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In the coastal area of Benin, the vodu is a widespread religious practice. In the last years, a vodu cult, called tron kpeto deka, has achieved an outstanding success. Its leaders and adepts define it a "modern" vodu, because it appears suitable to cope with the contemporary society dynamics: it is clean, tidy, its rituality is more simple, speedy and efficient. This vodu elaborates its own discourse of modernity that, in the local sense, speaks of desire of social progress and of confidence in a future of success and wellbeing. The history of tron kpeto deka started in Gold Coast, during the period of the anti witchcraft cults' widespread. During its geographical and historical path, that brought it from the Northern savannah region to the coastal area, the cult embedded signs, practices, symbols and objects evoking the universal religions and a vague and unpredictable idea of North. The post colonial Benin and the ambivalent relationship between politics and vodu, that was developed in that period, contributed to build a favourable ground for the tron kpeto deka. Its modernity and alien origins cope with the demands for a renewal of local religions: people who are no more comfortable with "archaic" vodu practices, who are more involved with contemporary dynamics and look at the universal religions as means to "enter the world", seem to find in the tron kpeto deka a suitable religious alternative. ; In the coastal area of Benin, the vodu is a widespread religious practice. In the last years, a vodu cult, called tron kpeto deka, has achieved an outstanding success. Its leaders and adepts define it a "modern" vodu, because it appears suitable to cope with the contemporary society dynamics: it is clean, tidy, its rituality is more simple, speedy and efficient. This vodu elaborates its own discourse of modernity that, in the local sense, speaks of desire of social progress and of confidence in a future of success and wellbeing. The history of tron kpeto deka started in Gold Coast, during the period of the anti witchcraft cults' widespread. During its geographical and historical path, that brought it from the Northern savannah region to the coastal area, the cult embedded signs, practices, symbols and objects evoking the universal religions and a vague and unpredictable idea of North. The post colonial Benin and the ambivalent relationship between politics and vodu, that was developed in that period, contributed to build a favourable ground for the tron kpeto deka. Its modernity and alien origins cope with the demands for a renewal of local religions: people who are no more comfortable with "archaic" vodu practices, who are more involved with contemporary dynamics and look at the universal religions as means to "enter the world", seem to find in the tron kpeto deka a suitable religious alternative.

This article contributes to the recent wave of historical studies that have examined the immediate social transformations implied by slavery abolition on gender relations. It highlights slave women's attempts to alter their status and the personal agency they displayed in the immediate post‐proclamation period in the Gold Coast (present‐day Ghana). During this very early period (1874–1877) women were quite an active presence in the colonial court and the percentage of cases discussing the right of women to leave their husbands increased. Traditional and colonial powers soon reacted to this changing situation. There were two main constraints to women's emancipation. On one hand there was a general confusion on the legal status of wives within traditional family, and on the other, the logic of debt concealed within the repayment of dowries tried to force women back into bondage even when they succeeded in changing their status from slaves to free women.

This dissertation focuses on the broader questions regarding the response to natural calamities in the early modern period and on the popular reception of plague literature. The point of entry for my research is the plague outbreak of 1630 and in particular a curious phenomenon that took place in Milan, Italy. A belief begun spreading that people assisted by demons were using a poisonous concoction to spread the plague. The episode became a cause célèbre thanks to Alessandro Manzoni who told the story of the plague-spreaders to criticize the faulty judicial system which tried and executed the plague spreaders based on superstitious beliefs rather than reason. The little scholarship available on the topic has often conflated the events of 1630 with witchcraft. In my dissertation, I contend that the phenomenon of plague spreading exemplifies the synthesis of complex popular beliefs that characterized the Milanese "Seicento", and contemporaries did not perceive it simply as a form of witchcraft. I join the revisionist effort of the last forty years that has tried to bring light to the history of Milan during a century that, until the 1980's, was labeled as a culturally "dark" period of Spanish domination, and for this reason neglected.