Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature

Chapter Five: Childless Mothers and Dead Husbands: The Enslavement of Intimacy and Ama Ata Aidoo's Secret Language of Memory

133 c h a p t e r f i v e Childless Mothers and Dead Husbands The Enslavement of Intimacy and Ama Ata Aidoo’s Secret Language of Memory From the fragments of the myth of male dominion, we seek to structure a new way of saying things, one apposite and graceful to the new situation. The urgency is to acquire a language which expresses the woman’s grasp of reality as present and immediate; even in love, such urgency must not be suspended. —Hortense Spillers Though the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in Denmark in 1802, in England in 1807, in the United States in 1808, in Sweden and Norway in 1813, in the Netherlands in 1814, and in France both in 1794 and again in 1817 (after Napoleon reinstated the trade in 1802), the illicit trade in human lives was still a lucrative enterprise on the west coast of Africa by the 1830s and ’40s. Historians of West Africa disagree on the degree of impact that abolition had on the sale of slaves, both domestic and transatlantic, but all agree that the legal abolition of the slave trade did not coincide with an end to trading in practice. The competition for increasingly scarce clients and resources that resulted from abolitionist policies helped to inflame a new phase of regional conflicts, which ironically seemed to escalate slave capture and trade along the coast. The effects of the trade rippled through the coastal communities of West Africa—and even much farther into the interior—decades after it was chapter five 134 officially outlawed. Domestic servitude increased, but illicit transatlantic trade remained a viable enough business to continue to influence significantly the politics of the region. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, in what was then called the Gold Coast, the Asante and Fante were in a nearly constant struggle for dominance , as the Asante of the interior vied for a position on the coast from which they could manage their own Atlantic trade, while the coastal Fante fought to maintain their commercial and political bonds with the British as traders of goods and people at coastal forts such as Cape Coast. Though by the 1820s the slave trade had been in steep decline along the Gold Coast for decades, European sources show that the slave trade was increasing in 1827.1 Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson have argued that though Gold Coast suppliers seem to have been hit harder by the abolition of the trade than the dealers located at some of their rival export centers, slave prices along the Gold Coast actually rose after 1820 as a result of both continued (though decreased) demand for exports and a possible increase in domestic demand after abolition,2 thus continuing to make slave trading a sustainable business. In the interior, though the end of the legalized transatlantic slave trade certainly impacted the Asante, there were numerous expansions and infrastructure projects under way that indicated the economy had by no means collapsed as a result of the abolition.3 Alternating periods of war and peace were characteristic of Asante-British relations in the 1820s, as large factions of the Asante vehemently opposed the expansion of British control to the south and sought their own expansion in the region, while other factions sought to negotiate peacefully.4 Though the Asante claimed never to go to war solely for the purpose of obtaining slaves, warfare continued, and as a result, war captives continued to be produced.5 Thus, while the Asante struggled to sell these captives along the coast, the numbers of domestic slaves increased dramatically, lowering their value such that exchanges and tribute previously paid in slaves were expected in ivory and gold.6 This shift in commodity payments most likely prevented the Fante from paying tribute in the Asante region, which was just as well for many anti-Asante Fante communities, and as Mary McCarthy claims, it might have even encouraged Fante resistance against Asante power on the coast.7 Thus, it is clear that decisions regarding the transatlantic slave trade not only continued to have a ripple effect in Gold Coast politics and conflict, but perhaps highlighted the tensions in the region as well as allowed for the continued production of enslaved captives and domestic slaves. Though the West African transatlantic slave trade had largely shifted eastward, slaves were reportedly be- Childless Mothers and Dead...