My dissertation argues that past examinations of West African slave systems have over-emphasized the importance of social, linguistic and cultural marginalization, highlighted by a lack of access to the enslaving society's kinship networks, as the defining factors of slavery in West Africa. By centering the narrative of renown nineteenth century slave-turned-king, Jaja of Opobo, my work argues that, as abolition took effect in the Atlantic world, Igbo slaves amassing in Niger Delta trading state of Bonny were increasingly able to maintain elements of their natal identities and, in cases like Jaja's, were able to reconnect with their natal kinship network in the Igbo interior. Furthermore, my dissertation argues that the slavery-to-kinship continuum model, first put forth by Miers and Kopytoff in 1977, is inherently flawed, inasmuch as it only accounts for the ability of the enslaved to be absorbed into the kinship networks of the slave-holding society, ignoring completely their ability to reconnect with their natal kinship groups in this increasingly turbulent period of West Africa's history.
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