Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-290) and index.

Introduction / Stephanie Beswick and Jay Spaulding -- Slavery in the Western Soudan / Martin A. Klein -- Slaves without rulers : domestic slavery among the Diola of Senegambia / Robert Baum -- The work of slaves in the Akan and Adangme regions of Ghana in the nineteenth century / Raymond E. Dumett -- When deities marry : indigenous "slave" systems expanding and metamorphosing in the Igbo hinterland / Nwando Achebe -- Death's waiting room : Equatorial Guinea's long history of slavery / Randall Fegley -- Slaves in the politically decentralized societies of Equatorial Africa / Robert Harms -- Indigenous slavery and the Atlantic trade : Kongo texts / Wyatt MacGaffey -- Bound to violence : Uganda's child soldiers as slaves / Randall Fegley -- South Sudanese systems of slavery : state expansion and slave mobility among the Bari and Azande of South Sudan (c. 1700-1900) / Stephanie Beswick -- "Slaves of the king?" : rhetoric and reality in the Nubian state tradition / Jay Spaulding.