This book focuses on the range of trajectories followed by slavery as an institution since the various abolitions of the nineteenth century. It also considers the continuing and multi-faceted strategies that descendants of both owners and slaves have developed to make what use they can of their forebears' social positions, or to distance themselves from them. The book contains both anthropological and historical contributions that present empirical evidence on contemporary manifestations of slavery and related phenomena in Mauritania, Benin, Niger, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, and the Gambia.