TY - JOUR T1 - Promises and Pitfalls of Global Comparisons JF - African Economic History JO - Afr Eco His SP - 15 LP - 46 DO - 10.3368/aeh.49.1.15 VL - 49 IS - 1 AU - BENEDETTA ROSSI Y1 - 2021/11/16 UR - https://aeh.uwpress.org/aeh.uwpress.org/content/49/1/15.abstract N2 - Taking cue from Paul Lovejoy’s criticism of the dichotomies of centralized and decentralized societies, and Slave Societies and Societies with Slaves, this article contextualizes Lovejoy’s arguments within broader debates on historical comparisons in global slavery studies. It examines a case of slave trade that involved negotiations between actors belonging to different political cultures in regions west of Lake Chad in the 1920s through 1940s. The article agrees with Lovejoy’s criticism of macro-historical dichotomies and argues in favor of comparative models that go from the specific to the general. It suggests that historians pay specific attention to vernacular ideas and embodied experience. ER -