From Slavery to Aid

Reviews / Votes

'Benedetta Rossi connects the specificities of place with the importance of connections across space, and she connects the continuities of a former slave society with the development initiatives of a colonial and post-colonial state. She uses her rich ethnographic and historical material to analyse insightfully the meaning of unequal social and economic relations, within a region, within an African state, and in relation to the external world.' Frederick Cooper, New York University 'A magisterial study of how a desert-side slave labor system in Niger is transformed by French conquest into a forced-labour system, and then by modern development agendas. It is also a story of how people survive under difficult circumstances.' Martin Klein, University of Toronto 'In this pathbreaking application of historical anthropology, Benedetta Rossi explores the shifting boundaries of social relationships in the West African Sahel. The politics of labour on the margins of desert and savanna marked the northern frontier of the Islamic Sokoto Caliphate and determined the impact of the colonial and post-colonial state. From Slavery to Aid unpacks the transformations of society on the ecological edge.' Paul E. Lovejoy, Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History, York University, Toronto '... well-organized, clearly written, and easily digested ... From Slavery to Aid successfully blends archival research with ethnographic fieldwork, making it an exceptional specimen of historical anthropology.' D. Dmitri Hurlbut, African Studies Quarterly