Servitude and Slave Narratives

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Notes

1 Britain's involvement in slavery began in 1562, with the first voyage of John Hawkins to Guinea, and was abolished in Britain in 1807. The Slavery Abolition Act to end slavery in the British colonies, however, was not introduced until 1833. Compulsory apprenticeships were then used to keep slaves on the plantations, so the first slaves began to leave the plantations in 1838.

2 It was published in Germany in 2002.

3 I use Gayatri Spivak's term ‘subaltern’ here, which she uses to describe the marginalised and disempowered: ‘the illiterate peasantry, the tribals, the lowest strata’ (25).

4 Although, for Bales, those who wish to stretch the definition of slavery to encompass such abuses as prostitution and prison labour ‘dilute’ the meaning of the term (10). Lee also argues that ‘human trafficking as a contemporary form of slavery is marked not by legal ownership of one human being by another or long-term enslavement, but by temporary ownership, debt bondage, forced labour and hyper-exploitative contractual arrangements in the global economy’ (3).

5 Similarly, in Bridget Anderson's words, ‘this is modern-day slavery with shackles made of passports, not iron’ (12).

6 See also Deandrea ‘Shards', in which he considers the spaces of the new slaveries.

7 Contrary to de Lame's assertion that ‘The Rwandan genocide has been a shock beyond any consideration of nationality or affiliation’ (35).

8 For an essay on how the display of bones of Rwandan victims engages with ideas of memory and genocide, see Guyer.

9 Mbembe argues in his essay ‘Necropolitics' that ‘Slave life, in many ways, is a form of death-in-life’ (21), which of course ties in with Patterson's claims in Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study.

10 Salih and Sandra Courtman both pick up on Prince's allusions to her sexual abuse at the hand of Mr D—, whom she refers to as an ‘indecent master’ (Prince 25). As Courtman asserts, such references suggest ‘she probably spoke about sexual abuse, but this was censored by Strickland’ (37).