ABSTRACT
Female slaves usually received better treatment than their male counterparts. It was feared that they had the capacity to poison their masters, since they were the ones who fetched water, ground the flour and prepared the food. Even the right of partial inheritance might in practice be allowed by a generous master to a trusted slave. Slaves were used to staff the royal households, build up standing armies, to carry trade goods, to perform specialized crafts, in mining operations and agricultural clearance. Sixteenth-century observers were of the opinion that in parts of Kongo slaves outnumbered the free and performed most of the menial and manual work. During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Oyo was exporting large numbers of slaves both northwards to Hausaland and southwards to the Atlantic coast west of Lagos. By the mid-eighteenth century Asante, secure in its dominion over the central forest region, had reached the limit of the territory which it could rule directly.
