Vulnerability and Dependence in Slavery and Post-Slavery Societies: A Historicisation of the Enslaved Children (Pon Pekpen) from the Bamum Kingdom (West Cameroon)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for your informative paper on this region in Africa that is not well known. You can see my comments on specific lines below. My biggest recommendation is to rethink how this paper ties into the theme of the journal _Genealogy_. You bring up children many times, but there is very little in your paper about children, and their relationships to family organization and connections over generations. You need to re-frame the whole discussion of the paper to emphasize slaves and their genealogical connections or consider sending this paper to a different journal. A journal on African history might be one good possibility.
Title - Can you make it shorter and more clear?
L 24 - Intro sentence should be made more specific. It is quite a general statement that is true without saying it.
L 24-25 - Can you say here that you are referring to the slave trade in Africa? That would helpe make things clearer later on.
L. 28 - “taboo subjects” to whom? To people in Cameroon? To people in Europe? To people in Asia?
L 29 - “After the first works dating” . Could be reworded so the reader knows that you are talking about research works.
L 33 - “At THE international level”
L 35 - Is the Slave Route project still going on? It looks like the dates of the studies you cite are over 20 to nearly 30 years old.
L 38 - “controversies”
L 43-45 - This sentence is unclear, because I don’t understand what a minimalist or maximalist tendency is in regards to the slave trade.
L 46 - “AND it should be noted...”
L 72 - “his Doctoral dissertation TO A LIKE STUDY...”
L 72 - Start a new paragraph at “These various works”
L 97-99 - Start a new paragraph somewhere around here.
Thanks for putting in your thesis statement. This is the conclusion I would make without reading your paper, because children are almost always the most vulnerable people in a society. Can you add something distinct in your thesis about the situation of children who were slaves that goes beyond what you have already? Also, are you talking about child slaves in the Bamum Kingdom or the status of children in these societies today? The following section makes me think that you are talking about children today (See lines 118-121 - make these match your thesis in lines 97-99).
L 100 - The data collected “were”...
L 127 - “(captives) resulted” Take out ‘had’
L 129 - What is the “Grassfield tikar kingdom?” You talk about it, but I am confused between “Grassfield tikar” and “Grassfields of Cameroon.”
L. 136 - “1500 metres of rainfall” ? Isn’t this supposed to be centimeters?
L. 137 - kingdom is located precisely “was located”
Map 1 and L 162 - Since the Pays Bamoun is not the same as the Bamun Kingdom, it would be better if you had a historical map here, and/or one that also shows the rivers and physical regions that you discuss.
L 137 + Please explain why giving the geography of the Bamun Kingdom is important for the paper.
L. 181 - 202 - This is interesting history. Make sure it is written for those who know nothing of this area. A number of the places and terms are unfamiliar and a map of them would be helpful (like Mappe, Foumban, and Njimon)
L. 205 - Map 1 and 2 and Photo 2 should be Figures 1-3
L. 211-212 - Above “above all, it had a slavery character”. Why did its history translate into it having a “slavery character?” — I see it come out on lines 252-253...
Table 1 - You should translate this into English. It is difficult to understand if you don’t speak French.
L 266-267 - Once the table is in English you can tie these people in the structure to the table.
L 302-303 - I don’t see the Grassfields or Adamaoua on Map 2. They should be somewhere that the reader can understand their spatial context
L. 307-309 - Also say that you will discuss the origins of the slave trade before talking about the different categories of slaves.
Section 3.2 - How can you make this section more about child slaves? It reads like it is more about women and families than children.
L 390 - “19th century”
L 394 - since the XIXth century – “during the 1800s”
L 404 - lead by the Royal Navy - “led by the Royal Navy”
L 425 - Article1 - “Article 1"
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Some minor editing throughout the paper would be helpful, especially with making some very large paragraphs smaller and starting each paragraph with a topic sentence that helps direct the flow of the paragraph.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I hereby writting to thank you very much for your professional expertise of my paper. I have taken into considerations all your remarks, comments and recommandations to rewrite my article.
