A Contemporary Investigation into the Social Memory of the Transatlantic Slave trade and its Impact on Slave Descendants’ Everyday Experiences in Southwest Cameroon and the Cross River State Nigeria

Maurine Ekun Nyok

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

The transatlantic slave trade's impact still casts a vast shadow over contemporary societies, affecting interpersonal interactions, cultural norms, and people with a shared history. This study examines modern interactions between freemen and slave descendants from a gender viewpoint, and its contemporary repercussions among the Ejaghams of Southwest Cameroon and Cross River Nigeria. Based on local-level ethnography, the study addresses the following question: Why do slave descendants seek to marry freemen in the face of experiences characterized by exclusion, discrimination, and restrictions? Through their shared experiences the study examines how slave descendants are restricted and excluded from mainstream society by exploring social groupings such as the Okongo and the Ekpe secret cults, and their symbolic representations. It further investigates the meaning of marriage and identity and how they play out in everyday life, focusing on the daily experiences of slave descendants in their marital/attempted marital unions with freemen. It further looks at how slave descendants use religion, marriage, education, and social mobility to gain acceptance and prospective marital partners among freemen. Finally, it offers a short postscript to the analysis, outlining and summarizing the gender imbalances in these communities. Qualitative data analysis reveals that the fundamental motive behind this push for marriage is to provide future generations of slave descendants with a partial "blue-blood" identity and improve their daily experiences. While slave descendants see marriage with freemen as a way to improve the lives of their children and provide them with other fundamental human opportunities, freemen fear that such unions will contaminate their "pure" identity, which their ancestors battled to maintain since the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Abstract:

The transatlantic slave trade's impact still casts a vast shadow over contemporary societies, affecting interpersonal interactions, cultural norms, and people with a shared history. This study examines modern interactions between freemen and slave descendants from a gender viewpoint, and its contemporary repercussions among the Ejaghams of Southwest Cameroon and Cross River Nigeria. Based on local-level ethnography, the study addresses the following question: Why do slave descendants seek to marry freemen in the face of experiences characterized by exclusion, discrimination, and restrictions? Through their shared experiences the study examines how slave descendants are restricted and excluded from mainstream society by exploring social groupings such as the Okongo and the Ekpe secret cults, and their symbolic representations. It further investigates the meaning of marriage and identity and how they play out in everyday life, focusing on the daily experiences of slave descendants in their marital/attempted marital unions with freemen. It further looks at how slave descendants use religion, marriage, education, and social mobility to gain acceptance and prospective marital partners among freemen. Finally, it offers a short postscript to the analysis, outlining and summarizing the gender imbalances in these communities. Qualitative data analysis reveals that the fundamental motive behind this push for marriage is to provide future generations of slave descendants with a partial "blue-blood" identity and improve their daily experiences. While slave descendants see marriage with freemen as a way to improve the lives of their children and provide them with other fundamental human opportunities, freemen fear that such unions will contaminate their "pure" identity, which their ancestors battled to maintain since the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Keywords

Slave Descendants, Marriage, Inequality, Discrimination, Exclusion, Cameroon, Nigeria

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 23. 4. 2024

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 7. 6. 2024
• Supervisor: prof. Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Ph.D.
• Reader: M.A. Irena Kašparová, Ph.D., Vitalis Ngambouk Pemunta, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Doctoral programme / field:
Sociology / Sociology