Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social Bondage in West Africa, ed. J. J. Shaffer and Paul E.

PETER HAENGER, Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: towards an understanding of social bondage in West Africa, ed. J. J. Shaffer and Paul E. Lovejoy, trans. Christina Handford. Basle: Schlettwein, 2000, 213 pp., Sfr 48.00, ISBN 3 908193 04 4.

Dr Peter Haenger's unusually fine doctoral work on the Basel Mission's work in Kwawu led historians of Ghana to await this, his subsequent study, with eagerness. The patience of his colleagues has been rewarded with a remarkably good book. As Paul Lovejoy sensibly notes in a thoughtful introductory piece, we know far too little about slavery and other forms of servile dependence in Africa, largely because of the paucity of reliable data. The detailed and often perceptive records of the Basel Mission, despite the problems of orthography, have many virtues. The most important are that they cover a relatively long period of southern Ghanaian history before the imposition of the Emancipation Ordinance by the British in 1874-the mission had established itself in Accra in 1827-whilst also telling us...