Pawnship, a legal category of social and economic dependency, has been largely neglected in the historiography of Africa. Yet the labor of pawns - freeborn women, men and children indentured in payment of interest on a debt - was an important supplement to that of slaves in the precolonial and colonial eras and a substitute for slave labor in the twentieth century.

This book examines the origins of pawnship; the economic factors that contributed to its spread; the ideological and institutional framework that supported pawnship; its organization; the experience of pawns; the role of class, gender, and age; changes under colonial rule; and the decline and extinction of pawnship.