A common response
was to call African ėslaveryķ ģbenignī
because it did not correspond to the
Western model.
But this was simply to apply
Western concepts of
ėslaveryķ and ėfreedomķ
to institutions in other cultural
and historical contexts and,
perhaps worse,
to treat the African phenomenon as
a deviation from the Western one
ńthe latter
being seen as the true norm
Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, 1977
Chartres Cathedral, circa 1220