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Rebecca Shumway, Public slavery in the precolonial Gold Coast (Ghana), Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 64, Issue 2, December 2021, Pages 80–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbab023
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Slavery was a common feature of social organization in many African societies up to the late nineteenth century, including those with a small minority of slaves, and a few outright slave societies (in which slave labour was the primary mode of production).1 Enslaved people were traded within several commercial networks connected to the African continent from ancient to modern times, including those of the ancient and classical Mediterranean, the Islamic realms, and the early modern Atlantic. In the West African region that corresponds to the modern Republic of Ghana, slavery was likely a very minor aspect of social and economic life up to at least the sixteenth century, then expanded to become a notable feature of social organization during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.2 African slavery resembled Islamic slavery in that young female slaves were typically valued above others, and one of the most common uses of slaves was as wives and mothers in the family of the slave owner. At the apogee of slavery in Ghana during the nineteenth century, however, mainly male slave labour was the basis of commercial agricultural production in some areas, while older forms of slavery persisted throughout the region.
