The main scenes of the story take place in the courtroom, where Abina strives to convince a series of "important men"-a British judge, two Euro-African attorneys, and a jury of local leaders-that her experiences and perceptions matter. Slavery becomes a contested ground, as cultural practices collide with an emerging wage economy and British officials turn a blind eye to the presence of underpaid domestic workers in the households of African merchants. The story of Abina Mansah-a woman "without history" who was wrongfully enslaved, escaped to British-controlled territory, and then took her former master to court-takes place in the complex world of the Gold Coast at the onset of late nineteenth-century colonialism. The book is a microhistory that does much more than simply depict an event in the past it uses the power of illustration to convey important themes in world history and to reveal the processes by which history is made. Winner of the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association-and widely acclaimed by educators and students-Abina and the Important Men, Second Edition, is a compelling and powerfully illustrated "graphic history" based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court.
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