shed the stigma of slave origins by seeking religious affiliations, education, ethnic identities, and kinship ties. Routes to emancipation were highly gendered as female slaves within owners’ households lacked both political support and legal rights to their children. Moreover, male ex-slaves’ ambitions to assert their own patriarchal status by controlling women could be a major obstacle for ex-slave women’s search for emancipation. Although political independence in the 1960s encouraged the condemnation of slavery as an aberration from a different era, slavery-derived social differences linger, and people with a genealogy of slavery may face status implications in certain situations. Though East African societies, rural ones especially, are readily characterized as timelessly egalitarian, they struggle to this day with the legacy of slavery and incomplete emancipation.
- Keywords
- Islam, East Africa, Modern history, emancipation, post-slavery societies, Islam, Christian missions, British empire, slavery, East Africa, gender and slavery, abolition of slavery, self-emancipation
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Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8693663
- MLA
- Becker, Felicitas Maria, and Michelle Liebst. “Routes to Emancipation in East Africa.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, edited by Thomas Spear, Oxford University Press, 2022, doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.939.
- APA
- Becker, F. M., & Liebst, M. (2022). Routes to emancipation in East Africa. In T. Spear (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of African history. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.939
- Chicago author-date
- Becker, Felicitas Maria, and Michelle Liebst. 2022. “Routes to Emancipation in East Africa.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, edited by Thomas Spear. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.939.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- Becker, Felicitas Maria, and Michelle Liebst. 2022. “Routes to Emancipation in East Africa.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, ed by. Thomas Spear. New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.939.
- Vancouver
- 1.Becker FM, Liebst M. Routes to emancipation in East Africa. In: Spear T, editor. Oxford research encyclopedia of African history. New York: Oxford University Press; 2022.
- IEEE
- [1]F. M. Becker and M. Liebst, “Routes to emancipation in East Africa,” in Oxford research encyclopedia of African history, T. Spear, Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022.
@incollection{8693663,
abstract = {{Slaves, ex-slaves, and their descendants have taken multiple and complex routes toward emancipation in East Africa. Their experiences varied regionally, with status contests most clearly traceable in those areas where slavery had been most concentrated, especially on the coast. As scholars have established, the legal abolition of slavery did not lead directly to emancipation in East Africa, but it contributed to the quick erosion of slavery-based labor regimes around 1900. Ex-slaves pursued economic security and livelihoods through access to land and wage labor and sought to shed the stigma of slave origins by seeking religious affiliations, education, ethnic identities, and kinship ties. Routes to emancipation were highly gendered as female slaves within owners’ households lacked both political support and legal rights to their children. Moreover, male ex-slaves’ ambitions to assert their own patriarchal status by controlling women could be a major obstacle for ex-slave women’s search for emancipation. Although political independence in the 1960s encouraged the condemnation of slavery as an aberration from a different era, slavery-derived social differences linger, and people with a genealogy of slavery may face status implications in certain situations. Though East African societies, rural ones especially, are readily characterized as timelessly egalitarian, they struggle to this day with the legacy of slavery and incomplete emancipation.}},
author = {{Becker, Felicitas Maria and Liebst, Michelle}},
booktitle = {{Oxford research encyclopedia of African history}},
editor = {{Spear, Thomas}},
isbn = {{9780190277734}},
keywords = {{Islam,East Africa,Modern history,emancipation,post-slavery societies,Islam,Christian missions,British empire,slavery,East Africa,gender and slavery,abolition of slavery,self-emancipation}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{35}},
publisher = {{Oxford University Press}},
title = {{Routes to emancipation in East Africa}},
url = {{http://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.939}},
year = {{2022}},
}
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