From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 18002000 [Paperback]

This book explores transformations in the relationship between ecology, politics and labour in the Nigerien Sahel over two centuries.From Slavery to Aid takes two major themes of African historiography - the death of slavery and the birth of aid - and constructs a social history of the Ader region, an understudied region of the West African Sahel in today's Republic of Niger.From Slavery to Aid takes two major themes of African historiography - the death of slavery and the birth of aid - and constructs a social history of the Ader region, an understudied region of the West African Sahel in today's Republic of Niger.From Slavery to Aid engages two major themes in African historiography, the slow death of slavery and the evolution of international development, and reveals their interrelation in the social history of the region of Ader in the Nigerien Sahel. Benedetta Rossi traces the historical transformations that turned a society where slavery was a fundamental institution into one governed by the goals and methods of aid. Over an impressive sweep of time - from the pre-colonial power of the Caliphate of Sokoto to the aid-driven governments of the present - this study explores the problem that has remained the central conundrum throughout Aders history: how workers could meet subsistence needs and employers fulfil recruitment requirements in an area where natural resources are constantly exposed to the climatic hazards characteristic of the edge of the Sahara.1. At the desert's edge; 2. Between Sokoto and Agadez: inter-ethnic hierarchy in the nineteenth century; 3. Entangled histories of colonial occupation, 18991917; 4. Governing labour  slave, forced and migrant, 191845; 5. The development of 'development', 194683; 6. Fighting against the desert, 19842000; 7. Between development and dependence. Benedetta Rossi connects the specificities of place with the importance of connections across space, and she connects the continuities of a former slave society witlÃz