This study provides, for the first time, an examination of slavery and its legacy in the Yoruba and incompletely Islamicized periphery of the Sokoto Caliphate and of Northern Nigeria. It links the story of the decline of slavery with the emergence of a small-scale peasantry, and follows its fortunes into the late colonial and post-independence periods.

Focusing on Ilorin, a city and emirate on the southern fringe of the Caliphate (now in Nigeria), this study uses the concepts of resistance and accommodation to reveal the evolution of the role relations between the members of the city elite and the slaves and peasants they controlled.