1 - Introduction:

Summary

Oral data on African slavery are a rich source of information, especially when one is trying to enrich historical interpretations with studies about the lives of real people. This introduction presents three different kinds of oral sources. The first is oral traditions from Ghana and the River Gambia. The expression oral tradition denotes both the content of what is transmitted and the process of its transmission. The second category of sources consists of historical tales from Cameroon, Benin, and Togo. The third group presents a set of interviews from Southern Tanzania, Kano (northern Nigeria), and Senegal, and provides insight into the ways in which the research encounter shapes the production of historical knowledge. Researchers must become familiar with the etiquette of the society they study. They have to learn how to formulate questions in ways that sound neither offensive nor intrusive.