Kind regards,
The author.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe essay is an an assessment of the legacy of the slave trade in West-Cameroon, focusing on the Bamum Kingdom. The author(s) look at slavery over time, making the argument that child slaves were the most adversely affected.
As a researcher on contemporary forms of slavery, I took interest in reading the piece, learning more about the history of West-Cameroon and the Bamum Kingdom. I believe the author(s) are attempting to shine a light on the legacy of enslavement in Africa, and for that reason the piece is worthwhile. The essay is also heavily cited, well-structured, and talks at length about the history of enslavement over time in Cameroon, which might be of interest to a wide readership.
My only concern--a big one--is that I am not sure I understand what the author means by child slavery. On line 84, the author says, "In this study, the term child slave should therefore be understood to mean any person of servile origin or blood." The author then says, child slaves are referred to "all descendants of slaves, regardless of age." The author compares this definition with current definitions of a child, including definitions from UNICEF.
I think the author is making the case that child slaves are all decendants, and that there is a kind of legacy of enslavement to understand and appreciate and honor, given generations of descendants of slaves in West-Cameroon. But as I was reading the essay, I was baffled. Typically, I still think of a child as someone 18 years old or younger, as the author acknowledges in the UNICEF definition. But I think the subtleties of what the author is reaching for are lost on me. Perhaps there is a kind of spiritual definition to "Pon Pekpen" that is lost to me as a non-African scholar. Or, I'm not fully grasping what the author is trying to accomplish. But as it stands, I don't follow their argument about child slaves having it the worst compared to non-child slaves (women slaves?)
I would recommend the author drop the argument about child slavery--it just doesn't make sense to me--but I sense that this argument is central to their paper. Perhaps the author could explicate a bit further on how everyone in Cameroon is a child slave, if I am reading their essay correctly. I feel there is a missing piece here that, if filled a bit more, could help me follow the logic of their augment a bit more clearly and fully.
Also, their commend on female slaves being manna from heaven was weird and strangely sexist. Try to stay objective.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
I hereby writting to thank you very much you professionnel comments, critics and recommandations/.
I really appreciation all the efforts you did in order to ameliorate the quality of my article befor the publication.
Kind regards,
The author of the article.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAuthors, Thanks for your improvements and responses to my recommendations. There are several places (see below) where you answered my question in your response to me but didn’t put an explanation into your paper. It would greatly help the general reader if you put the explanations for unclear passages into the paper.
Line 24 – The first sentence can still be improved to detail what type of “phenomena” that are noteworthy in the history of the world.
Line 35 – As it is a reference to show historical context, it would still be good to include the dates in which the “Slave Project” has been active.
Line 43 – You explained to me in your response what you are intending by a “minimalist” or “maximalist” approach, but the reader will not know what you are talking about. You need to put a form of that explanation into the paper, in terms of the “war of figures.” What is the “war of figures?”
Line 129 – You explained to me what the Grassland tikar Kingdom is, but the reader of your paper may not know about it. Please include your explanation in the paper.
Line 136 – It is not “1500 metres.” I think you mean 1500 MM (millimetres). That is how physical geographers express rainfall amounts. It might be a translation problem, but a metre is 100 centimetres or 1000 millimetres in English. Additionally, you should include that the 1500 MM of rainfall is annual (I assume).
Line 137 – You explained your inclusion of the geographical context to me, and now you need to do that for the reader.
Lines 181 – 202 – You didn’t help the reader by contextualizing this history as I suggested.
Map 2 – You did add a little bit to help the reader know where this is, but you could add more like you did in your response to me: Adamaoua was a main part of the of Adamawa, and part of the Caliphate of Sokoto located is the Sudanese region of Africa and linked to the trans-Saharan network. It is now in there northern part of the actual Cameroon and Nigerian.
I still suggest that you make your photo and two maps all “Figures” and number accordingly.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the file the file attached.
Kind regards,
The author.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
