Women as Actors and Victims of the Slave Trade in Igboland, Nigeria

Gloria Ifeoma Chuku

The findings of this paper came out of research I carried out between 1991 and 1995 for my Ph.D dissertation, and from preliminary oral interviews and archival searches conducted in Nigeria which I complemented with relevant available literature. This paper is an attempt to redress the gender imbalance and male-centered approach of most literature on the African Atlantic slave trade. It attempts to examine the role of women as victims and actors in the Atlantic slave trade as well as in the internal trade in slaves in Igboland of Nigeria between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that although Igbo women than men constituted the greater number of the victims, some of them participated actively in the trade as owners and overseers, chief beneficiaries of slave labor and dealers in slaves. These women acquired so much wealth that they invested in more domestic slaves, married wives for their husbands, became female husbands and built houses for them and their children. However, such factors as bridewealth, polygyny, manumission processes, reproductive and productive functions of women worked against them and made them the worst victims of the trade.

[WP # 99016]