The impact of British imperialism on the landscape of female slavery in the Kano palace, northern Nigeria

AbstractSpatial analysis of the Kano palace shows that colonial abolitionist policies enacted in northern Nigeria after the British conquest of 1903 affected the lives and places of female and male slaves differently. The differences derived from historical differences in the placement and function of slave women and men in the palace: whereas slave women lived and/or worked in a vast secluded private domain and engaged in state household reproduction on behalf of the emir, male state slaves inhabited ‘public’ places and held state-related offices. Colonial abolitionist policies, which restructured traditional ‘public’ spheres of state, accordingly forcefully altered male slave spaces while the private domain of female slavery initially went largely undisturbed. In time, as palace slave patronage was more severely undermined, domestic slave women left the palace to follow slave husbands and/or heads of households who had been exiled or who were in search of better outside opportunities, resulting in a decrease in the reserve of slave women from which concubines were chosen. The reserve declined further as slave men were permitted to marry freeborn women, resulting in a marked decrease in concubine numbers and a marked transformation of the internal organisation of the inner household. The spatial organisation of female slavery in the palace was thus affected indirectly and later than that of male slavery.The article demonstrates the utility of spatial analysis in understanding historical change and points to the need for greater sensitivity to issues of gender, ‘class’ and power in analyses of slavery and its abolition. It was the gender, wealth and power of royal patrons as well as the state-level skills and authority of male palace slaves, for example, that initially led British officials to promote state slavery for their own ends—advantages for slaves that women and/or masters of lesser means could not provide. Ironically, it was because male slaves held so much authority that British officials eventually intervened directly to erode their places and powers. The analysis establishes that the spatial organisation of slavery was constructed and eroded variably across time and place.