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5 - Oral Accounts of Slave-Master Relations from Cameroon Noncentralized and Centralized Polities (1750–1950)

from Part One - Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2013

By
E. S. D. Fomin
Edited by
Alice Bellagamba ,
Sandra E. Greene  and
Martin A. Klein
Alice Bellagamba
Affiliation:
University of Milan-Bicocca
Sandra E. Greene
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Martin A. Klein
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

The Cameroon coast occupies a big portion of the Bight of Biafra. Between the fifteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries, this was one of the major regions of Atlantic slave exports. This chapter shows that oral accounts can provide useful details on slave-master relationships and life in slavery in both the non-centralized and centralized polities. The first part of the chapter is a narrative, which is recorded from Ebeagwa village, in Upper Banyang, in 1981 and again in 1997. It is the story of the conflict between a slave master known as Ashunken and his slaves. The second part focuses on Essoh-Attah, which is one of the centralized polities situated in the Cameroon Grassfields, an area in the hinterland of the country. Banyang slaves could own property and had rights that they fiercely defended against the attacks of unscrupulous masters.
Type
Chapter
Information
African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade , pp. 55 - 64
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

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