Women and Slavery, Volume One

"…(Women & Slavery, Volume 1 clearly demonstrates that far from simply being a by-product of a trade in male slaves, in many societies women were the prime focus of the slave trade.…" (Africa: The Journal of the IAI) "The geographic and methodological diversity of the chapters constitute one of the collection's salient appeals.… The two volumes challenge us to reconsider women and slavery and appreciate the strongly gendered nature of servitude in world history." (African Studies Review) "Women and Slavery: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic offers an exciting addition to the scholarship on gender and slavery. Students and professors alike will find this volume provocative and useful in examining the role of women in slavery and slave trades.… This collection, and its sister publication, Women and Slavery: The Modern Atlantic, by the same editors, work masterfully together and could serve as the basis for an entire course on women and slavery." (International Journal of African Historical Studies) "All these contributions broaden and deepen the historian's craft as well as our understanding of the gendered nature of slave-life in each instance. We learn of queens and thralls struggling to survive, of the lives of slave-washerwomen, and the significance of 'maturity' among female slaves…. Measured in terms of (Sue Miers's) own career, this volume shows just what a long way the historiography of Africanist slavery has come and where it yet needs to go." (Slavery and Abolition) "I believe these essays have an audience among anyone interested not only in the intersecting histories of slavery and women, but also those who are intrigued more generally by the historian's craft." "Women and Slavery (Volumes 1 & 2) makes a significant contribution to our understanding of slavery in a global context" and "showing the centrality of women to slave systems around the world." (Journal of Global History)