Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760--1900

6. Redefining the Owner-Slave Relationship: Work, Ideology, and the Demand for People

Although Britain did little to emancipate the many thousand slaves in Lagos, economic, political, and legal changes occurring in the colony created new opportunities for some of them to begin to rede- fine their relationships with their owners. The abolition of the foreign and, more slowly, the domestic slave trades meanwhile diminished the threat of sale and widened the social space within which slaves could act. The final chapters of this book examine the shifting relationship between owners and slaves in the early decades of colonial rule, as slaves sought to improve their access to resources and alter their obligations for labor and allegiance, at the same time that owners looked for ways to maintain control over their slaves and other dependents. A number of distinctive features of the local system of slavery operated to the advantage of slaves as they struggled to transform their place in society. These included the dictates of the work they performed, the content of indigenous ideology regarding slavery, and the great competition for workers, wives, and dependents that existed in the growing colonial city. Yet powerful forces also constrained slaves, limiting their opportunities and autonomy and tying them to their owners or other superiors. While a minority of slaves quickly managed to accumulate wealth, rede- fine their identities, and acquire a measure of power and influence within the African community, the majority remained economically and politically marginal and many stayed trapped in relationships of subordination. 6 Redefining the Owner-Slave Relationship: Work, Ideology, and the Demand for People Redefining the Owner-Slave Relationship / 201 Gender and generation both affected the experiences of slaves as they struggled to renegotiate their relationships with their owners and position in society. Lagos’s many female slaves enjoyed certain opportunities not open to their male counterparts, and they also faced a number of different constraints. Moreover, owners and others seeking labor and allegiance tried in different ways to attract, discipline, and control male and female dependents. Evidence in the previous chapter demonstrated, moreover, that a high proportion—perhaps the majority—of slaves imported into Lagos during the second half of the nineteenth century were youths. Age also shaped the experiences of slaves. Child slaves were more vulnerable and probably also easier to hide, control, and assimilate than those who had reached adulthood. The historical record contains all too little information about slavery in Lagos after 1866. The paucity of data about slave women and children is particularly glaring. The reconstruction that follows takes gender and generation into account where possible, but the analysis is unavoidably uneven and fragmentary. Slaves had a range of experiences in Lagos during the second half of the nineteenth century. Following the British occupation, a few dramatically altered their relationships with their owners by running away from the town or the farms worked by its inhabitants. Some of these men and women fled beyond the slowly expanding frontier of British territory, bent on returning home or settling elsewhere in the interior. Others obtained access to land inside the colony and sought to support themselves by fishing, foraging, farming, manufacturing palm produce, or engaging in some other agrarian activity. Slave flight apparently occurred in spurts, concentrated at times of political or other turmoil and change.1 Consul Beecroft reported that most of Oshodi Tapa’s slaves ran away when the chief was driven into exile with Kosoko in 1851.2 If Oshodi’s slaves absconded at that time, those belonging to other chiefs and war captains in Kosoko’s entourage probably did so as well. Later in the consular period, Sierra Leoneans complained about slaves who escaped to Abeokuta and elsewhere, while at the end of the decade an estimated 450 slaves of northern origin took advantage of Baikie and Glover’s journey to the Niger to flee.3 The annexation of Lagos in 1861 and subsequent incorporation of Palma, Lekki, Badagry, and other territory also emboldened slaves to run away. A Badagry chief testified that many of his father’s slaves had absconded by the early 1870s, although he gave no indication where they went.4 A subsequent wave of former slaves from Lagos may have returned to their homelands at the time of the British penetration of Yorubaland in 202 / Slavery and the Birth of an African City the 1890s.5 There is no way to estimate the proportion of slaves that fled at the time of the bombardment...