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The Great Lakes region of East Africa is interesting as a region where the dynamics of political and social change were, until the nineteenth century, largely internal to the area. This makes it particularly interesting for the study of slavery. Penetration of the region by slave dealers led to a rapid expansion of slavery in the nineteenth century, but this book makes clear that slavery has a long history there. Until the recent research of Michael Twaddle, most authors believed that slavery was unimportant in earlier centuries. Few colonial administrators talked about slavery. The Christian elites often said little, and nor, except for the White Fathers, did many Christian missions. There is, nonetheless, a significant amount of data, which is ably presented here. The Great Lakes is interpreted rather broadly to include the Nyamwezi and the eastern Congo.
Most of the articles deal with the nineteenth century. In fact, half deal with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The argument for early development is made most clearly by David Schoenbrun in an article based on linguistic evidence. Schoenbrun argues that some form of dependency existed by the twelfth century and that, by the sixteenth century, a separate term for female dependents exists. A market for slaves, however, developed later. Schoenbrun links the process to political centralization. It is probable that chiefs and kings were the most important slave-users and that slave retainers played a...