Resistance to Slavery in Africa

Resistance to Slavery in Africa: Past and Present offers a sweeping, accessible overview of how African individuals and communities have challenged slavery across centuries. Bringing together insights from Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone, Arabic and Ottoman scholarship, this volume presents a truly pan-African perspective on resistance movements from the precolonial era to the digital age.

The collection traces resistance across diverse geographical regions—from West and Central Africa to the Indian Ocean and Sahara—demonstrating how people confronted external slave trades, local systems of bondage and enduring inequalities that survived abolition. Foregrounding voices too often hidden in the archives, this book explores creative strategies enslaved people used to claim rights, negotiate freedoms and reshape their social worlds through customary, Islamic and colonial courts. It highlights women's pivotal roles in resistance movements, from fleeing sexual violence to forging new kinship networks. Methodologically rich, the collection draws on oral traditions, microhistory, social history and digital humanities to illuminate overlooked experiences. By linking historical struggles to contemporary grassroots activism—including digital mobilisation against modern forms of slavery—it reveals resistance as an ongoing, evolving process that continues to shape African societies today.

Essential reading for scholars of African studies, slavery studies and social history, this volume reframes African resistance as locally rooted, historically continuous and globally significant. This book was originally published as a special issue of Slavery & Abolition.