webinar register page

Radcliffe Fellows' Presentation Series: Ndubueze L. Mbah

ABOLITION FORGERY: A History of the Afterlives of Slavery

Mbah is a West African Atlantic historian. During his Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowship, he is completing his second book entitled, “ABOLITION FORGERY: A History of the Afterlives of Slavery”. Mbah develops the theory of abolition forgery to explain an overlooked phenomenon: how political projects to end slavery, abolition laws and policies, and liberal freedom discourses disguised the entrenchment of slavery’s political, economic, and social unfreedoms. Mbah shows that abolition forgery was a key component of liberal internationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Abolition forgery fostered capitalism and state control over African imperial subjects. For African people, surviving abolition forgery entailed documentary and social identity forgery, human trafficking, contraband smuggling, and forms of rebellious mobility that challenged colonial borders.

Apr 12, 2023 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)