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THE SLAVE TRADE AND DECENTRALIZED SOCIETIES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2001

MARTIN A. KLEIN
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Abstract

This article, based on a review of the relevant literature, argues that the analyses of Andrew Hubbell and Walter Hawthorne can be extended to a general interpretation of the impact of the slave trade on decentralized societies. First, decentralized societies usually defended themselves effectively, forcing slavers both to extend their networks further into the interior and to devise new ways of obtaining slaves. Second, agents of the slave trade were often successful in developing linkages within targeted societies that exploited tensions and hostilities within them. In the process, the prey often became predators, but predators that captured people like themselves.

Type
Decentralized Societies and the Slave Trade
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Michael Levin, Richard Roberts, Ugo Nwokeji and Chima Korieh for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to Andrew Hubbell and Walter Hawthorne for sending me copies of their theses.