Introduction

This chapter addresses the silence that characterizes African domestic slavery in West Africa. Whereas the transatlantic slave trade is remembered and commemorated, domestic slavery has long remained a taboo topic. The chapter sheds light on recent attempts by African people of slave origin to reconsider the contribution of slaves to the construction of African former kingdoms and contemporary nation states. It examines the ways in which African domestic slavery has been disregarded and the possible reasons for the silence surrounding this issue. The chapter pays attention to rumours, gossip and everyday situations in which the centrality of the slave past comes to the fore. It details how the silence has been broken little by little over the past decade, and examines why African anti-slavery activists now aim to revise history. The chapter surveys how Gando people collectively responded to the denial of their existence as an ethnic group in today's Northern Benin

Aesthetics · Art · National identity · Political science · Sociology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Psychology

• Collective memory and the transatlantic slave trade

  Phyllis Kyei Mensah•Curriculum Inquiry•2022

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