ABSTRACT
The vulgar search for a single model of West African farm-slavery is a vain one, for although most slavery systems have several common features, including the slaves’ rights to live en famille with their wives and children and to pursue remunerative non-farming occupations, there are a number of salient variables which must not be ignored in any approach towards a typology, one of them being the distinction between Muslim and nonMuslim systems. Account should necessarily be taken of such variables as the assimilation of slave-descendants (where this occurs), prohibitions (if any) on the sale of slave-descendants, the existence of slave-villages, slaves’ rights (including the right of ransom) and the class or political position of the slave owners.
