Slavery, Marriage, and the Nature of History: Representations of Female Litigants in Gold Coast Antislavery Courts, 1874 to the Present

Historians studying abolition in the Gold Coast ( Akurang-Parry, Getz, Dummett, McSheffrey, Perbi, Haenger, and others) have traditionally used the testimony of litigants in courts as "facts", in much the same way that the colonial judges who heard their cases used this testimony as "evidence".  However, I am proposing that an affective and instrumental reading of their statements in court set within the context of local 19th century society reveals them to be performances more akin to oral tradition and literature.  Set within them are narratives of journey, characters with deep emotions such as shame and love, and plots with protagonists and antagonists.  More importantly, they are performances for specific audiences: meant to play to magistrate's biases, to establish respectability in local community, or to influence other witnesses.  The argument of this paper is not only that reading these sources as literature can help us to understand them better (more accurately and more authentically), but also that it can help us to construct better histories (more empathetic and more reflexive) as well.