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Perbi, Akosua Adoma, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana from the  15th to the 19th Century,  Sub-Saharan Publishers, P O Box 358, Accra, Ghana. 2004 ISBN 9988-550-32-4

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Christaller, Rev. J. G, Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Twi), Second Edition, Basel, 1933



Abŭro-kyíri, - the white man’s country, Europe and America respectively. . .

Abŭro-kyíri nipa – a man who deserves to be sent to Abŭro-kyíri.

• Arhin Kwame West African Traders in Ghana in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries    Longman  1979
  • Dupuis' description of parties on the Elmina/Kumasi path . . . A large party of Ashantees armed in the fashion of their country with musquets and knives and conveying some bulky loads of ivory and a valuable kind of grease used by the natives for annointing. The party included women and girls whose employment consisted of attending upon their husbands or masters. Another party of three men, two of whom were slaves carrying a few elephants teeth to the coast.  Again . . . 12-14  slaves loaded with ivory. 6 Ashantees and two others in company with many women and slaves among whom was a girl of fourteen. Slave women and girls would not have been distinguishable from wives and daughters unless they bore tribal marks which identified them as nnonkofo.  
    
    9    There were some mmusua who had more than 20 slaves, who had children and made their master wealthy.  Kumasi kente weavers generally sent a trusty servant to the foreign markets to purchase the silk cloths from which the threads were taken for making kente cloths.  Chiefs could buy but not sell slaves.

   

• Bowdich, T. E., Mission From Cape Coast to Ashantee 1819
  • 33    A man whom they were tormenting previous to sacrifice his hands were pinnioned behind him, a knife was passed through his cheeks, to which his lips were noosed like a the figure of eight, one ear was cut off, and carried before him, the other hung to his head by a small bit of skin; there were several gashes  in his back and a knife was thrust under each shoulder blade; he was led with a cord passed through his nose, by men disfigured with immense caps of shaggy black skins and drums beat before him.
    
    75    Apokoo, one of the four greatest men in the kingdom, hearing his mothers sister was dead, killed a slave before his house, and proceeded to her croom to sacrifice many more and celebrate her funeral custom; but when he found on opening her boxes, that the old woman from her dislike of him had thrown almost all her rock gold  into the river and that he would only inherit a number of hungry slaves, he sacrificed but one more victim and made but a very mean custom.
    
    76    A girl was beheaded for insolence to one of the kings sons and a man for transgressing the law by picking up gold which had dropped in the public market place, where all that falls is allowed to accumulate until the soil is washed on state emergencies.
    
    76    One of the kings sons (about 10) shot himself.  His mother, a favourite wife of the king's, having added crime to a continuing perversity of conduct, had been put to death; the boy was banished from the kings presence from that time.  This morning he had stolen into the palace for the first time and the king, desiring him to be removed, observing that he had doubtless as bad a head towards him as his mother had shown; he replied that if he could not be allowed to come and look at his father he had better die; half an hour afterwards he destroyed himself privately, by directing a blunderbuss into his mouth and discharging it with his foot.  His funeral custom was celebrated in the afternoon and a smart fire of musquetry was kept up until sunset, amidst dancing, singing and revelry. Two men and one girl were sacrificed  and their trunks and heads were left in the market place till dark.
    
    258    No man is punished for killing his own slave, but he is for the murder of his wife or child.  If he kills the slave of another he must pay the value.  If a great man kills his equal in rank he is generally allowed to die by his own hands; the death of an inferior is generally compensated by a fine to the family, equal to 7 slaves.
    
    260    The good treatment of slaves is in some degree provided for, by the liberty they have of dashing or transferring themselves to any free man, whom they enjoin to make them his property by invoking his death if he does not, an imperative appeal.

   

• Manning, Patrick, Slavery and African Life, Cambridge, 1990

  • 119    . . . since a slave woman had no lineage except that of her master, a man's sons by slave wives would be in his own lineage - or in no lineage at all. Thus for a man to marry his female slave provided more than the advantages of his personal power over her. It also gave him new control - not to be shared by his brothers or elders - over the labor of his offspring and the inheritance of his goods, without formally breaking matrilineal descent rules.

Austin, Gareth, Human Pawning in Asante, 1800-1920, Markets and Coercion, Gender and Cocoa, (in Falola, Toyin  and Lovejoy, Paul E., Pawnship in Africa, Westville Press)

Klein, A., The Two Asantes: Competing Interpretations of Slavery in Akan-Asante Culture and Society

Perbi, Akosua Adoma, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana from the  15th to the 19th Century,  Sub-Saharan Publishers, P O Box 358, Accra, Ghana. 2004 ISBN 9988-550-32-4

Robertson, Claire C., and Martin A Klein,  Women and Slavery in Africa Univ. of Winsconsin Press 1983

Singleton, Theresa A , The Slave Trade Remembered On The Former Gold And Slave Coasts, Slavery & Abolition 1999 20(1) 150-169