Testing the Boundaries of Marginality: Twentieth-Century Slavery and Emancipation Struggles in Nkanu, Northern Igboland, 1920–29

Abstract

In 1914 the Enugu Government Colliery and the construction of its railway link to the Biafran coast used slave-owning chiefs as labor recruiters. Although aware of slavery in the Nkanu clan area the state simply outlawed the slave trade and excessive treatment but left it to slaves to secure their ‘freedom’. Nkanu slavery was unusually pervasive, incorporating over half of some villages, with few opportunities for manumission or marriage to the freeborn. Severe ritualistic proscriptions excluded slave men from village politics. But forced labor destabilized slavery, causing unrest which reached crisis proportions in the fall of 1922. The revolt presents a unique opportunity for historical study of the goals, ideology and strategies of indigenous slave populations creating ‘freedom’ within the emergent colonial order.When owners demanded slaves' wages, the slaves resisted and demanded full social and political equality with the freeborn. Slaves who remained in the village struggled to provision Enugu's urban working class. For both slavery hindered opportunities in the colonial economy. In retaliation owners evicted slave families, increased their labor requirements and unleashed a reign of terror, abduction and sacrifice of slave women and children. By the fall of 1922 local government collapsed forcing the state to develop a policy on emancipation. It is significant that this struggle converted the slaves from a scattered subordinate group of patrilineages to an aggressive and cohesive community.