War, Slavery, and Gender in Sub-Saharan Africa: Exploring Historical Linkages and Contemporary Legacies

Most accounts of the historical origins of slavery begin with the enslavement of prisoners taken in violent conflict. This has traditionally been expressed in the language of a bargain, with prisoners ‘consenting’ to enslavement in order to avoid immediate execution. It has also become clear, however, that this one-sided bargain was primarily offered to captives who were deemed to be of potential value (and manageable risk), with more troublesome adult men regularly being slain. In most historical slave systems, enslaved women outnumbered their male counterparts. This pattern can be found in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, where both wartime enslavement and regional slave populations reached an historical zenith over the course of the nineteenth century. This underlying relationship between slavery and gender also had larger ramifications for the composition and operation of family networks, communal ties, and intergenerational obligations. While slavery in Sub-Saharan Africa experienced a ‘slow death’ in the first half of the twentieth century, this gendered relationship between war and slavery has continued to resonate in a number of recent conflicts in Africa.  In this paper, I examine a number of similarities and differences between historical practices and contemporary wartime experiences, drawing in particular upon archival research focusing upon Sierra Leone and Uganda. Through this analysis, I explore whether recent wartime abuses in Africa can be plausibly classified as a form of slavery, and whether (and on what terms) the history of war and slavery can be connected to events in our own time.