In honour of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, observed on August 23, we reflect on the histories of enslavement and abolition through works in MOA’s collections.

On the dawn of August 23, 1791, an uprising of enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue—now the Republic of Haiti—ignited the process that would lead to its independence from France in 1804. This foundational date was chosen by UNESCO as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.

As seen here in the image on the right, Haitian painter Roodly Jeune creates a contemporary memory of this history, depicting enslaved Africans being abused by French officials aboard a ship.

It is estimated that about 12 million enslaved Africans were taken from Africa to the Caribbean, South and North America between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Middle Passage, as the Atlantic passage was known, claimed the lives of about one-fifth of those who were forcibly embarked.

A wood carving of an enslaved African (pictured on the left) portrays a muzzled and chained man, with chains binding his hands, tied behind his back, to his legs and feet.

Although this carving seems to have been acquired in Nigeria, where its donors lived for a while, formally similar carvings originated in the 19th-century abolitionist movement in the United States.

Such images contributed to efforts to put an end to the practice of enslavement, whose consequences linger until today in the forms of racialized inequality and prejudice.

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Further Reading

Diène, Doudou (ed.)
2001, From Chains to Bonds – The Slave Trade Revisited, Berghahn Books / UNESCO.

Ogot, Bethwell Allan (ed.)
1992, Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century, Vol. V of General History of Africa, UNESCO. Accessible online through UNESCO.

MOA Collections Online
Explore more works from the Museum of Anthropology’s collections at MOA Collections Online.