Abina And The Important Men Summary

The paper I am going to write about is based on the story Abina and the Important Men. This book tells the story of Abina, a young woman, borne in Asante, who was enslaved and given by his master to a palm oil planter and important man Quamina Eddoo. She then escaped from this British controlled territory and sued Quamina Eddoo to the court because she was not free to do what she wanted. The story takes place on the Gold Coast in 1876, but the main scene is in the court room, where Abina faces some ‘important men’: a British judge, William Melton, two Euro-African attorneys, a wealthy African country “gentleman”, and a jury of local leaders. She did not want to prove that her living conditions were very bad, that the work was very hard too, …show more content…
Slavery took place in the 18th and 19th century, and ended at different times regarding on the countries. For example, it ended in 1865 in the United States, 1848 for the French colonies, or 1833 in Britain. This idea of abolition strengthened after the French Revolution and the US Revolution. One of the issues of slavery was the dominance of white people upon black people. Which right gave them the possibility to exploit them, to control them, to control their life, to make them work for them? …show more content…
First, in 1876 on the Gold Coast, slavery was supposed to be abolished. As James Davis, Abina’s lawyer, says, “Well, it’s true that there is no legal slavery here in Cape Coast or throughout the colony and protectorate”. We understand that as there should not be slavery anymore in this part of the country. But then, he says “But look, the government doesn’t have the money or the ability to enforce the law everywhere.” Which means that some people still exploit other people but they manage not to get caught, or to circumvent the law. The whole story is about the balance of power between a young slave and a group of important men. These men technically know they are wrong, but they do all what they can to prove that Abina is wrong. When the three girls, Accosuah, Adjua and Amba are supposed to come to the court and testify against Quamina Eddoo, we find out that at the last moment, they can’t come anymore because none of them could be rounded up so quickly. These important men have the power, and they can decide everything. We can actually wonder why Quamina Eddoo, a black man, was in charge of black slaves and friend with the British, when he was himself a black man. So, when the British took control of the territory in 1874 after the war, the biggest prize they won was to control the local trade: the gold trade but also the palm oil trade, vital to the functioning of Britain’s growing industrial production. Slavery had been abolished