SLAFNET Spring School 2019
Slavery and the Slave Trade in Ethiopia and Beyond
15-19 April 2019
Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University
Slavery and the slave trade have been an important historical feature of the Horn of Africa region. Consecutive regional polities executed slave raids into their respective hinterland well into the 20th century. The internal Ethiopian slave trade connected the political centers of Ethiopia with its peripheries, and the trade in slaves connected Ethiopia with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean world as well as with the Ottoman world. Various polities in the Horn of Africa were depended on, and were commercial centers for, slave labor. The regional contours of slavery are relatively well established. Despite the diversity of various forms of human bondage, slavery and serfdom, as well as the trade in slaves, and its relatively rich documentation, slavery has received little attention in the field of Eastern Africa’s social, cultural and economic history. Moreover, one feature of Ethiopia is the public silence and the absence of commemorative discourses among the descendants of owner groups, slave descendants as well as within the public sphere.
This spring school is part of a program by a scholarly network focusing on slavery in the East African region providing evidence of the diverse patterns of human bondage, in order to come to a more holistic understanding of what actually constituted slavery in East Africa, and what its legacies are today.
The spring school is organized by the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University, with the Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies and the Department for History and Culture of the Middle East (University of Hamburg, Germany), and the Institute of Research for Development (IRD, France), under the framework of SLAFNET (Slavery in Africa: a Dialogue between Africa and Europe).
The spring school shall be concluded by a public round table discussion on "New perspectives in the study of slavery and slave trade in Ethiopia"