From Slavery to Aid
Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800–2000

This book explores transformations in the relationship between ecology, politics and labour in the Nigerien Sahel over two centuries.

Benedetta Rossi (Author)

9781107545113, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 December 2017

403 pages, 12 b/w illus. 10 maps
23 x 15.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'… 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

From Slavery to Aid engages two major themes in African historiography, the slow death of slavery and the evolution of international development, and reveals their interrelation in the social history of the region of Ader in the Nigerien Sahel. Benedetta Rossi traces the historical transformations that turned a society where slavery was a fundamental institution into one governed by the goals and methods of 'aid'. Over an impressive sweep of time - from the pre-colonial power of the Caliphate of Sokoto to the aid-driven governments of the present - this study explores the problem that has remained the central conundrum throughout Ader's history: how workers could meet subsistence needs and employers fulfil recruitment requirements in an area where natural resources are constantly exposed to the climatic hazards characteristic of the edge of the Sahara.

1. At the desert's edge
2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century
3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 1899–1917
4. Governing labour – slave, forced and migrant, 1918–45
5. The development of 'development', 1946–83
6. Fighting against the desert, 1984–2000
7. Between development and dependence.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], African history [HBJH]