From Slaving To Neoslavery: The Bight Of Biafra And Fernando Po In The Era Of Abolition, 1827-1930

Fernando Po, home to the Bantu-speaking Bubi people, has an unusually complex history. Long touted as the key to West Africa, it is the largest West African island and the last to enter the world economy. Confronted by both African resistance and ecological barriers, early British and Spanish imperialism foundered there. Not until the late nineteenth century did foreign settlement take hold, abetted by a class of westernized black planters. It was only then that Fernando Po developed a plantation economy dependent on migrant labor, working under conditions similar to slavery. In From Slaving to Neoslavery, Ibrahim K. Sundiata offers a comprehensive history of Fernando Po, explains the continuities between slavery and free contract labor, and challenges standard notions of labor development and progress in various colonial contexts. Sundiata's work is interdisciplinary, considering the influences of the environment, disease, slavery, abolition, and indigenous state formation in determining the interaction of African peoples with colonialism. From Slaving to Neoslavery has manifold implications. Historians usually depict the nineteenth century as the period in which free labor triumphed over slavery, but Sundiata challenges this notion. By examining the history of Fernando Po, he illuminates the larger debate about slavery current among scholars of Africa. "From Slaving to Neoslavery is a first. No other books exist on Fernando Po in English. The work is original and the scholarship impressive. It will be a must in studies about late slavery, contract labor, and Creoledom. It is a well-researched history of another big plantation island, and its ties with the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, are well handled."Jan M. Vansina, University of Wisconsin