Pawnship In Africa

Download or read book Pawnship In Africa written by Toyin Falola and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1994-06-16 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pawnship, a legal category of social and economic dependency, has been largely neglected in the historiography of Africa. Yet the labor of pawns - freeborn women, men and children indentured in payment of interest on a debt - was an important supplement to that of slaves in the precolonial and colonial eras and a substitute for slave labor in the twentieth century. This book examines the origins of pawnship; the economic factors that contributed to its spread; the ideological and institutional framework that supported pawnship; its organization; the experience of pawns; the role of class, gender, and age; changes under colonial rule; and the decline and extinction of pawnship.