Topographies of the slave trade along the Cacheu River, Guinea-Bissau, 16th – 19th centuries.

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Cacheu was one of the largest Senegambian ports involved in the transatlantic trade of enslaved people. After the 1830s, despite abolitionist efforts, clandestine traders encouraged the emergence of illegal trade sites away from the control of colonial authorities, and slavery persisted. Some of those sites are now occupied by modern villages, where the memory of slavery is intertwined with late colonial practices of forced labour and the struggle for national liberation.

My ongoing project examines the relationship between the transatlantic slave trade and the complex regional trade network that sustained it. The project is grounded on the systematic survey and documentation of villages associated to the trade of enslaved persons along the Cacheu river. It will provide an analytical framework to understand the process through this trade affected power relations between Europeans and Africans, establishing divides along the lines of race, ethnicity, and nationality that endure in contemporary Western societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow