African Slavery Artifacts and European Colonialism: The Cameroon Grassfields from 1600 to 1950

Abstract

African slavers used various articles, often of intrinsic value, in their slave business: in the purchase of slaves, in regulating the trade and in assigning special functions to slaves. These articles constitute valuable slavery artifacts in Africa today. Using the Grassfields of Cameroon as a case study, this paper shows how the study of these artifacts exposes not only how African slavers perceived and treated slaves but, more importantly, how these artifacts were used in regulating and controlling the trade. The paper also stresses the fact that a great number of these artifacts of material history were seized, destroyed or looted by European colonialists and Christian missionaries, which accounts for their scarcity. The authors conclude that the study of slavery art constitutes a novel approach for researching the slave trade and African history from an African perspective.