ABSTRACT
In Badagry, historic preservation is as much about people and grassroots efforts to pass down history through oral tradition, song, performance, and education as much as it is about saving the fragile artifacts and physical representations of the slave trade. This chapter examines the historical development and challenges of promoting heritage tourism around slavery. Site visits, oral narratives, interviews with caretakers, local officials and community members reveal conflicts, practices, and meanings associated with the city’s history of slavery, the goals of historic preservation and the participants and beneficiaries of the small tourism economy. This case study is discussed within the context of the global movement to preserve places and memories of slavery, such as The Slave Route Project of UNESCO, and tourism as a driver of urban development. It shows how poverty and local governance complicate such efforts. Ironically, large-scale preservation efforts tied to the promotion of cultural tourism may threaten the community-led preservation that has uncovered the history of slave trade.
